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My Take On Embargoes — Break Them And No More For You!
I’ve had a variety of people ask me for my views on the embargo and I’ve thought about it over the past year so here goes. I think of embargoes as gifts. It’s a certain level of trust that a PR firm or company has given to a writer. It’s the most trust that a company can give out and something that should be respected as such. When I started CN I had zero contacts. I remember getting my first embargo and realizing I may now be part of the big time. It was one of the best days on CN! Maybe that’s why I respect them, maybe it’s my financial background and signing many corporate financial documents which, if made public ahead of time, could have sent me to Rikers. A friend of mine said that embargoes are all about “maintaining trust and long term credibility.”
I’ve seen bloggers who post early – whether its 5 minutes or 30 minutes, it’s still early in my book. We know why they do it, first is first.
Why are embargoes important? Because they allow the writer advanced time to prepare a story that has more details than just a press release post. It allows me to look at the service and give you a more detailed analysis. I can dive in and give you more than some corporate speak. They are critical for a site’s readers.
Every writer will make a mistake, I am sure I will make one at some point (knock on Facebook). So everyone should get one “embargo pass.” But break the rules again and you don’t get any embargoes for a specific period of time. The issue is that the PR firms and companies don’t really care when a writer breaks the embargo. The PR firm wants to be on x blog or y site and if they break it, big woopie they are still driving the traffic.
Though there is some promise being displayed over the past three weeks. One company told me they are no longer giving their releases to the blogs who broke their embargoes in the past. And two PR firms said they are working on new methods to protect the embargoes.
It’s like taking cookies from the jar when mommy told you not to. If she doesn’t punish you for doing it, then you will just keep doing it over and over. Same thing here. When a blog or paper consistently breaks an embargo, they should no longer receive them. Period.
I have no problem with the idea of embargoes at all. The problem, I think, is more that what a company thinks is news is not necessarily news. I think, from the outside, that’s a part of why the tech blogging world seems so myopic.
In an ideal world, I would read tech news that was discovered independently of press releases altogether. But there’s not unlimited time for you guys to do that, so I know that’s just unrealistic.
I do spend a lot of time looking for news I can assure you of that. Especially NYC news. But it’s good to get some delivered as well. But I agree, hunt and find can get you some good bits and bytes.
Got to say I agree but it doesn’t work this way unfortunately; I think at least with some PR hacks that embargoes are some sort of insiders joke on bloggers, I’ve always respected them but when others break them a lot of PR hacks don’t seem to care at all, probably because it’s their aim to maximize exposure embargoes be damned. It undermines the whole embargo system.
If they don’t play according to the rules, banish them for a long period so that they have the time to contemplate their follies.
I am actually being serious here. I remember in the old days where one magazine did not accept stories with embargoes because they published as soon as they got them. We totally avoided them and they weer the biggest guys on the block. Ah Well!
I agree about holding embargoes. Breaking them hurts every blogger/reporter.
I’m curious about what incident or set of incidents prompted this post.
There isn’t one specific event that I can point to. It happens just about weekly or so.
Hi Allen, I agree with most of what you said, though to underscore what another PR person said, we care A LOT if anyone breaks our embargos because it’s unfair to all the other bloggers and media who had the professionalism to honor it.
This is a business of trust, and the trust goes both ways. Our agency wants bloggers and media to know that if we offer an embargo, they can trust us to do our best to enforce it and not provide special privledges to anyone.
We’ve found the best way to enforce it is to clearly ask the blogger ahead of time if they will agree to honor it – before we give them the story. Even after they agree we’ll politely remind them during their interview, and we’ll make sure the press release is clearly marked with the embargo time.
In my experience, the few times I’ve seen an embargo violated it’s usually out of a genuine misunderstanding, possibly because we the PR agency didn’t adequately communicate the details.
We have a process in place (triggered only once or twice over the years) that if anyone breaks the embargo (deliberately or by accident, it doesn’t matter), we immediately contact everyone who agreed to the embargo and inform them they’re free to run with it. And of course, we apologize profusely because we know it’s a huge letdown after the blogger or reporter has invested a ton of time to interview the client and research and write the story, only to have someone steal the thunder.
If anyone were to deliberately break an embargo for one of our clients, not only would they lose the priveledge in the future for the client in question but we’d also never offer them embargoed stories for other clients.
That said, there’s more that PR people can do to avoid misunderstandings and treat all embargo honorees fairly. I write for VentureBeat. I’m often pitched by PR people who email me an embargoed press release before I’ve even agreed to honor the embargo (I honor all embargo automatically, but not all media do nor should they be expected to if they haven’t given their agreement first).
Many many years ago, before I knew better, I pitched a story to John Markoff. I made the mistake of leaving him a voicemail where I told him the complete story, and only at the end of the voicemail did I tell him we wanted this embargoed. Oops. He forwarded the voicemail to another writer and a story appeared the next day. Afterward, I shared my dilemna with Don Clark at the WSJ and asked him his advice on how to avoid this, and he said, “Always ask for agreement to honor the embargo before you give them the story.” Good advice.
That wouldn’t work very well to have exclusives only – all that would do is keep the #1 or #1-2 blogs on top and never allow anyone else to grow. Though there are some blogs who force exclusivity for writeups.
while I mostly agree with allen – embargoes are a “rule” that screams to be broken. when iPhone says “don’t hack” … don’t we applaud people who hack anyway? dont we visit sites who break the embargo anyway since we (as readers) benefit?
I would probably say: lets move away from embargoes to exclusives. an exclusive gives the blogger way more visibility and opportunities than just an embargo that he has to share with 10 other sites and can only “lose” since any other one will break it.
It’s about trust. Like mainstream media, bloggers should respect an embargo, and if they don’t, I’d take them off my list. There are often legitimate reasons to ask for an embargo — from SEC disclosure requirements to a company’s internal timing for when a product or service will actually be ready or available.
Despite what one commenter said above, we p.r. “hacks” do care if an embargo is broken, since it can put us into a very awkward position.
The problem is there anything they can really do to stop the bigger sites from breaking them. Maybe a signed paper saying they are not going to break the embargos and if they do they are libel in a court of law. I suppose the only problem with that approach is the a-list blogs will just not cover the event.
maybe a teaser issue and then the full issue when the date has been reached.
I agree on the embargo’s, but there is that possibility that someone is ALWAYS going to be break it, and receive more readers because of it. If it’s successful, then sometimes the company who put the embargo on them doesn’t do anything about them– as it got them the exposure they wanted anyway. Just like parents, the company’s doing the embargo’s MUST be consistent and always play by the rules themselves. Otherwise, it’s a case of bad discipline, and bad discipline gives us pretty bad children! It’s a little hypocritical to get upset about it one time, and in the next time do nothing about it.