This week, Gary and I are helping manage the press room at Semicon West, the global trade show in San Francisco for the world’s chip equipment industry.

A few years ago, we surveyed Semicon reporters about press kits. The majority urged: “don’t load us down with all that paper. One editor he usually fills up a suitcase on wheels full of press kits, then lugs them back to his hotel room where he tosses 98%.

So, what do you do?

Says Laura Peters, Semiconductor International: provide the information electronically via email or on a memory stick.

Okay: put the information on a CD or thumb drive and hand it to them at the show or mail it ahead of time with an embargo date.

Our advice: save yourself and your company the wasted paper and the expense of printing color sale sheets, photos and press releases.

We noticed a big drop in the number of press kits delivered to the press room this year. Down by two thirds over the past three years. And, of the kits we looked at, about third are filled with sales sheets and no news. Reporters want news, not sales collateral.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Media Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.