Utility versus creativity in press releases

A press release that is one big image, full of text that can’t be copied/pasted and links that can’t be clicked, might be colorful, but it’s not the most useful thing in the world.

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I try to keep things on a pretty even keel, especially when I’m writing articles for PR Daily, but just this once, I’m going to have to let my rage out.

This week, I received a press release for an online video campaign, and when I opened the email, I was shocked to find that the contents were just one big image.

That might be OK if it was a quick, to-the-point image of a slogan or a teaser (and if that image was also a link to a full press release), but this was a huge image of what looked like the Web version of a text press release, with what looked like links and everything.

Here’s what it looked like:

None of that text could be highlighted to copy and paste, because it wasn’t really text. It was part of an image. Likewise, clicking on the underlined blue text didn’t do anything. Further down, there were images from a YouTube video that also weren’t clickable (though there was a for-real link to the video at the very top of the email). It felt like a cruel joke. I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fools’ Day again.

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