ACHIEVING A MATCH: GAUGING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CORPORATE PRESS RELEASES

Abstract

From a public relations perspective, the effectiveness of a press release is measured by the extent to which the media coverage matches the original intent of the piece (Wilcox et al., 2015). The present study examined press releases over the past five years from the top 25 corporations in the United States in order to ascertain the extent to which news media match these public relations efforts. Press releases and articles were coded for the presence of various discourses (technology, science, quality, sales, change, ethics, innovation, excellence, and crisis) business and social marketing practices, supplementation, and referential similarity. The results revealed that the discourses were the most frequently matched component between press releases and articles and that while articles never provided a direct link to the original press releases, they did reference the release the majority of the time. Business marketing, social marketing, and supplementation were rarely present in the press releases and even less so in the articles, which suggests a filtering of corporate bias by news media. Discussion focuses on practical implications for the field of corporate public relations.