By Dominic Jones | Published: November 13, 2006 | 
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PR Newswire Should Give Heineken’s Money Back
By Dominic Jones (2 comments posted)
THIS kind of thing shouldn’t happen — and companies need to stand up and start demanding that it stop.
I’ve pasted a screenshot below of a news release today by Heineken N.V. inviting investors to listen in on an investor presentation it’s giving in New York. The company has done the right thing for its investors, but the newswire has screwed it up for them.
To help investors, the company provided a direct link to the page on its website where they can access the webcast. This is good practice as it saves investors time and encourages click-throughs.
However, as shown by the red arrow, the problem is that it’s a long URL that has broken up over three lines and now doesn’t work. You can’t even easily copy and paste the link into a browser because its on three lines.
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| The direct link to the webcast is broken up over three lines rendering it inoperative and unusable. PR Newswire should make sure things like this don’t happen. |
That’s 100% PR Newswire’s fault. The screenshot is from PR Newswire’s website, so they’re directly responsible and have control over how this release appears.
PR Newswire has options for making sure that links in its clients’ releases work as they’re supposed to. There’s no excuse for this and it demonstrates how antiquated the company’s technology is.
Ironically, if regulators allowed companies to send these kinds of notices via RSS, a move PR Newswire bitterly opposes, these types of formatting issues wouldn’t happen.
PR Newswire should give Heineken their money back because it has made the company look bad and delivered no real value to the company’s investors.
Full Disclosure: For the sake of clarity, I thought I should add that I have no connection to Heineken. I came across this release by chance. I don’t even drink their beer. I have no ax to grind other than that I find it a shame when companies actually try to do things properly — too often they couldn’t be bothered — only to have their service providers bungle things.
If someone from PR Newswire is willing to address this issue, they’re welcome to put their side of the story forward in the comments below. We do not edit any comments submitted by readers.
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November 14th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
Dominic,
Being accurate is critical to PR Newswire. No matter how hard we work, it is inevitable that mistakes happen. They also happen on blogs, including this one. I am sure the communications team at Procter & Gamble is sick of seeing the company’s name misspelled as “Proctor” as you did when critiquing imaged-based annual reports.
http://www.irwebreport.com/paid/030103_2.htm
When we spotted your Heineken post, we re-filed the webcast advisory without the broken link. Each month, we catch an average of 8,000 mistakes in news releases BEFORE they are distributed. When one slips through, we are quick to issue corrections and, yes, refund customers.
We agree, Dominic, that anchor text is a helluva lot easier to click on than long and cumbersome hyperlinks. This functionality is alive and well in our Multimedia News Releases and in testing in a new editorial platform we’re rolling out.
If you spot other areas for improvement, let us know.
- Dave
November 14th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
Dave,
First, thanks for replying. It would’ve been much easier for you not to. Second, I’m glad you acknowledged the error and fixed it.
Mistakes happen. I make lots, far more than the one you’ve mentioned (fixed now, thanks).
But I’m not sure that comparing PR Newswire, a fee-for-service business, to blogs is a fair comparison. Or that a typo is as significant as a broken link to Reg. FD materials.
I do hope to write more about the wire services in upcoming posts.