A new, comprehensive resource directory for the PR industry has made a virtual appearance and promises to be a handy, no-frills one-stop shop for information-seekers.
Media Distribution Services, New York, perhaps as a way to get customers to check out its own printing and mailing offerings, has teamed with Sumner Rider & Associates (SRA) PR firm in New York to create PRPLACE at http://www.prplace.com/ on the Web.
The site is a text-filled assemblage of listings of major PR organizations, publications, magazines, newsletters, research journals, media sites, forums and chat rooms. Also included is a PR bibliography of related books, complete with links to national and international new services and journalism group Web sites. Probably the best news for users is that the service is free.
MDS, based in New York, is the nation's largest PR printing and mailing service, with over 10 locations nationwide. PRPLACE connects to MDSCONNECT, at http://www.mdsconnect.com/, which provides visitors with information on MDS' services, lets them e-mail MDS and offers free how-to guides to get direction on press conferences, PR printing, direct mail, media contacts, and distributing press material. Users can fill out a request form for the information they want, e-mail it to MDS and receive it for free.
Before Don Bates, executive vice president of SRA, started developing content for the site, he checked out other resources on the Web, and said that he found bits and pieces of information in various places, but no extensive information all in one place.
By working in the PR business, Bates had collected media lists and contacts, which he tweaked and updated for the site. He canvassed the Web for media sites such as news services, looked through books on media contacts and collected press releases he already had.
It took Bates about three months to put all the information together, and cost MDS about $25,000. This is an unusually short amount of time and low cost for a project such as this, but Bates has been working directly with MDS for 10 years, and knows the ins and outs of its services. The amount of time and money SRA invested would have been twice as high if the PR firm and client had never worked together.
Dan Cantelmo, president of MDS, said that the feedback he's gotten so far (in the past week) shows that users like "the look and feel of the site, it flows smoothly, has no overbearing graphic and it's easy to move around."
Users can e-mail MDS via the built-in response/request form, for specifics on its services, and there's also a feedback form for users to tell SRA what and what not to change. Since the launch of the site, Bates has received only a few requests for changes.
"If the need is there and the payoff for the client is good, we'll expand it, and of, course, there'll be changes. But no one knows exactly where it's going. Its purpose is to create traffic for MDS, but we don't want it to become an encyclopedia for the PR industry," said Bates. (MDS, 212/279-4800; Sumner Rider & Associates, 212/661-5300)