Despite the ongoing proliferation of visual elements throughout the media, the use of multimedia in PR remains a mixed bag, according to an exclusive survey by PR News and PR Newswire.
Consider, for example, the use of multimedia elements such as video, infographics or contests in press releases. According to the survey, 30% of the respondents said they “sometimes” use multimedia elements/rich media in their press releases while 26% of the respondents “rarely” use such elements in their press release. About 8% of the respondents said they “always” use visual elements in their press releases.
The online survey, which was conducted this summer, generated a total of 452 responses. Respondents included C-suite executives, senior-level managers from both the corporate and agency PR levels.
While the use of multimedia trends in press releases leaves a lot to be desired, the use of video in PR messaging is downright anemic.
Asked how frequently video is used in PR messaging and platforms, 79% of the respondents said it was “underutilized” and would like to do more, while 2% said the volume may be too high. A little more than 16% of respondents said their use of video in PR messaging was “well-balanced” (see below).
Kevin West, senior VP of multimedia at MultiVu, a PR Newswire company, told PR News that many marketing communications “budgets are still locked up in traditional methods of communicating and traditional content creation.”
But that may be changing, and quickly.
In planning for next year, 76% of the respondents said that they anticipate using some form of visual storytelling and just 1% said they plan to decrease such storytelling.
With those stats in mind, here are some samples of multimedia news releases, compliments of PR Newswire.
Sources: PR News and PR Newswire
Matthew Schwartz: @mpsjourno1
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