Okay, so we're being churlish to pick on the press area of a
media site that, after all, sends reporters from Time, CNN, People,
Fortune, Business 2.0 and many others to badger PR pros like you at
your own Web sites.
But oddly enough, the AOL/Time Warner corporate site (http://www.aoltimewarner.com)
has more technology and Web savvy than good media sense.
It contains most of the formal elements of a good press area.
But the ambitious Web site demonstrates little to no understanding
of why the press would visit. It also is evidently obvlivious to
the sorts of material they need to write their stories.
The site demonstrates unwittingly that there is a difference
between offering a lot of good and timely information and being
genuinely communicative and forthcoming with the media.
(Contacts: AOL/TW PR Executives, Ed Adler, SVP Corporate
Communications, 212/484-6630; Tricia Primrose, VP, Corporate
Communications, 212/484-7450)
|
Criteria
|
Grade
|
Comments
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| Link from Home Page | C | There is no dedicated press area here because AOL/TW apparently assumes that the press is the main audience for this corporate site. Press releases are on the front page, as are direct links to vital corporate and executive information, which is good. But because there is no press area per se, the informational resources get mixed up with bits and pieces of AOL/TW entertainment content and even links to shop or download AOL software. A better approach is crafting a dedicated press area that focuses on serving the specific needs of the media. |
| Press Release Archive | B | AOL/TW generates so many announcements that all it fits on the press release page is news of the past week. From there, you have to use the excellent search utility (see below) which includes news from 1998 on. But the results can be too cryptic because they rely on the release headline to summarize the news for each item. And when you click into the release, there is no functionality for easy printer formatting or emailing the item. Little thought seems to have gone into how the press actually use the material they find at a corporate site. |
| Contact Information | D | You can find contact names and numbers on the site, but they are either buried in the "Press Kit" page (only two contacts) or they are appended to individual press releases. Such a large, complex company desperately needs a detailed directory of PR contacts broken down by area of responsibility or subsidiary. At the very least, AOL/TW should centralize its contact information across the entire company here. And how about email addresses? This is the "You've Got Mail" company for land's sakes. It doesn't want PR to use email? |
| Timeliness | A | Above all else, AOL/TW is a media organization, and to its credit, the content it features on the front page of its site, as well as the press material and investor information, is not only current but farsighted. A calendar of events outlines which company properties are being released in the coming days, and upcoming investor information, conference calls, and other vital stats are announced well in advance. |
| Archive of News Coverage |
F | Here is where the old saw that no industry is more thin-skinned than the press holds true. Not only is there not a whiff of third-party coverage of AOL/TW here, but the company even provides its own feature stories about itself. A series of interviews with key personnel takes the place of much more helpful links to actual coverage, analyst comments, etc. |
| Ease of Navigation | B | The site makes good use of technology to create a "flat" Web design that gets you to the relevant information fast. Most helpful is a colorful front-page graphic that lets you mouse-over the name of the major corporate subsidiaries and click directly into its general description. Best of all, each subsidiary or investor area of the site has a well-organized set of relevant cross-links in the right column for direct cross-navigation into a user's logical next step. Good thing, too, because navigating into specific areas of the site from the front page can be thorny. The nav bar labels are too curt and non-descriptive, and many pieces of the site are not where one expects them to be. |
| Search Functions | A- | There are actually two excellent search engines for the site, one to search all content and another just to pull up press releases. The former produces a good trove of results, but it has no advanced searching options and the result page doesn't give any content from the individual listings. This means that the press has to click into too many items to narrow into the right document. On the other hand, the press release search utility is exemplary, as it lets you narrow the search by date range and search only for documents related to specific AOL/TW subsidiaries. Among all of the tools at this site, this may be the one that best serves press needs. It recognizes the complexity of the job of covering this corporation and offers a tool that addresses that complexity well. Oh that the rest of the site were this smart. |
| Company Information | A | Among the best features of this site - or any corporate site we have seen - the company information is broken down into subsidiaries, but each entity gets an extremely well-designed page of its own, with a bulleted overview, list of executives, key businesses, and hot links into further information about each. The information is written and organized for easy consumption on the Web. For a conglomerate, this is a superb way of condensing enormous amounts of data into a single page and giving the journalist the ability to drill to what she needs. The only thing missing is, again, direct press contacts for each of these corporate entities. |
| Financial Information | A | Exceptional. The financials are broken down into easy access to all quarterly reports, conference call transcripts and recordings, and even trending figures in downloadable Excel format. While it is intended for investors, this high degree of organization and detail is great for the press. It even has a lengthy list of financial analysts that cover the AOL/TW stock. If only there were a "press area" this conscientious. |
| Graphics and Media Assets |
F | We couldn't even dig up a logo let alone print- or Web-ready executive photos, etc. This is yet another sign that the site's relationship with the press is more incidental than deliberate. |
| News by Email | B | Email sign-ups for press releases and investor news are readily available in most of the relevant site areas. The only weakness here is that visitors cannot elect to receive releases pertaining only to certain businesses. Again, here is an instance where a conglomerate seems unaware of how large and complex it is and how the press might want to monitor specific businesses, not receive ten releases a week every time an SVP gets his annual lateral promotion. |
| Overall | C | Whatever is good and effective about the AOL/TW corprorate site is good because these guys are media pros who know how to shape and deliver complex content, not because they are themselves reporters who want to help other members of the press write fair and complete stories about the company. Which is astonishing, considering the skeptical press this conglomerate faces right now. Nowhere does the site try to make a positive case for itself with the business or general press. Nowhere does it acknowledge and challenge common conceptions about the failure of the legendary merger or the ineffectiveness of cross-media synergy. Without a specific press area, the site looks and feels entirely aloof from media scrutiny and diffident about press coverage. The lack of media assets is inexcusable, as is the sloppy approach to listing press contacts. Regardless, if you are looking for ways to convey basic corporate and financial information to a general and press audience efficiently online, we recommend you shamelessly copy AOLTimeWarner.com. Just don't expect them to answer any of your questions. |