They Say
War Crowds Out Corporate News
Excerpted from Laurence Darmiento’s March 31 story in the Los Angeles Business Journal:
When PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. released an index of physician quality a year ago it was besieged by calls from reporters wanting details.
Earlier this month, the Cypress-based health maintenance organization released what it felt was a similarly important index of hospital quality. It barely caused a ripple.
“This time we got a few bites. Last time we couldn’t stop the phone from ringing,” rues spokesman Tyler Mason.
The difference? The all-consuming conflict in Iraq, which has left little room among both news organizations and the public for the types of business stories that normally are daily fodder.
PacifiCare is not the only company having trouble reaching its audience. Internet postage company Stamps.com saw a major announcement of a partnership with software giant Microsoft Corp. get lost in the blizzard of war news. Jakks Pacific Inc. trumpeted to deaf ears a new video game based on its World Wrestling Entertainment characters. Both companies are rethinking their wartime marketing strategy.
Meanwhile, both PR Newswire and Business Wire, whose lifeblood is a steady stream of new product, company alliance and other business announcements, have seen a decline in volume this month.
“We are letting our clients know (if they put out a release) they are not going to receive the amount of coverage they normally do,” said Lysa Barry, owner of Barry & Associates, a Woodland Hills public relations firm. “It’s hard to get either journalists’ attention or the public’s.”
“There are reporters I deal with at The New York Times who cover business and lifestyle I saw in Iraq on CNN,” said Genna Goldberg, Jakks’ spokeswoman.
Officials with PacifiCare, Stamps.com and Jakks said they would consider holding back any further announcements if it is at all possible, as long the intense coverage and interest in war news remains.
“You don’t want to put out a press release when you are not going to get any press from it,” Stamps.com Chief Executive Ken McBride said.
Exceptions would be Securities and Exchange Commission-mandated filings, such as quarterly earnings announcements that the companies will issue on their regular schedules.
Business Wire, a San Francisco-based press release distribution service, reports that volume is off by 12% in March compared with last year. Competitor PR Newswire reports that it only carried about 500 press releases on March 21, a few days after the war started. On a normal day it might have 700.
“A lot of it is the economy, but business was way down in March,” said Larry Lokey, chief executive of Business Wire. “All bets are off now until the war ends.”
Even then, relief might still be a ways off. Barry figures that while the war’s end will bring back some normalcy, there will be great interest in rebuilding Iraq for a minimum of one to two months afterward. “We will still have post war coverage and that will be intense,” she said.
There is a silver lining, though, for companies that have bad news to report.
Two weeks ago, PacifiCare announced that one of its subsidiaries settled a lawsuit brought by the Texas attorney general regarding its payment practices. The company admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay a $1.5 million fine.
The agreement got coverage in Texas but in its home state of California, Mason acknowledged that there was none.
