Sourcebottle - a great PR service

There's a service in the US called ProfNet from PRNewswire. Basically what it does is allow journalists to identify their need on a given day. I've used it in the past and while you won't get a ton of opportunities from it (or at least I didn't), there were some that were applicable. And it's really nice not to have to do anything to find an opportunity... you simply view a list of areas of interest that journalists are looking for help with on any given day.


I was pleasantly surprised to see a new free service called SourceBottle. I was even more shocked to see that the fees that are associated with the service are actually fees journalists have to pay!

So basically, their model is the exact opposite of ProfNet (at least based on the last time I used ProfNet a few years ago, where it was the PR people who would pay the fee and I believe it was free to journalists to use).

The only draw back? It's a service out of Australia and so most of the editorial ops are Australian ones.

What the heck is it with the Australians? They seem to have that innovative spark that North America had 10 years ago.  When I was working at CCSA it was actually Australian research that I found to be the most well done, I was always impressed by how they went about things down under (it's almost as if all the common sense in the world has been sucked in to Australia).

So what does this service model (where journalists pay and PR folks don't) mean? It's simple really and something I've talked about in the past. Journalists use to have the time to hunt down contacts and stories. But they don't any longer. They, like most professions, are having to do more with less. Which means they need people bringing information to them... they can't spend their morning hunting down who they should be talking to.

This is also why it's critical to have good PR services associated with your organization. Reporters are simply not going to come knocking on your door every time they write a story pertaining to your area of expertise. In the past you might have been lucky and in their research on a specific area they would stumble across your organization and give you a call, but those days are long gone.

If you aren't pursuing them, as far as they are concerned, you don't exist.

This is why they are even willing to pay now to generate connections with PR folks that can help them. If that doesn't tell you how important PR is becoming and how desperately it is needed, nothing will.

I strongly suspect part of this is also a result of organizations cutting back on their PR staff during the recession, making reporters' jobs exponentially more difficult. Can you imagine being a reporter and having to first do the research as to what organizations you should be talking to and then having to call around to those organizations and deal with PR people (if you can get one on the phone) who half the time aren't sure they can help? Talk about a pain in the butt.

Makes way more sense to simply post a 'call out' and let the appropriate organizations contact you. As long as they don't have to add it as an expenditure, there's no reason every PR person in Australia wouldn't be tracking SourceBottle. 

Kudos to SourceBottle for flipping the 'call out' model on it's head. I think they've really tapped a great idea here and would be shocked if they aren't hugely successful with it.

If anyone knows of a similar service here in North America let me know. 

Oh one last thing.. I like their Web site and Twitter background... great branding, very memorable.