Thursday, January 03, 2008

HISPANIC PR MONOPOLY?

Is PR Newswire headed for a Hispanic PR monopoly? Is this is a sign of the continued emergence of the Hispanic economy or the Latinization of business?

Today, PR Newswire announced "its acquisition of Hispanic PR Wire, LatinClips, and Hispanic Digital Network."

I have used these services, at times, for the major clients of my agency, The 2050 Group, so I know them well.

For PR Newswire clients who want to reach Hispanics and Hispanic media I think this will be great because when they use the Spanish distribution service (which presumably will combine the strengths of the two services) they'll likely reach more people, and more of the right people, than ever before.

But for Hispanic PR Wire, LatinClips and clients of other services, I would be surprised if we didn't see a nice hefty price increase in the near future. These services have been pretty effective.

PR Newswire is really cleaning up in this narrow industry. Again, I use their services and they're great. But it looks like they're headed for monopoly status in both general public affairs news distribution as well as the Hispanic/Spanish news distribution. Who knows if that's good or bad at this point.

With all this said, nothing beats actually having terrific media contacts at Hispanic/Spanish-language media organizations and a press list of only those journalists who actually want to receive your news.