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BIZCHINA> Top Biz News
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Corporations' need for communications drives PRN Asia's expansion
By Song Hongmei (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-09 10:56 Despite disastrous worldwide economic conditions, PR Newswire (PRN) Asia, formerly known as Xinhua PR Newswire, now lists more than 700 companies and organizations as users of its information distribution services in the Chinese mainland. Some 400 of the total users signed or renewed year-long "package" agreements during 2008 and early 2009, with a retention rate of 95 percent. "Our performance on the part of our customers in 2008 was the best since we began operations in China in 2003," said John M. Williams, senior executive vice president of PRN Asia.
"That success is mostly due to our primarily Chinese staff members who have been able to convince Chinese companies or the firms that represent them to see and accept the value in using a service such as ours. "Additionally, the multinational business community has also joined the trend as our ability to provide results has shown marked improvement and economy," Williams said. By the end of 2008, the wire service provider had transmitted over 10,000 articles from corporations, their agents and organizations, in sharp contrast to 2004, when it handled fewer than 1,000 stories. "The financial crisis offers a real opportunity for us to expand our presence in the Chinese mainland," he said. "When times become tough, corporations need more communications with their consumers and investors, actively telling their stories and their strategies for coping with the financial crisis to maintain their consumers and investors' confidence with them," said Williams' deputy Chen Yujie, managing director for the service provider's Chinese mainland business. PRN Asia assists corporate public relations staff communicate to stakeholders in a cost effective way during these tough economic times. "We are in a position to help them cost-effectively create visibility for their business, products or services by having their news releases delivered to all important media outlets around the world quickly and economically," Chen said. Prices for distributing a news release range from 2,600 yuan to 3,800 yuan ($385-$560) at PRN Asia's Chinese mainland office, depending on the client's membership, whereas a press conference usually costs more than 20,000 yuan including hiring a public relations agency, renting a meeting room at a luxury hotel and preparing a press release kit. "Our confidence in this year's performance is also buttressed by our continually improved distribution capabilities, extended distribution network and more client-friendly after-sales services," added Chen. Last spring, PRN Asia introduced China's first multimedia solution for corporate news distribution. The "Multimedia News Release" makes it easy to deliver news releases in a multimedia format, blending video/audio, text, logos, photos and related documents into a dynamic HTML platform. The service provider also provides production services for those companies which may need content creation. PRN Asia currently distributes corporate press releases to almost 11,000 journalists from some 3,000 media outlets in China. Through cooperating with the leading wireless Internet portals and a leading cell phone terminal software developer in China, all press releases including text, logos, images and other multimedia content can now be directly transmitted to more than 9 million smart phones and more than 60 million wireless Internet users across the country. Taking a foothold in China PRN Asia was previously known as Xinhua PR Newswire in China when it began in 2003 as a joint marketing operation between China's premier financial services and media company Xinhua Finance and PRN, a New York-based global leader in news and information distribution services. Since then, the company has kept pushing forward a business model that PRN started over 50 years ago in the United States -- helping companies in their public relations services efforts by providing information free to media and investment institutions.
Public companies issue news releases to the financial community when they need to broadly disclose information simultaneously. Editors, reporters, and journalists depend on these news releases to alert them to unique products, trends and changes in the business landscape. PRN creates a platform for both of them and in today's highly-changing transparent environment, its network proves to be efficient and timely. News releases are delivered by PRN to journalists and analysts for review. If the journalist or analyst finds the announcement of value they may contact the company for more details and possibly an interview. This may result in the company being mentioned in an article or broadcast. (For more biz stories, please visit Industries)
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