The press conference has changing. It has become a form of ‘event marketing’ and it is no longer restricted to selected journalists (and bloggers). They have to be invited of course otherwise it wouldn’t be a press conference but they are no longer the exclusive channel for the launch message. We can all attend the launch.
This change has already taken place in the technology sector with two major examples in the past week. Apple, who have mastered the craft of the press conference event, launched the iPad, and today Google launched its new killer social networking application Google Buzz.
For me what was extraordinary about the launch of Buzz was that this morning I didn’t know it was about to happen. I picked up the buzz around ‘Buzz’ on twitter. I saw that the press conference was going to be channelled live on YouTube so I joined Jeremiah Owyang and the select few who were actually there and tuned in. I realised immediately that Buzz would be big so I ‘live blogged’ over at PR Media Blog whilst the conference was still on, screen grabbed an image from the YouTube feed and posted my take a couple of minutes before the conference ended.
I subsequently discovered via @scobliezer that meant I had broken the embargo that the journalists attending had signed up to. Surely, they broke their own embargo?
PR and the Social Web 
The embargo is confusing… giving a live feed but not allowed to comment? Have you tried buzz now? I took a look and was not keen, although I may go back, it may turn out to be great so I don’t want to dismiss it yet.