Hey Marketing Folks! Where’s the Pictures?

I’ve mentioned this on all of the sites I write for at one time or another, but it truly just annoys me to no end.  Why do companies put out press releases about new and exciting upcoming products but don’t include a picture of said wonderful product to go with it?!

I just got a package of Computex related press releases announcing 16 new products and only half of them had actual pictures of the products they were announcing.  I even went to the company website to look for my own pictures and there are none to be found. Sure I could post the ones with pictures I guess, but that’s not the point.

I see hundreds of press releases per day and I’d have to say that more than 75% of them do not include an actual picture of the product that they’re announcing. I don’t understand that at all.

Some press releases don’t include pictures but in them are links to pictures which works as well, but the majority don’t even have that. So I have to spend my time searching for one and I’ve found that oftentimes you can go to the actual company site and they don’t even have a picture of the product they’re announcing. 

What is the thinking behind this?  Are people supposed to imagine what this great new product looks like just by your description of it? It makes no sense to me at all. These companies are all excited to share the news with out readers but yet there’ no picture of the actual product they’re announcing?!

Who the hell thinks this is a good way to announce a new product? Apparently most companies do from what I’ve seen…

Prime example Mad Catz just announced a whole slew of products at E3 and I got press releases from them directly and I get them via Business Wire and none of them had pictures of the actual products to go with the announcement.  Sure I could go and search the sites for pictures but why should I have to do more work for you? You want me to post about your product but you also want me to search and hunt for pictures of said products.

Not getting on Mad Catz, but it was just the first one that popped into my head because I have three tabs open right now with their press releases in them with, you guessed it, no pictures!

Another quick example of this is Electronic Arts, I have seven tabs open right now with their press releases in them about new games, not one of them has a screen shot, logo or even a box shot to go with it. What the hell?

Another example is new phone releases, phone companies are horrible when it comes to this, they announce a new phone but yet there’s no pictures of this new device and they’re not even on their site. I’ve found also that cell phone companies are also great at putting out a press releases with links in it that don’t work yet. They include links to the product landing page that isn’t even live yet?! My first thought is who the hell is in charge over there?  How do you put out an official PR with links in it that don’t even work?! That just makes no damn sense to me at all…

it seems to me it’s the smaller companies that go the extra mile as it were and include pictures, it’s more the bigger companies that just don’t seem to care. it’s like they say “yeah here’s the announcement, if you want material to go with it, find it yourself”.

I don’t want to do it anymore, if it doesn’t have a picture then I’m just not going to post about it. Maybe if we all do that then these companies will realize that it’s not too hard to include a picture with their press releases.

Sad thing is that it will never change, they don’t care enough to change it I think….  Oh well…