Why News Embargoes are Crap

Automobile manufacturers love a good news embargo. The promise of exclusive content hand-delivered to specific media outlets of their choosing. The allure is real. But is the outcome really that effective?

If you’re unfamiliar with a news embargo, the concept is fairly simple. A company provides advanced opportunity to select media outlets to report on an upcoming product, report or piece of news. In return for that advanced opportunity, the selected outlets return the favor by holding off on releasing the news they’re reporting until the company gives the go-ahead.

A most recent example is driving impressions of the much (too?) hyped Chevrolet Corvette C8. The mid-engined super-car-in-the-making made waves months ago when it was launched. It was the first time America’s favorite sports car had moved its engine to behind the driver, satiating years of rumors and magazine cover speculations. It was a big deal. It is a big deal.

However, up until October 15, no one had actually talked openly about having driven one, outside of GM insiders. The lucky ducks at Car & Driver actually got to ride passenger in a prototype back in July. That was just a small taste to whet the palette.

In late September, Chevrolet made their rounds with near-production spec C8 Corvettes. Driving them around, lending them to journalists at outlets like Road & Track for their Performance Car of the Year (PCOTY) review. All of the pre-release PCOTY promotion on social media heavily made it clear that, yes, the C8 was being driven, and driven hard, but any impressions of the actual experience wouldn’t, er…couldn’t, be released until mid-October. That was all Chevrolet’s doing, with a heavy-handed embargo.

Then, October 15 came, with a deluge of C8 content hitting the Internet. As the above photo shows, everyone who had been embargoed rushed to upload content as quickly as possible. If you’re a content junky, this was like Christmas. You could watch every video, read every article, and see exactly what press outlets Chevrolet loves the most.

But, it seemed too much. Too much, all at once. Too many opinions, too many small details being nitpicked to differentiate one review from another. So, the question remains: Why the embargo? Why not just let journalists do what they do best, instead of holding their hands behind their backs?

Here’s a list of pros and cons, and ultimately why new embargoes are crap:

Pros:

Control: The company that’s spent millions of dollars researching, designing and manufacturing a vehicle or developing a product and brand get all the control with an embargo. They get to say what, where and when the information is gathered and released. Think of it as protecting a seismic investment.

Timeline: Embargoes ensure a timeline can be met. Releasing something as holy-shit-this-is-happening as a mid-engined Corvette isn’t by accident. Chevrolet spent years researching. testing and re-testing both the market for the vehicle and the supercar itself. An embargo guarantees that a timeline for public relations and marketing can be met. From initial launch, to first drives, to vehicle production and, ultimately, customer and dealer delivery.

Selection: Press events and large-scale public events like international auto shows have massive guest lists. An embargo guarantees exactly which news outlets, even which authors and journalists, are reporting on the news. There are inevitably outlets that manufacturers aren’t so fond of. Ones that have stepped on toes in the past. Those magazines and websites go to the bottom of the list, if they’re on it at all.

Cons:

Over-Exposure: I understand the idea of guaranteeing your spot at the head of the news cycle with an embargoed story. So many outlets reporting at the same time is bound to draw attention. However, news consumers in today’s over-saturated environment often read headlines and headlines only. True enthusiasts who are interested in the subject matter will click and read as much as possible; but not every consumer is an ultra-obsessed brand loyalist. Showing so much content at the exact same time might register for a minute, but the likelihood a reader will peruse the headlines and go no further seems much higher.

Bang-For-Your-Buck: A delayed public relations and marketing strategy that is multi-faceted with several “hits” of coverage over an extended period of time is a better investment than an all-at-once strategy. For example, the C8 debuted in July with a lot of fanfare. In September, journalists were allowed to drive the vehicle, but must keep mum until mid-October, after initial orders for the vehicles had already been placed. It isn’t until the embargo lifts in October that anyone who isn’t Detroit elite have been able to find out how it drives. At this point, those initial orders have been logged, there’s a back-order for first-run vehicles and any new consumer who reads the glowing reviews of “Rolls Royce-like luxury ride” or watches Matt Farah of The Smoking Tire giggling with excitement at the start of his first drive, becomes a seemingly secondary customer. They’re bound to finding dealers with allocations that haven’t already been taken or worse, dealers who are gauging the living daylights out of customers from a pricing standpoint.

Repetition: Everyone and anyone who reads news sites will know when an author is just repeating a press release. Same details, different bylines. Embargoed stories read like that, in my opinion. I prefer various journalist’s perspectives over others, such as Jason Cammisa or Sam Smith, both with Road & Track, Matt Farah of The Smoking Tire, or Jonny Lieberman at MotorTrend. Each one can put their own spin on what they drove and experienced. The boring part comes when each story trails off into paragraph after paragraph of numbers and details that they were handed on a spec sheet.

Competition: This bullet point is strictly from a journalist’s perspective. Competition is half the fun of being a journalist. The high you get when you’ve got a scoop. Writing on deadline to be the first to publish. With an embargo, you’re all in the same boat headed for land. A healthy dose of competition isn’t a bad thing. In the automotive journalism space, it’s a bit more difficult. Manufacturers and PR agencies pick and choose who gets cars to test and who doesn’t, and in what order. The first run at news could be the magazine who guarantees favorable content, or outlets that carry more of the brand’s advertising dollars. It’s not exactly diplomatic. That’s not a bad thing. That fact makes journalists work for the scoop they could lose sleep over. Axing an embargo strategy would, at the very least, force writers to pen better, more in-depth and comprehensive stories.

One-and-Done: I mentioned earlier that an embargo almost guarantees your spot at the head of the news cycle. The problem is that that very news cycle you’re standing at the top of, will be over and done with in 24 hours, 36 or 48 if you’re lucky. With a giant dump of information onto the Internet at the same time, consumers will read what they want, and move on. Which is great, as long as they’re reading it in the first place. Because within a day or two, your ground-breaking, earth-shattering news, will be replaced by someone else’s.

Automotive marketing is an expensive sub-industry of the car world. Protecting that investment is wise, and I understand that. However, the practice that so many manufacturers seem to live and die by of getting all the writers in a room together and then metaphorically gagging them for weeks and months on end is a tired one.