Thank goodness it’s over for another year – the madness that is Mobile World Congress (MWC).  As a technology PR company that specialises in the mobile market and someone who has been visiting the show since the days when it was in Cannes, one thing has remained surprisingly the same – the short-sightedness of companies looking to blow all of their best press release stories at the one venue, where they will be competing with the biggest names in the mobile world.

I’d love someone to explain to me why we do this every year!  It seems to me that many companies save up all the releases that they’ve been planning over the year and decide to push them out in a rush on the four days that the entire mobile world is engaged in the same activity.  Yet, no matter how many times I speak to exhibitors about the folly of such an approach, it seems that the flurry of press releases at show time is as much a part of the exhibition protocol as crackers at Christmas.

One of the most common explanations for this offered to me is that the executives really need to have a full diary of briefings at the show.  This also puzzles me, because surely they want to be speaking with prospects at the show.  And a good way to remind your prospects to come along and visit you is to ensure that they are reading interesting things about you before they visit the show.  After all, many of the reports from the show itself won’t be written up until after the exhibitors have packed up their bags and gone home.  So is it therefore pure executive ego that drives us on to bash the phones and call in all our favours throughout the year with our journalist pals to agree to meet our clients at the show.

What’s particularly galling is the fact that news stories that – released at any other time of year – would get real interest, are dismissed with a cursory snippet in the trade press.  Journalists too attending the show are just as frustrated at being stalked by PRs in the weeks preceding the show.  In fact many of them admit to refusing to answer their phone as mobile world approaches to save them the pain of explaining to yet another PR person that they can see the vendors at any time of the year.  They go to MWC to hear from the mobile operators and industry pundits that they don’t have easy access to and that this is the reason that increasing numbers of journos will refuse to set appointments with vendors at the show.

Yet, it seems that we will never learn. We’re into the full on event season now and I notice that RSA Security and InfoSecurity are round the corner and already our customers are contemplating a tsunami of releases…   Is it just me or should vendors really be altering their approach to exhibition PR support?