ResponseSource and republication of media requests

We recently discovered a company taking journalist requests from our ResponseSource Enquiry Service and selling subscriptions to receive them.

Clearly this is bad for our business but the greatest concern is that it is unpopular with our journalist community. Journalists and bloggers take confidence in the knowledge that their enquiries are going to our established customer base of PR professionals with which we have a close relationship and are not being redistributed beyond this group.

We've asked the individual behind this venture to stop republishing ResponseSource enquiries and it appears this request has been heeded.

I have to say in 15 years of DWPub I have never been put in such a position and it's really not in my company's culture to be confrontational or litigious. This is why I have not identified the individual or the company here.

I'd like to take this opportunity to confirm a couple of things with our community of journalists, bloggers and PR professionals.

• We do not have any relationships with third party organisations for the republication of ResponseSource Enquiry Service content

• ResponseSource Enquiry Service subscriptions are for the purposes of conducting PR campaigns and persistent forwarding or republication of requests is excluded in our Ts & Cs

The ResponseSource Enquiry Service has been extraordinarily successful and continues to grow. It takes significant resources to manage the service and I'm very proud of the hard work my team put into ensuring it works for both journalist and PR users. Ensuring subscriptions are not abused is part of this work. The ResponseSource Enquiry Service is quite open and we really don't want to lock it down and make life harder for everyone.

Comments

[Carina Birt]

Well done on how you have handled this Daryl. I am surprised and disappointed that this has happened.

I have been a user of the service for many years and its open, slightly informal, non big brother feel is what underpins its success.

To see it turn into a heavily moderated, legalease-citing, overly gated access site, because of the grasping behaviour of one person/company, would be a real shame. And something I am sure we will all strive to avoid.

We are a large group of PRs and journalists that rely on this service so let's hope by not naming and shaming, you do indeed see an end to the service abuse.

[Andy M Turner (@andymturner)]

Daryl, maybe this highlights an opportunity rather than a threat? Clearly there is a market for your service that currently cannot afford the rates you charge (I'm assuming the unidentified 3rd party was charging lower fees otherwise why else would someone pay them?) So perhaps you should review your packaging and pricing options so you can meet that demand yourself?

[Daryl Willcox]

Thanks for your comments Carina. We'll always strive to maintain our existing culture, I think it's one of the reasons people do business with us.

[Daryl Willcox]

Andy, you raise an interesting point. Though I would not describe it as an 'opportunity rather than a threat' rather 'a threat and maybe an opportunity'.
Someone taking content and reselling it will always be able to charge less as they have none of capital investment and overheads needed to generate a constant stream of varied, useful requests. So such a thing is always a threat regardless of what we charge.
As for pricing and packaging, I feel the existing service is reasonably flexible without being too complicated and offers good value for money, but as the service gets more sophisticated there may be the opportunity to offer a wider range of packages.