As a PR person, the topic of embargoes comes up a lot — just yesterday I got into another long conversation about the practice.
The truth? We know who breaks embargoes and who doesn’t. And we don’t work with people who break embargoes, end of story — it’s unfair to everyone, including the other peeps that we have pre-briefed. Furthermore, honestly, if you have good clients that are doing interesting things, at least from a PR perspective there’s less to worry about — the relationship is symbiotic and, as Rick says, built on trust.
That all being said, I think that the other side of the coin is far more explosive — exclusives. I’ve said it before — I can’t speak for other PR people, but we just don’t give exclusives anymore. It just pisses everyone off, even more than embargoes. It’s not democratic, and it doesn’t help build a community. Now there are still plenty of outlets that angle and/or intimidate in the hopes of getting an exlcusive — I understand how the game is played and the value of exclusive information, but it just ain’t gonna happen.
Two caveats: it makes sense to give an exclusive if: you have no PR budget and/or bandwidth to manage a full-blown campaign; or, you have a minor piece of news (like a second close of B round funding) that most people won’t care about anyway, but that offers an opportunity for upleveling the conversation if that content is exclusive.