OK, here's the skinny! I used to run a news agency and one of our (many) sidelines was to do PR for companies.
An app is of zero interest! The moment a sub-editor sees the word "app", your PR piece goes straight into File Thirteen! It is one of those non-stories that we used to call "Sony looks to the future!"
Your PR piece has to have a hook. A reason for the paper, mag, website, whatever, to run the story. "Oh look! Yet another boring app!" - that is a turkey that no editor will run!
There has to be something sexy about your app - and don't call it an app! The story must have a human interest and be completely app-free in the headline and the first paragraph. Sex, drugs, corruption, naked women, dogs that can play Bach. Anything will do - and the app can be mentioned further down within the story.
I'll give you an example - A theatre in Scunthorpe buys a piano. NOT a story!
A theatre in Scunthorpe buys Andre Previn's piano. That's a story. Admittedly, not much of a story, but it got into the local rag with a full page. Celebs always help to sell any story!
A German professional theatre group started workshops. That was NOT a story. But they desperately needed publicity!
We did a whole work-over on that one! We called it a comedy school instead and the headline was "Ve have vays of making you laugh!" with the by-line "Germans get crash course in humour!"
That was even run by the News of the World.
(I must point out at this stage that I am German - and we love to make fun of ourselves. And the theatre group was immensely pleased with all the publicity they got - it even ran on TV and made the pages of Bild Zeitung!)
Now, do you get the idea?
