Embargo

Handing out materials on the morning of an announcement has one problem you can't fix from inside it. Writing a real story means checking things, and a reporter who gets the material that morning has no time to check anything. Calling the contact back about a number, comparing the product against a competitor, getting one industry voice on the record — that takes a day at minimum. So the story that runs is a press release with the sentences rearranged, or the reporter who wanted to do it properly pushes it to next week and forgets.

Sending a few days early creates the opposite problem. One outlet that got the material first posts a day ahead, and everyone else preparing for the same date is now writing a story that already exists, so they drop it. The company is stuck too: the product page is still closed and the customer email hasn't gone out, but coverage is circulating.

An embargo tries to keep both instead of giving one up, by attaching a condition. The material goes out early; when it can be used is nailed down. The reporter gets time to report and the company keeps the timing. What enforces it isn't a contract but the next opportunity. An outlet that breaks the agreement comes off the list for the next announcement, and that costs more than one day of being first.

Set the release hour first, send the material a few days ahead with that hour attached as a condition, and let everyone publish at once when it arrives. Six steps.

1. Set the release time. A date alone produces an outlet posting at 1 a.m., so write hours and minutes: March 4, 10:00 a.m.
2. Choose the list. From the reporters you've built up through media relations, pull only the ones who actually cover your space. Spraying it wide only raises the odds somebody breaks it.
3. Put the condition at the top of the email body when you send, not inside the attachment. The first line. Put it in the subject as well, as in [EMBARGOED] March 4, 10:00 a.m.
4. Confirm the recipient agrees. Sending doesn't create the agreement. A reply accepting it does, and an outlet that never answers has simply received material with no strings on it.
5. Take questions during the reporting window. Those few days are the entire reason for the embargo, so if the contact is unreachable the first four steps were wasted. Opening a media kit with logos and product screenshots alongside it cuts down the requests that land near deadline.
6. At the hour, open the product page and official channels at the same moment. Coverage running while the product page is still closed leaves readers nowhere to go.

Decide in advance what happens if it breaks. The usual move is to tell the remaining outlets immediately and lift the embargo on the spot.

The participants split into the outlets receiving the material and the people at the company who will answer questions over those days. The timing means two decisions: how many days ahead to send, and what hour to lift.

Keep the outlet side narrow. Five to ten reporters who cover your space is enough; past twenty, one of them breaking it is close to guaranteed. When a partner or an investor is announcing on the same day, their communications lead has to share the same hour. The accident where one side posts to its own blog 30 minutes early starts here.

Three people get tied up on the company side: the communications lead taking inquiries, the founder available for interviews, and an engineer who can answer technical questions. Leave those days unblocked on their calendars and reporters hit deadline without confirming anything, which produces exactly the rewritten-release story you were trying to avoid.

How far ahead to send follows from how much reporting is needed. A single feature launch runs on two or three days. Something with more to verify, like a funding round or an acquisition, gets five days to a week. Longer feels safer, but every extra day the material sits outside raises the chance of a leak.

Pick the hour by when stories get read. Mid-morning on a weekday, around 10 a.m., is a safe default. Avoid Friday afternoons and the day before a long holiday, since the story gets buried over the break. Avoid days that collide with a large conference or another company's major announcement.

"This one goes out under embargo until March 4, 10 a.m. I'll send the detailed material only to outlets that reply."

The material comes early on the condition that nothing runs before that hour, and only outlets that accept receive it.

"That outlet broke the embargo. Let's lift it right now."

One publication went first, so the proposal is to tell everyone else they can publish immediately.

"That's under embargo, so I can't discuss it yet."

The speaker already knows, but can't mention it outside until the agreed hour passes.

The week Pagedeck launched automatic meeting-note cleanup, Ravi ran exactly this sequence. On Monday he sent material to seven reporters conditioned on Thursday 10 a.m., and passed the waitlist numbers and product screenshots only to the five who replied. Tuesday and Wednesday, Grace took two interviews and Theo answered questions about processing speed. At 10 a.m. Thursday, four stories went up together and the product page opened at the same minute.

One piece went wrong. An outlet published Wednesday evening, and half an hour later Ravi emailed the other four to say they could go public. That outlet was off the list for the next announcement.

The most common belief is that an embargo is legally binding. The condition was attached formally, so breaking it looks like something you could hold an outlet to. In practice nothing gets signed, and the only consequence available is not sending next time. Treat it as a contract and hand over information that isn't ready to be outside, and once it leaks there's no way back other than crisis communication.

The other one is thinking the agreement exists as soon as the condition is written. The hour is stamped on the first line of the email, so the recipient seems bound by it. But an agreement takes two sides, and an outlet that never replied accepting is just an outlet holding material. If they publish first, they haven't broken anything. Skipping the step of confirming replies is how a team loses any standing to object later.