They PR to the medical market to SELL their product and build awareness. Healthcare blogs and newswires will instantly pick it up and post it on their boards.
Walmart doesn't need to PR toilet paper because it's a distributor.
Apple PR's a product to get people excited. Intel PR's a product to create a buzz about it's technological advances.
Here, I'll help you with a definition of a news release from Wikipedia so we can end this discussion about its purpose (yawn):
The use of a news release is to attract favorable media attention to public relations professional's client and/or provide publicity for products or events marketed by those clients.
News releases can announce a range of news items such as: scheduled events, personal promotions, awards, news products and services, sales and other financial data, accomplishments, etc. They are often used in generating a feature story or are sent for the purpose of announcing news conferences, upcoming events or change in corporation.
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