Paul Fletcher, The Daily Record Newswire
The press release remains one of the most effective means for lawyers and law firm marketers to convey information to the media – and even to commit news.
A good press release makes it easy for the recipient, whether a reporter or editor or news director, to determine whether the item is worth pursuing or including in a news report. Here’s how to help:
FOUR Ws. The press release author can help by packaging the news nugget she seeks to tout in a format that will be easily recognizable to the newsperson. Here, we are looking at the hoary but valid who, what, when, where. Journalism schools pound this quartet into would-be journalists as a means to organize data for their readers. And it will work as an organizing tool for the press release writer, too.
MAKE SURE IT’S NEWS. There are press releases that come in that look like they were churned for the sake of billing a client. Make sure there is something significant going on.
CONTEXT. Context helps to show that something significant happened. Why is the information important or what does the story being pitched add to anything? Because it is new, it is the first time, it is the biggest, it is something that hasn’t happened before. It helps the newsperson cut through an emailbox full of dreck to flag these distinctions.
AVOID ADJECTIVES AND BLATHER. With some press releases, one wonders if the author was paid by the word, with layers upon layers of adjectives. Or there are empty quotations cobbled into the release, attributed to firm leaders who never said any such thing.
I’ve been making a study of sorts of the unsuccessful press release – the one that virtually guarantees that it will be toast and on the losing end of the delete key or headed PDQ to File 86.
This is the fourth annual installment of the “Toast” series, and as in previous incarnations, we use our own in-boxes as source material. The sins, errors and omissions below are real; the names and any identifying facts in most cases have been changed to protect the guilty.
Here are 10 fresh ways to guarantee your press release is toast:
1. Talk about fish guts
It pays to know your audience and not to send press releases out willy-nilly to everyone, literally, in the world. Here is release we got this summer:
Loch Lomond Ltd, independent Scottish salmon farmers, has signed a groundbreaking supply agreement with Nutrigoop Ltd, a company pioneering new developments in advanced nutrition.
Stop. Ach, lads, ye have breached one o’ the cardinal rules: you have failed to provide any real news in your lead. An agreement signed? You don’t even say what it’s about.
Loch Lomond has always believed that sustainability is a multi-faceted objective. One essential is to maximize the effective use of the salmon with minimum wastage. Currently, when the salmon are prepared for customers, the guts are safely disposed of through insilation, and, once filleted, the heads and frames are used in low-grade applications such as fertilizer and pet food.
Now, in a groundbreaking agreement which significantly increases the value extracted from farmed salmon, Loch Lomond has agreed to supply Nutrigoop with up to 450 tonnes of salmon viscera (guts), heads
Laddies, your cut-and-paste cut and ran. Something is clearly missing after “heads.” Like a point, maybe?
The salmon by-product will be used to produce Digestomagic, a new nutritional compound that has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of malnutrition in people who cannot otherwise digest protein.
So the fish guts will help people who have digestion problems. Good to know, but why are you sending this to us? Aye, that’s wastage, me bonnie boy.
2. Pay no attention to your recipient’s work
On May 12, we published an article by Executive Editor Deborah Elkins on an employment case, entitled, “No looking the other way.” It highlighted Freeman v. Dal-Tile Corp., a 4th Circuit case finding that a business could be liable for harassment by a third party.
A month later, on June 16, Elkins received an email with this subject line:
Subject: Hostile Work Environments, Employers Can No Longer “Look Away” From Third-Parties
Yes, that sounds familiar. The text ran like this:
“Hi Deborah,
You may be familiar with the recent increase in hostile work environments, but did you know that employers are not only legally responsible for their own employees’ actions, and are now liable for the actions of outsiders as well? Some courts are now signaling that employers can no longer ‘look away’ and ignore situations in which third parties, including customers and vendors, create hostile work environments for employees.
“Last month, the notoriously conservative 4th Circuit Court of Appeals adopted such a theory of liability in the case of Lori Freeman v. Dal-Tile Corp.
“Arnold Becker is a shareholder with MacKenzie Brackman in Norfolk, who regularly assists clients with all forms of dispute resolution, including the issue previously mentioned, and he counsels clients on dispute avoidance. He is available to discuss this new trend and what employers can do to prevent themselves from being victims to these third-party environmental circumstances. Please let me know if I may connect you with him for an interview.”
Elkins in fact did know all that, and she shared a copy of her article with the marketer, asking if there was anything she missed.
3. Send irrelevant commentary on today’s celeb headlines.
Comedian Tracy Morgan was injured seriously in a truck-auto wreck in New Jersey earlier this year. A lawyer at a firm in Michigan thought he’d weigh in.
The lead of the release:
“A serious accident on the New Jersey Turnpike involving a Limo and a Walmart truck that threatened the life of ‘30 Rock’ TV star Tracy Morgan and killed his friend may have been caused by driver fatigue.”
See the note above about who, what, etc. Then, in the fifth paragraph, we get:
“Linus Van Pelt, a Michigan attorney who has led reforms for truck safety, points out that fatigue is a major contributing factor to many truck accidents because companies keep their drivers on the road for too long. Walmart has sophisticated equipment to keep track of where their drivers are and it is unbelievable that Walmart allowed their driver to be on the road for too long.
“‘More often than not, a needless tragedy like the Tracy Morgan incident will occur because a truck company kept the driver on the road longer hours without the required breaks to satisfy business demands,’ says Van Pelt, a partner with Van Pelt & Associates in Kalamazoo. ‘The biggest killer on our highways is fatigue. Federal transportation officials must come up with stricter guidelines to make sure that logbooks are properly kept and that commercial carriers ensure their drivers get the rest they need between trips.’
“Besides calling for reforms to combat fatigue, Van Pelt also has championed mandatory retirement ages for truck drivers and in Michigan has pushed for paving construction to widen two-lane highways that often contribute to fatal truck-car accidents.”
This isn’t a press release. It’s a comment on a Facebook post. And as they say in Scotland, it’s wastage.
4. Treat the press like your valet
Here’s a very brief email message from a firm’s marketer:
“Attached is a press release with photo for immediate publication. Please let me know when this will be/is published. If you need anything further, please contact me.”
Most reporters or editors aren’t going to jump and say to themselves, “Let me get right on that!” Nor are they going to drop all the many other things they have to do to say, hey, we ran your release in Monday’s edition.
By the way, what is the urgent story requiring immediate publication? Here’s the lead:
“On May 16, 2014, Charles Brown gave a presentation on ‘Tips and Take-Aways on Business Succession Planning’ to the Wawawa County Bar Association. Mr. Brown concentrates his practice in the areas of business planning, commercial transactions, mergers and acquisitions, franchise law and taxation. He has handled small and middle market business clients for over 25 years.”
Oh, a “guy gave a talk” story. Next.
5. Drown us both in alphabet soup
This makes the same point as item #1 above, which is make sure you send your release to a publication that might find it useful, but there’s a twist.
Click & Clack CPAs & Business Consultants is pleased to announce that Bob Edwards, CBA, CVA, CMEA, has received the Certified Machinery/Equipment Appraiser (CMEA) designation from the National Equipment and Business Builders Institute (NEBB).
Yay, Bob. The sheer volume of acronyms here is a thing of wonder. Or blunder. You make the call.
6. Use bloviating quotations
The new-hire/new-partner release is one of the most common we see.
The law firm of Peck & DuVall PC has added Atticus Finch as a partner in its Fairfax office.
Thirty-one lawyers from the firm’s 12 offices across the nation joined the partnership on January 1.
“We’re pleased to add Atticus to the partnership ranks,” said Mary E. Badham, managing partner of the Fairfax office. “He’s well established in this part of the country, and he helps us provide extensive public finance services throughout the Eastern Seaboard.”
Pity Mr. Finch here. The enthusiasm level from his new managing partner stands in marked contrast from the hypercaffeinated rhetoric we see in most releases on new hires or partners. Badham might as well have said, “This guy is overwhelmingly adequate. He’ll likely bill a lot of hours.”
7. Overdo the adjectives
This author likely keeps a thesaurus next to the computer:
“Good morning. Below you will find the latest release from the East Virginia University School of Law on an exciting new judicial poll with eye-opening results just released today. I thought you might be interested in taking a look at it.
“The poll is a survey of state and federal judges nationwide and it reveals that an overwhelming majority support overhauling the legal discovery process. If you would like more information about the poll, or if you would like to speak with Donald Draper, the professor who conducted the poll, please contact me.
“Results of the survey and a list of key findings can be found here: [link to poll results]. Can I put you in touch with Mr. Draper?”
This one actually did a number of things right – it gets to the nut of the findings (relatively) quickly; the link to the findings was useful and made it easy for the reporter to get to the primary info, which would tell the tale of whether this poll is worth covering.
But an “exciting” poll with “eye-opening” results? Calm down, Sparky.
8. Use a word because, heck, it sounds right
Back in the winter, during the fight over same-sex marriage in Virginia, a number of Republican legislators were angry that Mark Herring, the state’s new Democratic Attorney General, would not defend the marriage amendment in the Virginia Constitution in federal court. The hedder on their press release could have use a little proofreading:
“Delegates Call on Governor McAuliffe to Reign in Attorney General Herring
“Spellcheck actually would not have helped here. The guy who invents homonym-check will be as rich as a king.
9. Hop in my chair. Take my keyboard
Here’s another from the political world. A newly elected legislator was just trying to helpful. And controlling. First, this one:
“Please print the attached press release describing my new committee assignments for the Senate and highlighting the importance of these committees to Western Michigan. I will follow up shortly with a picture to go with the press release. Thank you very much.”
The follow-up:
“Please place the attached photo with the press release I just sent. The caption should read as follows: Senator Ford on the floor of the state Senate on Friday, January 17th.”
Sen. Ford sent about four such releases, directing that they be “printed” pretty much verbatim. Fortunately, someone must have talked to him, because his communications took on a different tone from the fifth one on.
10. Let some vendor pimp itself at your expense
If I had a dime for every one of these cruddy releases I have received, I could reign over even the homonym-check inventor: I refer to the practice of letting some vendor announce breathlessly that you bought their product.
Document Management Tech (DMT), a leading provider of hosted intellectual property (IP) document management technology, announced today that Lincoln, Johnson & Grant LLP, an international IP law firm based in Alexandria, Virginia, is implementing its Really Good Electronic Patent System (RGEPS), an electronic IP information management system, and its Easy-Access Document Management (EADM) module. Did your firm get a kickback or a price break on the Easy-Access module?
Or did you even know that DMT and other vendors do this with regularity? I don’t recall ever seeing any publication or broadcast use one of these. I have seen them show up in a “sponsored content” portion of a website. In other words, someone paid to have it “published.”
