Lazy language does your PR no favours
If you scan a lot of news releases you’ll notice a high proportion of them use a similar sort of language. It’s the language of corporate speak, only to be found in PR and marketing materials and never used by anyone in real life. There seems to be a distinct lack of creativity when it comes to using adjectives in external communications. The worst culprits are the words ‘leading’ and ‘delighted’.
Why can’t PRs think of more words to use than ‘leading’ and ‘delighted’?! It seems like every company is a leader and every spokesperson is always gushing that they are delighted about winning a new client, hiring a new manager or winning an award. Why don’t you stop and think for a moment about whether this is really news and what you really feel about it.
Let’s take leading first – it’s actually ridiculous to use this adjective when you think about it, because so few companies ever substantiate or qualify this claim. Do you sell the most, do you have the most customers or members, are you the fastest growing, have you won the most awards, are you the most trusted by consumers? If you are, then say you are – don’t just say you are the number one. In any case, no journalist is ever, in a million years, going to write about your company in the exact same way as you have presented it in your carefully crafted news release.
Secondly, we come to ‘delighted’. If you look on twitter for #delighted there are an increasing bunch of well-respected journalists who tweet every time some hapless spokesperson uses ‘delighted’ in a quote. And the rest of us are all having a good laugh at the spokespeople’s (and PR’s) expense.
Are you really delighted? Can you not think of something else to say?
Being lazy about language makes your news look like an identikit communication and undermines what is a potentially serious or interesting message. Get creative and do yourself justice.
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