Find a poster person
Put a face on your message
“Show them the forest; introduce them to a tree.”
— William Blundell, author of The Art and Craft of Feature Writing
To introduce the first replacement knee for women, Zimmer Inc. ran a campaign that included a series of patient stories like “‘Grammy’ Back to Babysitting Now that Knee Pain Is Gone.” It started like this:
“Eileen will never forget the morning she stopped by her daughter’s house, and heard her 2-year-old granddaughter crying upstairs in her crib. She zipped up the stairs to tend to her and was rewarded with Anna’s engaging smile for ‘Grammy.’
“It was all that much sweeter because Eileen couldn’t have zipped up those stairs a few months earlier. Eileen, 68, had such pain in her right knee that the things she loved most, including babysitting for her grandchildren, going to the theater and dinner with friends, and even walks in the park had become impossible.”
Need to call attention to a problem or issue? Don’t lead with the numbers. Find a poster person — a single human being who can stand for your point.
One of my favorite things about being PRSA’s “national writing coach” is my annual visit to the association’s headquarters in New York. There, I review Silver Anvil Award-winning campaigns, like Zimmer’s, studying trends and techniques to identify the best of the best public relations writing practices.
And one of the big trends I saw this year was humanizing stories with a single person. Whether you’re writing to clients and customers, employees, the community or members, how can you find a poster person to put a face on your message?
Tap People Power
Want to master the art of letting people stand for your point?
- Read Zimmer’s Silver Anvil Award entry.
- Read Zimmer’s patient stories.
- Read all of Zimmer’s “‘Grammy’ Back to Babysitting Now that Knee Pain Is Gone.”
- Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing or editing project. We specialize in writing human interest narratives for organizations like Saint Luke’s Health System.
- Bring Ann to your organization for a Make Your Copy More Creative workshop.
- Work with Ann to polish your writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
- Get dozens of tipsheets on writing human interest copy at RevUpReadership.com.
- Get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
About Ann Wylie
Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.
Copyright © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.
