Quotes on Cutting Through the Clutter in PR

What writers & others say

“There’s too much time spent trying to bamboozle us with flowery marketing-babble instead of cutting to the chase and saying just why this should be important to readers.” — Charles Cooper of Ziff Davis in a Softletter survey of media about the quality of PR writing

“Don’t expect to hyperbolize your way to press coverage; if anything, the most absurd superlatives are often deleted the fastest.”

— Katie Burke, head of Analyst & Media Relations at HubSpot

“There’s too much time spent trying to bamboozle us with flowery marketing-babble instead of cutting to the chase and saying just why this should be important to readers.”

— Charles Cooper of Ziff Davis in a Softletter survey of media about the quality of PR writing

“If you (or your client) can’t articulate why your technology really is interesting or matters to normal human beings without graduate degrees in computer science, there is no reason for that product to exist, let alone get coverage.”

— Barb Darrow, senior writer at GigaOm

“If you can’t express what you want and why it’s newsworthy in 10 seconds, you’re off the phone.”

— A news director for a major NBC affiliate, quoted by Rick Frishman, president of Planned Television Arts

“I tend to disregard immediately any PR pitches for Internet and e-biz stuff that include the words ‘first,’ ‘pioneering,’ ‘leading’ and ‘largest’ associated with the word ‘company.’”

— Bruno Giussani, The New York Times, interviewed by Softletter.com

“BS is always BS.”

— Antone Gonsalves, journalist for Ziff-Davis

“Be fair. Don’t stretch the truth or tell half-truths. When words such as ‘first,’ ‘best,’ ‘biggest’ or ‘only’ are used, there better be supportive explanations.”

— Journalist in the 17th Annual Bennett & Company Media Survey

“Stop the BS and hype. I don’t want to hear that the XYZ company, ‘Leader in the field of fisbies’ has announced a revolutionary new computer … with no data, no insight, no competitive data, just BS, time-wasting words. Do you PR people really think we’re going to either be influenced by that or, worse yet, print it?”

— Jon Peddie, Jon Peddie Associates, interviewed by Softletter.com

“Companies can increase the likelihood of their press releases being used by bloggers and local news sources by giving them a more news-like tone and dialing down the marketing hype.”

— Adam Sherk, blogger