The worst press release ever

Earlier this year, S&A Vice President Mike Trainor shared with me a press release that had been sent to the editors of Cary Magazine, a publication from our publishing division. Upon reading it, I tweeted that I had just read the worst press release ever written.

Rather than publicly shaming the persons responsible (via LinkedIn, I discovered they are in marketing and not PR), I thought I’d take this opportunity to point out why this particular announcement was so awful.

• Inappropriate use of quotation marks – In the headline, not only did the writers put quotation marks around what apparently was a tagline, they also put quotation marks around the name of a local shopping center. Why? I have no idea. Later in the body text, there was an open quotation mark before the name of the company, but no closing quotation mark, and quotation marks around the term mouth-watering. I’m at a loss here.
• Headline in all caps – Journalists love nothing more than to be screamed at (no, not really).
• Different fonts – This particular release used both Arial and Times New Roman because apparently one font was not enough.
• Horrendous punctuation – Yes, even in the headline. The period goes inside the end quotation mark, unless you’re in England.
• Date left blank – Yes, these people were so lazy they actually sent out a press release with the date listed as “March __, 2015.”
• More bad punctuation – “State of the art” and other compound modifiers appearing directly in front of a noun should be hyphenated (actually, they wrote “State of Art”).
• Unnecessary use of all caps in the body text – The name of the company and shopping center appeared in all caps again, in case you forgot what the press release was about.
• First-person language in the body text – Several references to “our guests,” “our menu,” “our leather recliners.” It’s fine to incorporate first-person language within a quote attributed to an individual, but not in the body text.
• Ad copy – Liberal use of exclamation points! Hyperbolic claims: “You won’t miss any of the action!”; “…the COLDEST draft beers in town…”; and “…over 60,000 square feet of pure entertainment….”

Okay, it’s easy for me to poke fun at this atrocious piece of writing, but the worst offense is that this press release was distributed to the media and badly reflects on the company it represents. If they had an internal review process it wasn’t employed here, which makes me wonder about what other corners they cut or shoddiness they let slide.

The other reason I shake my head when seeing this abomination is that it gives communicators a bad name and adds to the clutter of bad press releases through which all legitimate releases must fight through.

My message to readers of this blog is this: don’t settle for sloppy work. Demand excellence in your internal and external communications, and work with professionals who know what they’re doing.

P.S. If you would like to see a Word document of the actual release, shoot me an email and I’ll share it with you.