Three quick tips for writing a totally pointless press release

We’ve been a bit upbeat on this blog lately. So time to get back to our roots and put some singularly bad business writing under the Good Copy, Bad Copy microscope. Today, three quick tips for ensuring your next press release bombs, inspired by this pointless piece of prose:

"The new brand is a result of our collaborative work with stakeholders, members and customers. We listened to their feedback about a desire to work with a more modern and global organization, while still maintaining our rich history and an emphasis on sustainability," said Ash Sahi, President & CEO, CSA Group. "The singular, more streamlined brand identity will help as the organization extends its global service offerings and solutions to our customers and members while building on our specialized technical expertise, reputation, trustworthiness and rich heritage."

And here are those tips:

1. Announce something of absolutely no interest to any living journalist A good topic for your totally pointless press release? Your redesigned logo, a subject containing such minimal news mileage that it definitely warrants 370 words’ worth of your corporate affairs manager’s time.

Caveat: if your new logo is likely to be greeted by universal opprobrium, tell your corporate affairs manager to expect to be fielding calls all day.

After all, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, is there? Hmm. Tell that to the hapless designer who's not worked since committing the heinous crime of adding a little blue square to the word “Gap” for a brief moment in 2010.

Not to mention the creative minds responsible for the wincingly awful attempt to be down with the kidz that is the London 2012 logo (yes, all I see is Lisa Simpson doing THAT, too).

2. Pepper your totally pointless press release with biz babble Start by including anything that's appeared on Good Copy Bad Copy’s various lists of words that should be banned, such as:

Stakeholders (No. 41) Sustainability (No. 4) Solutions (so awful it warranted a post of its own) Offerings (No. 3)

We’re particularly pleased to note that since we wrote about it, offering is going the way of learning and is increasingly being pluralised.

Which only adds to our feeling that this is a word most often paired with the adjectives meagre and burnt.

3. Write a quote for your CEO that sounds so obviously made up people will wonder if he’s actually a robot And remember: the best way to compensate for your total lack of ear for the rhythms of normal, human speech is to write a quote so ridiculously long it would eat up about six column inches of space in your chosen publication. That’ll persuade them to run it.

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