Don’t Fall in Love (With Your Press Release or Your Narrative)

 

Don’t Fall in Love (With Your Press Release or Your Narrative)

 

There is an old saying : “Don’t get too close to the press release”. Even the father of Modern PR, Ivy Lee,  learnt it hard way when coal operators hired him to represent them for the strike and he wrote a press release that was rejected by the media. 

So if he could get in love, get so involved, any one. We have to because when we’re deeply involved in a client’s PR strategy process, we risk romanticizing their brand, inspiration, or point of view. But our job as strategy advisors is to analyze (dispassionately) how the release flows and performs and evaluate the strategy behind it.

 

Content creators are the most susceptible to falling in love with their content. When I started, my manager pointed out that my heroes always had the perfect line. They never stared too long at the opposite sex, told an awkward joke, or made a stupid mistake. Whatever flaws these characters had were an unintended result of their heroic efforts. 

 They were the literary equivalent of answering this job interview exchange: 

 Interviewer: “What is your biggest flaw?” 

 Candidate: “Sometimes I just care too much.” 

 Everyone: “Yeah, sure.” 

 Audiences see right through that – and the whole story is less believable because of it. 

In writing a press release , the challenge isn’t usually creating a flawless release. More often, it’s romanticizing the brand’s point of view. It’s easy to become so enamored with one view, voice, or approach that you never check to see if your journalists care about it.

 

It happened to me when I was head of communications of a sports channel in the early 2000s. As I like to say, “We were in the premium league cloud before being in the premium league was cool.” 

 

One of the primary thought leadership initiatives we built focused on the idea that our league was “true league” (designed and built for the audience), and other leagues were non existent in India. There was no IPL at that time. 

 

We loved that story. It had bite. We wrote our release and built a good narrative. Compared with others our league performed better (in specific areas), the game was fast paced and time consumed was less. We wrote carefully crafted thought leadership, education, inspiration content around that story.  

 There was only one problem.

 Nobody cared.

 We were undeterred. We were passionate. We doubled down on the story. I can’t count how many meetings we had  where we complained, “Why don’t customers care about this? It’s so important!”

 Spoiler alert: We wasted time. Our audience never cared.

 The lesson? When you’re involved in creation, remember that your stories aren’t perfect. And they shouldn’t be. If you over-romanticize and try to make them perfect, you’ll remove believability and depth. And you’ll find it harder to recognize if they fail to resonate with audiences. 

 As you create your stories, watch out for signs you’re falling in love. If you do, you’ll try to make things perfect that shouldn’t be. Once you’re in love, you might not see those attempts at perfection – and you’ll end up avoiding the changes that need to be made.

 

It’s your story. Tell it well.