I was thinking the other day what would be the one most important thing when writing a press release. Join me in my discovery.
I think the one thing that’s most important when writing a press release is … (drums rolling) telling the full truth.
Sure, in Public Relations (acronym – PR) there are alternatives to that:
a. Omitting some truths;
b. Emphasizing the least important things from the journalists’ perspective;
c. Promoting the products and the company.
I think that if you do a Press Release (same acronym – PR) and try to mask the truth, sooner or later the journalists will penalize you for that.
The journalists suffer since you present a not-that-true Press Release.
What could happen?
a. In the first scenario, the Press Release won’t be published at all;
b. The journalist could try to understand the whole picture by himself; He won’t get the full idea, he might get things wrong, and that’s even worse than not having a Press Release published at all – it’s published with the wrong data.