A tale of two press release quotes: One bad, one better
Chris Casacchia’s column in the Phoenix Business Journal on Friday, September 4 showed a striking contrast between a communicator who doesn’t know how to write a press release quote and one who does.
Alliance Bank of Arizona had great news about reaching a critical goal: $1 billion in total assets! The president and CEO, obviously excited by his bank’s achievement, was quoted from the press release sent to Casacchia: “Reaching the $1 billion dollar milestone in total assets, driven by our exceptionally strong deposit growth, continues to illustrate the value of having a strong capital position.”
Can’t you just see him spouting that gem while toasting his company’s success!
In another segment of the column, Jacob Gold was quoted in a press release about his book “Financial Intelligence: Getting Back to Basics after an Economic Meltdown.”
“You would think that with the abundance of readily available financial information, people would know which path to take with their money,” he said. “In reality, the exact opposite is the case.”
No, it’s not perfect, but at least it’s conceivable that those words actually came out of someone’s mouth.
So who cares? Both got the publicity they were asking for. Even the lousy quote from the bank got ink.
The problem is, many reporters will go out of their way to NOT use a quote like that. And even when it’s used by a journalist who doesn’t take the time to call to get something better, it bores readers. They either don’t understand it, or it they do, they’re so turned off, they stop reading.
At least I did.
