In 2010, on Valentine’s Day, I sent a loving message to my students: Cut the fluff!
Two years later, my crusade continues.
What’s fluff? It’s the syrupy, hollow statements that organizations weave into their PR materials almost daily. It’s the vacuous, self-serving nonsense that clients and management love to insert. And too often, PR pros don’t fight it.
But what about reporters? Don’t they deserve a share of the blame? After all, if they didn’t publish the fluff we send their way, it would probably stop, right?
What trigggered this post is a story I found on Kent Wired today, Kent State’s fine student media operation. These kids do award-winning work, but often allow themselves to become channels for the happy talk of their sources.
Some sources have PR counsel, some not. But they all bring fluff to their interviews, especially when we let them respond via email.
Lesson? If you don’t probe for substance, your source probably won’t give it to you.
These excerpts are from a KW story about the four finalists in the KSU provost search.
David Franko:
“I am thrilled and honored to be named a finalist for this position,” Francko wrote in an email. “As KSU alumni, my wife Diana and I were profoundly shaped by (the university’s) caring, dedicated faculty, staff, and administrators … and it would be wonderful to have the opportunity to come back ‘home’ and help facilitate Kent State’s mentorship of a new generation of teacher-scholars and student-scholars.”
Todd Daicon:
“…he is ‘thrilled to be a finalist’ at a school with ‘a great reputation as a well-administered and progressive university that successfully educates its students to be lifelong learners.'”
David Moerland:
“It is indeed an honor to be considered for this leadership role,” Moerland wrote in an email, and he said he “would welcome the opportunity to serve and lead KSU in the capacity of provost.”
Bernard Mair:
Mair said he is “very excited at the real prospect of being chosen for such an important position,” but said he is also aware of the challenges of running a large, research-intensive university.
Ugh!
I don’t mean to beat up on student reporters. They’re publishing their homework, and we hope they learn from these kinds of mistakes. When the source serves you fluff, ask more specific questions. Probe for examples. Don’t print the bullshit.
For a source — often a PR client — it’s an opportunity to use the media to tell a meaningful story. For the reporter, it’s a chance to give their readers something substantive and satisfying, not something fluffy.
The next time you find yourself fattening a news release with mindless fluff, remember that important question posed by the late Carla Peller: Where’s the Beef?
I’m surprised that this post has not elicited commentary. You address a major challenge in organizational communications. Despite our best efforts at stamping out this kind of fluffy, immaterial content, our students get into the professional world and are forced to churn out this kind of claptrap.
Tactically, the release quote (or any other kind of quote a communicator crafts for someone) is the one place in a release that one can put the value for the customer/consumer/etc. into a human voice. The quote also provides cues for the reporter/reader/etc. to think about the product, service, or organization within a broader context. So, why then do we waste this precious space on meaningless “I am so happy/excited/thrilled…” kind of quotes?
Our best hope, Bill, is to continue fighting for a better way and hoping that in the future, when our students are running things, that they will remember the lessons learned about quality writing, not just blindly accept the “that’s how it has always been done…” excuse/justification. Johnny Appleseed, my friend…spread the seeds…
Bob,
Last time I wrote about this topic, I drew quite a few comments. In fact, my posts on writing over the years have been among the most popular. It has me wondering if blogging is a lot art — or perhaps a lost medium in world with too short an attention span.
Of course, it could also have something to do with that last blogging vacation I took. As you know too well, no one pays us to write this stuff.
Well, that’s not entirely true, as this post attests: What’s the ROI of Blogging? Exactly $1.55
Agree with you entirely Bill – too much fluff, puff and BS in too many press releases and journalism. Not only does it make text largely unreadable, but it loses all credibility. Does anyone ever say they are “delighted”?
BTW, noticed this release (http://www.cipr.co.uk/content/news-opinion/press-releases/106022/cipr-joins-forces-with-presspage-to-launch-newsroom) on the CIPR website just this morning and groaned aloud as it is so hard teaching students to write better when the professional body not only uses the meaningless quote (x2), but also allows mindless jargon in as well.
Heh. Three years ago I called out PRSA for the same nonsense. They gotten better! Thanks for coming by, Heather.
Great post and a great reminder as I begin my PR Writing class today. I always tell my students not to use quotes with “excited,” “pleased,” “honored,” etc. Of course the people being quoted are excited, pleased and honored, or else you wouldn’t be writing a news release to announce it!
Hi Bill,
I agree with your sentiment entirely. As a consumer (of both media and goods), I hate reading standard press release quotes in articles and blog posts. These tell me nothing interesting or distinct and usually provide no reason for me to seek more information about the company, product, event, or service. I consider that a failure.
In my own PR career, I try to counsel clients to give more informative rather than emotional quotes – not why they are excited, but why this course of action had to be taken in the first place.
Unfortunately, because the “X is Excited” formula has become standardized it makes it more challenging to get these types of press releases approved, especially when dealing with directors of communications who have been in the field for decades.
This is where I’m glad I do more digital and online media relations these days. I rarely send out press releases because bloggers and journalists who write for dynamic and vocal web audiences have no interest in them – probably because they know they’re full of fluff that can quickly generate calls of BS in the comments section.
All the best,
Meg
Thanks for your thoughts, Meg. The explosion of fluff in PR communications is, in part, a result of digital technology that puts the tools for news distribution in the hands of amateurs. But we’re not going to change that.
The other problem has to do with the missing backbone in those I-aim-to-please PR types. You won’t find many CEO’s telling the lawyers or accountants, “Let’s change it to read this way, and let’s tell ’em how pleased and excited we are about it.”
Ain’t gonna happen.
I’m feeling a Rodney Dangerfield moment coming on
We just don’t get no respect!
OK. To show it’s not just student media that publish fluff in their stories — this is from the Cleveland Plain Dealer today. It’s a story about a TV station firing two of its anchors.
Later in the story:
We’re excited, too, Dan. I feel all, you know, fluffy!
I certainly agree that we need to cut the fluff. Is there a time and place for it? Certainly, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. However, cutting the fluff out of our messages is necessary as we recognize an intelligent audience. With the powerful internet at hand, and with mass messaging coming at them from every direction, they can detect fluff, and they’ll cut our messages out for us.
As I work with clients developing social media strategies, so many try to fill their FB statuses and Tweets full with full, sales pitches, etc…and their poor weekly statistics reflect their following’s opinion of such messages. That’s where I come in; our messages, with SM especially, it’s necessary for us to 1) be brief, 2) be straight forward, and 3) be honest.
Thanks for sharing your experience and your crusade for the reduction of fluff!
Cheers,
Matthew Plooster
Blog: http://www.bold-pr.com
FB: http://www.facebook.com/boldpr
Twitter: @ploomatt