David Politis

Notwithstanding Malcolm Atherton’s comment in our recent training meeting about the rule to keep headlines in news releases short in length, the truth is that sometimes reality trumps the rules. Here’s a case in point.

One of our clients at Politis Communications, HandHeld Entertainment, notified us the other day that it was going to be adding a new “outside” member to its board of directors. Obviously, adding a board member is significant news, so we began drafting up a release.

Later that day we had the first draft completed and within 48 hours the release was ready to go out the door with (as it turns out) an eight-word headline.

Then at the last-minute, the top client contact (CEO Jeff Oscodar) pointed out that the addition of this new board member would put the company back in compliance with NASDAQ regulations regarding the number of outside directors. This one observation led to a quick re-write of the headline, a modification of the lead sentence and the addition of a new sentence to the finished release.

So . . . although the rule of thumb is keep news release headlines shorter (eight words being the ideal length), there are exceptions to every rule, this one included.

Depending upon what needs to be accomplished, a longer headline may actually be required.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 12:05 am and is filed under Betty Factor, Betty Factor, The, Investor Relations, Media Relations, Politis Perspective, Politis Pointers, Public Relations, Strategic Communications, The Betty Factor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.