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 was just one of the “loud and clear” messages that struck home in a recent training meeting with Business Wire’s Malcolm Atherton at the Politis Communications offices.

To be specific, news releases with headlines that are eight words long was deemed the ideal length.

Such length best for several reasons, Atherton explained.

1. Shorter headlines improve results in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.
2. Shorter headlines have greater impact with readers as there is less to read.
3. Shorter headlines don’t get truncated in returned search results. (Both Google and Yahoo! only include the first 50 or so characters of a headline in the returned summary result; everything else is cut-off in the summary.)
4. Shorter headlines force writers to truly understand the thrust of a release, boiling the content down to the absolute essence — the core of what is needed — no more, no less.

Simple lesson then: When in doubt, shorter headlines are best for news releases.

On the surface, the headline from today’s Dell Inc. news release seems fairly straightforward: “Michael Dell Assumes Duties as Chief Executive Officer of Dell Inc.”

And yet as one begins to dig a bit deeper into the nuances of the release, I believe that clues begin to emerge as to what likely happened at Dell in the past 24-48 hours.

First some context.

According to Reuters, Kevin Rollins joined Dell in 1996 as senior vice president, corporate strategy following a stint with management consulting firm Bain Inc. After a variety of escalating promotions, Rollins was tapped as CEO of Dell in July 2004.

Note the praise Michael Dell heaps on Rollins praise in the following quote taken directly from the news release announcing Rollins’ promotion to Dell CEO on July 16, 2004:

“There is no single person who deserves more recognition for our great accomplishments than Kevin. His becoming CEO is as much about recognizing what he’s already done as it is about our confidence in his future and Dell’s.”

My how the worm has turned. Now, let’s look at today’s news release.

One, the lead paragraph explains that Mr. Dell will take over as CEO “effective immediately” replacing Kevin Rollins. Notice that the release is not about Rollins resigning; it’s about Dell becoming CEO. Interesting distinction.

The next several paragraphs are all about Michael Dell and how wonderful he is, which is fine.

But note that it’s not until the fifth paragraph that we learn that Rollins has even resigned from Dell at all, both as CEO and from his position on the Dell board of directors. Here again, note the use of the term “effective immediately.”

I point out this phrase because my experience in tracking news announcements during the past 20 years suggests that any time a release says an executive is stepping down “effective immediately” I am quite confident that the decision to resign was not made voluntarily.

Note also in the sixth paragraph that Michael Dell says that “Rollins has been a great business partner and friend,” which sounds perfectly fine, even laudable on the surface to say nice things about a former business partner. But note that the verb used is in the past tense — “has been” instead of “is.”

Obviously I understand that Rollins is no longer Dell’s business partner, but couldn’t this sentence have been written ”Rollins is a great friend and has been a great business partner” just as easily? Maybe it doesn’t roll off the tongue as well, but for something this important, I’m confident the release was written in this manner on purpose.

Finally, there are two more things in the middle sentence of the sixth paragraph that I think bear further examination: “He has made significant contributions to our business over the past ten years.”

Did you see the classic PR mistakes made in this sentence? Specifically, any public/investor relations pro or journalist worth her salt knows that the word “over” is used in PR- and news-writing to signify a place of position and not a period of time. (For example, “He held the bat over his head.”)

Additionally, with minor exceptions (and this isn’t one of them), numbers 10 and higher are always shown as a number and not spelled out in PR- and news-writing, while the numbers zero through nine are always spelled out.

Hence, the sentence should have been written “He has made significant contributions to our business during the past 10 years.”

Taken in concert, I believe all of these points suggest that this release was pulled together very quickly (my guess is within a couple of hours) without the input of PR professionals.

I also believe it was probably written overnight (probably by Dell’s legal counsel) with vetting by Mr. Dell himself and the Dell board, then prepped for distribution and publishing on the Dell Website and shoved out the door.

If I take these suppositions a step further, it would not surprise me to learn the forced decision to resign was presented to Rollins in a Dell board meeting last night.

Do I know this for sure? Of course not.

But almost every news release leaves clues as to what really happened behind the scenes, including today’s release from Dell Inc.

(For more on this topic, check out my other blog post at UtahTechWatch.com.)

When I began my first professional job in public relations in January 1984 at Tycer-Fultz-Bellack in Palo Alto, California (then the largest high-tech ad/pr agency west of the Mississippi River), we had to write or type our news releases by hand and then give them to a secretary who would get them “word processed” for us.

If we needed to get a news release or a pitch letter to an editor fast, we used a courier to have it hand-delivered (assuming, that is, that the journalist lived in the same metropolitan area). Typically, however, fast delivery meant using the U.S. Postal System.

There were no fax machines, no personal computers, no desktop publishing, no FedEx, no cell phones, no email, no Internet (at least not that the general public knew about), and certainly no World Wide Web.

Broadband connectivity? What was that.

BlackBerries? Don’t you find them growing on vines out in the country?

Apples? Yeah, they grow on trees. One supposedly fell off a tree and bonked whats-his-name on the head.

And Web 2.0? Is that the name of the sequel to “Charlotte’s Web?”

A lot has come and gone in the 22+ years since I started working in the field of PR, but one thing has not changed.

If you absolutely, positively have to make an impact in Public Relations, particularly if you’re talking to management, you had better figure out how you (and your PR campaign/strategy/tactics) can positively impact the bottom line. Otherwise, you might as well go off and flip burgers for a living.

Simply put, it doesn’t matter how many people you reach or products you introduce or product evaluators who write favorable reviews or great speeches you write or stories you place, etc., etc., etc. If you can’t frame the discussion within the context of bottom line impact — leads generated, revenue growth, return on investment, market share increase or what-have-you — you will not succeed in the long run.

Your PR plans (and their projected results) have to be concrete and such results have to be measurable. If not, you will always be fighting an uphill fight with the bean counters in the room who demand quantitative results.