Writing Sample: Press Release

Press releases are common public relations tools. They're basically brief articles about a product, service or company which are distributed to newspapers and other publishers in the hope of gaining free publicity. Press releases are supposed to read like news stories, and they have to have a "hook"; the hook is the newsworthy tidbit that will attract newspaper reporters, newspaper editors, and the public.


Below is a press release sample I wrote for my copywriting portfolio. I tried out several ideas before I decided to write about Claire's Cakes and Cookies, a fictional bakery I created for a previous writing sample. For this press release, my hook was the free cinnamon rolls, though the 90th anniversary celebration of baking in the Schlitterwhooster family was another big focus in the article.

I really wanted to focus on writing something that was very clear, very clean, and very easy to read. Most press releases I found on-line were nearly impossible to hack through, and I usually found myself losing interest in their "news" during the first or second paragraph. Sometimes I even got bored just reading the title!

This piece is 361 words long and formatted like a traditional press release would be. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement!

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Claire's Cakes and Candies Offers Free Cinnamon Rolls, Celebrates Heritage with New Location

Olathe, KS, October 23 2009--Claire's Cakes and Candies, a bakery and confectionery owned by Olathe native Claire Schlitterwhooster, will celebrate the 90^th anniversary of Schlitterwhooster baking by opening a second location on the Country Club Plaza. Both store locations will celebrate by giving away free cinnamon rolls with any purchase or order from October 26-30.

Why cinnamon rolls? “My great-grandmother Annett Schlitterwhooster was a baker in Germany before she and my great-grandfather moved to America,” says Schlitterwhooster. “She started her bakery in 1919, which specialized in classic German pastries like strudels, cinnamon buns, and berliners.”

Since then, the Schlitterwhooster women have grown up baking classic German treats as well as American favorites like chiffon cakes and cookies.

But Schlitterwhooster was the one to take the family tradition to the next level. She attended culinary school in 2000 before opening the original Claire's location in 2003. She chose to focus on custom cakes for weddings and celebrations because she noticed a dearth of professional cake bakers in southern Johnson county.

“When my friends were getting married, they were driving up to Leawood or Kansas City to get their cakes. I saw an opportunity to add something to the Olathe community that wasn't readily available,” Schlitterwhooster says.

In 2006, Schlitterwhooster added a storefront to the Olathe location to offer same-day sheet cakes, ready-made cupcakes, and gift chocolates. The new Plaza location will focus on wedding cakes and ready-made cupcakes in a variety of traditional (chocolate, white, and red velvet) and adventurous (mango lassi and strawberried rose) flavors.

Schlitterwhooster has been planning the Plaza location's grand opening for several months and is excited for the upcoming celebration. “I'm honored to bring these two great traditions together: my family's long history of baking and the classic elegance of the Country Club Plaza. It's a great match, I think, and I can't wait to see what happens.”

Claire's Cakes and Candies has locations at XXXX Zero Street in Olathe, KS and at YYY Nada Lane in Kansas City, MO. Their staff has over seventy years of combined experience making custom celebration cakes, cupcakes, and candies. Please call 123-456-7890 for more information.

Contact:

Lesley Owens

098-765-4321

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Art & Copy

I managed to see Art & Copy this weekend at Tivoli Cinemas in Westport. It was absolutely fascinating and, for a documentary about advertising, it was surprisingly moving. I decided to write a review about it because a) I figured it would help me sort out my thoughts about the movie, and b) it would give me another journalistic writing sample. I managed to trim this piece down to 415 words without sacrificing any major facts, ideas, or opinions, so I was very pleased.

Anyway, I hope that my review persuades you to go out and see Art & Copy for yourself. If you're at all interested in advertising, art, writing, or the creative process, I think you'll enjoy it.

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The Faces of Advertising

Don't let the trailer fool you: Art & Copy isn't a documentary about creativity or the American advertising industry. It's an astute examination of psychology: the psychology of the American consumer and of advertising's greatest creative executives.

In Art & Copy, director Doug Pray interviews a handful of creative giants to find out what makes them tick. We meet Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein (“Got milk?”), George Lois (“I want my MTV!”), David Kennedy and Dan Wieden (“Just do it.”), Mary Wells (“I love New York”), and even Hal Riney (the mind and voice behind Ronald Reagan's “Morning in America” reelection campaign).

Pray presents a wide array of campaigns in the film, taking us from Volkswagen's revolutionary “Think small” 1959 Beetle campaign to iPod's 2001 iconic dancing silhouettes. Each campaign is introduced and explained by its creators.

While this formula sounds dull (talking head-style interviews, office tours, and a slew of commercials), the results are electric. The creative directors are fascinating characters: George Lois is outspoken and crass, Mary Wells crackles with drama, Lee Clow (of iPod fame) looks like a beach bum but talks like a revolutionary, and Hal Riney simultaneously soothes and charms from his unassuming cream-colored couch.

As we learn more about the artists and writers behind each campaign, the commercials take on a whole new life. We forget to suspect them as calculated sales tools and begin to see them as their creators do: as works of art, as haiku, as tools for social change, as legitimate cultural artifacts, even as expressions of human truths.

Pray is enchanted by the creatives he interviews, and his take on advertising is overwhelmingly positive. But he does gesture briefly to advertising's tremendous size and influence: he tells us that the average city dweller sees 5,000 ads a day, that 65% of us feel bombarded by too many ads, and that more than $500 billion is spent per year on advertising. But these stats don't stick. The creatives are too compelling, too charismatic to ignore.

In a way, Art & Copy is the best advertisement you'll ever find for the advertising industry. It shows us the faces behind the images and catchphrases that have become as quotable to us as Shakespeare (“Where's the beef?”).

Pray does for his subjects what they do for the huge, anonymous corporations they work for: he gives the advertising industry a face, a personality, a heart.

The Round-Up

Despite the utter lack of job postings in the KC area, I've been busy lately. I've been conducting informational interviews (Callahan Creek must have the kindest copywriters in the world), reading up on marketing, working on my portfolio, and generally trying to let the world know that I'm looking for a job.

My brain's been fragmented, so this post is going to be, too. Just go with the flow, people. Dig the melange.

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1. I finally chose a poem for my friend's wedding, and she loved it. I'm so thrilled! It's by Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of the first major black American poets. I've never really cared for his poetry (I always thought it was too sing-songy and cliched), but this poem is killer precisely because it so gentle, soft-spoken, and unexpected. I especially love the refrain of "And you are welcome, welcome."

Invitation to Love

By Paul Laurence Dunbar

Come when the nights are bright with stars

Or come when the moon is mellow;

Come when the sun his golden bars

Drops on the hay-field yellow.

Come in the twilight soft and gray,

Come in the night or come in the day,

Come, O love, whene’er you may,

And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,

You are soft as the nesting dove.

Come to my heart and bring it to rest

As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.

Come when my heart is full of grief

Or when my heart is merry;

Come with the falling of the leaf

Or with the redd’ning cherry.

Come when the year’s first blossom blows,

Come when the summer gleams and glows,

Come with the winter’s drifting snows,

And you are welcome, welcome. 

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2. There's a fantastic article about swine flu in this month's Vogue. It's called "The Year of the Pig," and even if you're not a Vogue subscriber, I'd strongly recommend that you park yourself by a Border's magazine section and give it a read. In the piece, Robert Sullivan takes a look at how the government has been planning for the swine flu pandemic and why experts are so worried about it. He explains that H1N1 is behaving very much like the Spanish Flu of 1918: so far, it hasn't proven very dangerous (except to children), but experts suspect that the strain may mutate by next year and cause rocketing number of cases in the fall and winter of 2010. They don't believe that the virus will grow much more fatal, but it will severely strain the American health care system. Scientists are raising alarms about the flu now in order to prepare for next year. So, in conclusion, ack!

Reading this reminded me of Ellen Bryant Voigt's Kyrie, which is one of the saddest and most beautiful books of poetry I've ever read. It's a series of sonnets about the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. Voigt writes mostly in the voices of the flu's survivors, and her use of the sonnet form is clever, appropriate, and moving. Go out and read it, like, now.

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3. Speaking of horribly sad poetry, I finally managed to read Donald Hall's Without. Hall's collection follows the illness and death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon. Surprisingly, the volume was a page-turner; I read the whole thing in about an hour, and, naturally, waterworks ensued. Why am I so attracted to poetry that ruins my make-up?

To be honest, I wasn't in love with the poetry in this collection. The poems were just so raw, so straight-forward, so narrative that I couldn't call it very good or interesting poetry (thought, in general, I think Donald Hall is quite brilliant). But it did depict a beautiful love affair and the sort of raw emotion usually reserved for romance novels and chick flicks. I'd recommend this book if only for the catharsis.

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4. I've also been reading The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. It's a fascinating exploration of how to successfully position a product within a unique market. Jack Trout and Al Ries use a ton of real-world examples to prove their points, including the never-ending marketing battle between Coca-Cola and Pepsi and lots of little tidbits from the emerging PC market (well, emerging in 1993, when the book was first published).

But despite the myriad references to Atari, Commodore, and a hundred other computer and software companies I've never heard of, the book feels relevant and useful to a business newbie like me. In fact, these guys are kind of blowing my mind: they make me realize how complex marketing strategies can be, but they're also reinforcing how much I have to learn if I want to be a part of the marketing industry. It's wonderfully exciting to read about something as familiar as Coke and Pepsi, but to find myself seeing it in an entirely new way.

Crafting Copy for Marketing Campaigns . . .

. . . always involves alliteration!

At least as far as I can tell. I've been researching marketing copy this weekend and drafting writing examples I can use in job applications. My marketing skills are a little rusty, but after reading other people's portfolios on-line, I'm feeling confident that I could do at least as well as most professionals, if not better.

Some of the advice pages I've found about writing marketing copy have been fantastic; I found GNC's suggestions and DT&GBusiness's tips to be particularly helpful. These sites made me wish that I had taught a web-based persuasive writing assignment in my composition courses. Not only would it have been tremendously helpful to the students' general writing skills, but it would have forced my students to practice practical rhetoric, something that even I'm not used to doing.

Anyway, I've posted my marketing copy example below. I made up a business (Claire's Cakes and Candies), brainstormed some services they might have, and tried to explain these services to a potential consumer. I image that this copy would be used for the bakery's home page as an introduction to their basic services.

I tried to directly relate each service to a specific need or desire that the consumer has, like the need for convenience or the desire to impress his or her guests. I'm especially fond of my slant-rhymed tag-line: "Creative Designs for the Event of a Lifetime!"

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Claire's Cakes and Candies

Creative Designs for the Event of a Lifetime!

Welcome to Claire's Cakes and Candies! We provide . . .

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  Custom Cakes for Weddings and Special Events: We don't just make cakes, we make impressions. Let our staff of master bakers and designers shape a sophisticated, one-of-a-kind cake just for you. With our wide selection of gourmet flavors, we can ensure that your cake will be as delicious as well as spectacular. We're expert at suiting any style, any occasion, and any palate. So let us take care of your cake so you can enjoy your event! Schedule a design consultation and taste test with us today.
  
  
  
  
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  Same-day Sheet Cakes: Forgot to order a cake for a co-worker? Missed Mom's birthday? Call us on your way to work and we'll have your custom sheet cake ready by the afternoon. With a personalized message and colorful butter cream detailing, we can make any of our fresh pre-made sheet cakes (available in white and chocolate) into something special just for you. Never miss another opportunity to show that you care!
  
  
  
  
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  Cupcakes: Perfect for on-the-go hostesses and spur-of-the-moment celebrations, our cupcakes (available in white, chocolate, and carrot cake) can turn any day into an event. We whip up our no-fuss, all-fun cupcakes by the dozen. And since we they're made fresh daily, these mini cakes will let you display your party panache at a moment's notice!
  
  
  
  
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  Fine Gift Chocolates: From kids to connoisseurs, everyone loves our hand-crafted chocolate gifts, which we make using only the finest ingredients from Belgium and France. Our artisan molds transform our deluxe milk and dark chocolates into dramatic gifts for your special someone. Playful or polished, silly or sophisticated, Claire's chocolates make a sweet statement for any occasion.
  
  
  
  

About Us

Claire Schlitterwhooster and her staff have over seventy years of combined experience making custom pastries and chocolates for the Kansas City area. Though she grew up baking cinnamon buns and coffee cakes with her German grandmother, Claire chose to focus on crafting artisan cakes after graduating from culinary school in 2003. Since then, Claire and her staff have combined a passion for art with a love of gourmet sweets and fine European chocolates. Her staff includes Mark Chevre, her talented sous-chef; three full-time bakers; four cake artists; two chocolate confectioners; and long-time office manager Marie Clark.

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Isn't Schlitterwhooster a great name for a pastry chef?

I also created a pdf mock-up of what the website would look like, incorporating a few photos and a basic header image I made myself on GIMP. I converted my pdf to a couple of jpgs and posted them below. They're nothing fancy, but hopefully they'll help my potential employers imagine what my work would look like with a designer's help!

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