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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Writing Sample: Christmas Shopping on a Student Budget

After seven years of college and grad school, I'm pretty much the expert on budget-conscious Christmas shopping. I thought I would be well-qualified to write a how-to list on student Christmas shopping, so here it is! This is going to be another piece for my copywriting portfolio. I wanted this list to be brief (468 words!), entertaining, and informative, and I think I succeeded. Please leave any suggestions for revision you can think of!

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Christmas Shopping on a Student Budget

Looking to please your friends and family this Christmas without taking out another student loan? If you think your student stipend can't make for a happy holiday season, think again! With these six tips, you'll be on your way to playing Santa on a student budget.

1. Plan Ahead. You may think that mid-October is too early to start shopping, but beginning early lets you shop sales and compare prices at different stores. Why buy a CD from a specialty store in December when it will be $5 cheaper at Target next week? Besides, shopping in October lets you avoid crowded stores and the rush of finals week!
   
2. Clip Away! I know what you're thinking: coupons are for Depression-era grandparents and neurotic supermoms. But coupons are a great way to stretch your Christmas cash. Put together gift baskets made up of grocery store staples for friends and family. Try a finals week snack box for a roommate or a winterizing kit (lotion, lip balm, hot chocolate mix, etc.) for a family friend
   
   
   
3. Such Talent! Don't forget that you are your own greatest resource. Know how to knit? Scarves for the whole family! Love to write? Record some of your favorite childhood memories, bind them, and give your grandparents copies! And if you're not artistic, you can always make prints of your favorite photos, arrange them in inexpensive photo albums, and give them to family members.
   
   
   
4. Flour Power. Never underestimate the power of baked goods! A tray of festive sugar cookies will melt any neighbor or boss's heart. There are plenty of recipes out there that are inexpensive, easy-to-make, and incredibly appealing (try Rice Crispy Treats or Peanut Butter Buckeye Balls). Can't bake to save your life? Make one of those gift mixes in a Mason jar—just pour the ingredients in, twist the lid, and you're done!
   
   
   
5. Give the Gift of You. When you're living away from home, sometimes the best gift is just showing up. Rent a movie for your mom and promise to watch it with her (no matter how much you hate Steel Magnolias!), or take your grandma out to tea at her favorite tea shop. They'll be happier than if you had given them an afternoon with George Clooney! Well, maybe.
   
   
   
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   Personalize It! Pay close attention to your friends' and family's interests before you spend a cent; responding directly to their passions will make a bigger impact than spending a lot of money ever could. For example, if your sister believes in fair-trade and loves the color purple, she'd rather get a pair of lavender bead earrings from Ten Thousand Villages than diamond studs! 
   

   
   Just remember that it really is the thought that counts when giving gifts and you'll be on your way to having a gloriously inexpensive giving season!
   

   
   

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.

Contemporary Book Club classics

By Lesley Owens

As the weather cools and the kids head back to school, you may be looking for a palate cleanser after all that pulpy summer reading. So re-shelve your copies of Twilight and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and make a plan to catch up with these three classics of contemporary literature.


The Center of Everything

At the beginning of Laura Moriarty's The Center of Everything (2004), Ronald Reagan is president and Evelyn Bucknow of Kerrville, Kansas is nine, old enough to notice when her mother's life becomes a series of misfortunes: the car breaks down, she loses her job, and she gets pregnant by a married man. But as things go downhill fast for the Bucknow family, Evelyn finds herself increasingly singled out as a gifted student “special” enough to distance herself from her mother's mistakes.

As Evelyn tries to escape her unwanted poverty and her mother Tina struggles to find happiness, Moriarty creates something very special: two characters who are flawed yet likable, and tragic without being gratuitously gritty. As you read, you're sure to recognize high school classmates, your grocery store check-out clerk, and your best friends in the novel's startlingly realistic characters.

There are many flaws in this novel, Moriarty's first, but she ably tackles complex relationships, welfare, and small town life, producing a page-turning coming-of-age novel that avoids melodrama and political warfare.


Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage

Alice Munro is known as a master of the short story form, and Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage (2001) solidifies her reputation for writing quietly beautiful short fiction. The stories in this collection are set in Ontario, Canada and take on the difficulties of real life relationships. Unwanted and strained connections abound, mostly between wives, husbands, and desperate female relatives.
 
Munro's characters come from a variety of milieus and eras, but they are always short on happiness and long on repressed urges, unreachable temptations, illness, and death. But these stories feel flat, not sad. Munro's characters could explode into action and drama at any second—in fact, as readers, we often expect them to—but they simply don't.

And that's the whole point. The stories in Hateship, Friendship are not “slice of life” pieces, but they are very much like life: no matter how rich and riotous our inner lives feel to us, our outside lives often remain as plain and practical and faded as old linoleum.


Housekeeping

Reading Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping (1980) is a lot like reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway: it's fascinating, somewhat baffling, and immensely compelling. As you turn the last page, you'll find yourself wanting to start page one all over again.
 
Housekeeping is set during the Depression in Fingerbone, Idaho. After a series of family deaths, Ruthie, the narrator, is adopted by her aunt Sylvie. Sylvie is a former transient and an unconventional parental figure: she takes catnaps on park benches and fills her family home with tin cans and stacks of magazines. As Ruthie's sister Lucille increasingly rejects Sylvie's ways, Ruthie willingly dissolves herself into the rhythms of Sylvie's bizarre lifestyle.

Robinson's prose is supple and rich with sensuous imagery, and each page of the novel is lush with contemplative eddies as Ruthie considers memory, death, and time's liquidity. Robinson's skillful writing ruthlessly mirrors Ruthie's increasing difference from the outside world, and despite the novel's leisurely pace, you'll find yourself content to slow down, to wander within the watery flow of Ruthie's mind.

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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Tips for Tentative Tweeters

Tips for Tentative Tweeters

August 27, 2009

I like Twitter.

There, I said it. I like to use it, and I like to read it, no matter how many pundits and laymen alike grumble over the microblog's purported uselessness. While not everyone who creates a Twitter account will find the site useful or compelling, the widespread appeal of Twitter is no fluke. In the right hands and with the right intentions, Twitter can actually be fun, useful, and even informative. Here's the why, who, what, when, and where of using Twitter to its best advantage.

Why should you be on Twitter?

I like Twitter because it's a quick, easy, precise way to post interesting stuff on the web. I get most of my cultural news this way: I've found new books to read, new blogs to follow, and new topics to think and write about through my friends' tweets. The best Twitter accounts should make you feel engaged, informed, and current.

Your tweets should do the same for your followers. Forwarding links, composing brief reviews, and sharing quick facts provides a varied and compelling array of information to your readers. It also allows you to promote great ideas, articles, and writers to ensure that they get the exposure they deserve. Think of tweets and re-tweets as brief, culturally enriching chain letters that can spread the best web content across the globe. But, you know, without the chain mail curses.

Twitter has not proven particularly useful for creating social intimacy or providing a space for intelligent debate. The site is not a "social network" in the conventional sense because it doesn't attempt to represent the self like Facebook and MySpace do; at best, Twitter conveys the momentary interests and fleeting preoccupations of an individual. So if you're looking for a web application to forge connections with your peers, Twitter might not be for you.

What do people tweet about, and what should people tweet about?

According to a recent study, about 40% of tweets are "useless babble" about the weather or eating a sandwich or buying a spice rack. These are bad tweets. Another 37% of tweets are conversational (meaning that they are directed at only one person, not at the general population of followers). Only 9% of tweets are re-tweets (meaning they're interesting enough to have "pass along value") and only 4% of tweets are news-related.

I'll be honest: about one in ten of my tweets is "useless babble" (actual tweet: "the plaster & paint are up @ the grandparent's house--what a day!"). No one cares. I know this, and I try to limit myself accordingly. But when I do fall under the Internet's siren song of unfettered self-expression, I try to make up for my inanity through cultural commentary attached to #hashtags (such as movie reviews or book recommendations) and links to articles that I think are worth reading.

I try to tweet away from personal topics as much as possible. Like any other form of writing, you should consider the needs and interests of you audience; your Twitter friends are following you because they want to be entertained or informed, not to be subjected to the minutia of your daily life. If in doubt about whether something personal is tweet-worthy, ask yourself this: if you were to run into one of your followers on the street, would you find it necessary to tell him or her that you "Might stop for a coffee before hitting the office!" or "Luv luv luv cantaloupe for breakfast!!!"? No? Then don't tweet it.

Who should you follow?

I follow friends, colleagues, and a few news accounts. I follow friends because we share a sense of humor and they add personal zest to my home page. I follow colleagues because they frequently post great links about interests we share; they help further my professional interests. I follow news sites to stay up to date on certain topics and publications, though I only follow news profiles if they don't tweet more than a few times a day and their interests are very similar to my own (like @newyorkerdotcom and @iwantmedia, which tracks digital media trends).

I follow less than thirty people, and I don't think that a tweeter could follow more than fifty without losing track of what's going on in real time (and that's the whole point of Twitter, right?). When it comes to who you follow, keep the list small to keep it useful.

Where does tweeting occur?

Basically, you can tweet on-line or over a mobile device like a cell phone. It doesn't matter where you tweet, but you should know that tweeting from your cell phone makes it easier and more tempting to post useless and off-putting blather to Twitter. Tweeting about a visit to the doctor's office ("Sitting in the waiting room for twenty minutes now. SOOO bored. Old Redbooks suck!") may alleviate your boredom, but it's only increasing that of your followers.

When should one tweet?

I tweet about twice a day on average: sometimes I tweet ten times a day, and sometimes I go for several days without tweeting. I have friends who tweet once a week and friends who tweet as often as they check their email (which is very often).

There is no ideal tweet frequency, but tweeting more than once an hour on average (more than 24 posts a day) is bad Twitter etiquette. It's annoying when a single tweeter fills your home page with updates. Besides, it seems implausible that a single person could have more than 20 hilarious epiphanies, bizarre experiences, enlightening opinions, and illuminating reading sessions in only a few waking hours. Anyone who's tweeting at this frequency is not tweeting much worth reading.

However, if your life just happens to be that fascinating, your mind that fecund, and your web trolling that extraordinary, you can find me at @amoebaspleez; I'll be sure to follow back.

Laura Moriarty: Best-Selling Author and Lawrence Native

Last Thursday, I went to a reading by novelist Laura Moriarty at the Lawrence Public Library. The reading was great fun; Moriarty was outgoing and entertaining (which you can't always expect from an author), and her new book sounds fascinating. I'm especially interested to read it because the heroine (Veronica) grew up in a suburb of Kansas City, attended KU, and is a resident assistant in the dorms, all of which I share in common with her. I think it will be exciting and strange to read a novel set in Kansas about someone who is at least a little like myself.

Anyway, the article below is an attempt to write a newspaper-style report on the reading. I was trying to make it terse, clean, informative, and focused on Moriarty as a writer. If you have any suggestions for improving it, please let me know! And if you want to know more about Moriarty as a person and her life in Lawrence, you can read this great little interview from Gavon Laessig of the Lawrence Journal-World.
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Lawrencians Fall for Local Novelist
August 8, 2009

Not every novelist compares herself to a Border Collie and forces her characters to eat meat, but Laura Moriarty, a Lawrence resident and creative writing professor at the University of Kansas, is not every novelist. As she read to a crowd of over 70 readers at the Lawrence Public Library on August 6, the young author was relaxed, personable, and often funny, easily charming her hometown crowd, many of whom (if you go by their questions) had already read both of her previous novels: The Center of Everything, published in 2003, and 2007's The Rest of Her Life.

Moriarty's newest novel While I'm Falling, released this month by Hyperion, follows Veronica, a 20-year-old junior at KU, as she deals with the aftermath of her father returning from a business trip to find a young, shirt-less roofer sleeping in his bed. An expensive divorce follows, and Veronica finds herself scraping through college as her parents battle over money.

Moriarty weaves several storylines together in what she describes as her most plot-oriented novel yet: the parents' divorce; Veronica's mother's waning finances; Veronica's dislike of her job as a dorm resident assistant; Veronica's childhood friend Haley who undergoes a radical transformation to become the black-clad “Simone”; and Jimmy, a suspicious security guard who involves Veronica in his shady dealings.

Though Moriarty read two sections from her novel, she spent most of the hour-long reading responding to the audience's questions, including the perennial favorite of readers everywhere, “Is this book autobiographical?”

Though Moriarty also attended KU (where she earned a B.A. in Social Work and an M.A. in Creative Writing), worked as an R.A. in the dorms, and had parents who divorced while she was in college, Moriarty is adamant that, from there, she and Veronica are completely different people. When working on Falling, Moriarty made Veronica eat meat in as many scenes as possible to help keep Veronica “distinct” from her staunchly vegetarian self.

Moriarty says that the secret to her success as a novelist is writing 1,000 words a day, no matter how long it takes. She finds the most challenging part of writing to be blending her plot lines together and knowing when she should write about each character and conflict. She plans the details of each character's storyline very carefully before eventually “braiding” these lines together into a single plot sequence. When writing The Center of Everything, she used a chart hung on the wall of her home to stay organized; for Falling, she followed a very thorough outline.

As the evening wrapped up, one reader said, “You are a very prolific young author. Have you already started on your next novel?” Moriarty nodded and smiled. “Oh, yes,” she said. “The hardest times for me are when I'm coming up with an idea for a novel, so I try to start on the next one as quickly as possible. I'm like a Border Collie,” she laughed. “I like to know where I'm going.”