Twitter followers of @graeme_brown and @alunthorne, two giants of the BPM Media coffee room, will be accustomed to tweets bemoaning lazy press releasing.
“Why is creative sector so utterly uncreative when it comes to press releases? Three “delighteds already today. #delete” Alun mocked.
“I thought I’d reward your PR *ss for managing 1,000 words without a single ‘delighted’,” jested Graeme.
Fair’s fair – and I’m whispering the next bit – they’re right. When flacks rack up a press release, we’re prone to relying on multi-purpose cliché to get us through a few hundred words – if senior managers were really as ‘delighted’ as the PR industry repeatedly suggests, the NHS would be prescribing their aura as an alternative to Prozac.
In our defence, we’re no worse than the hacks themselves.
We PRs know the Great British media, primary destination for our press releases, is a lair of lexicological labour-saving, a kingdom of cliché.
The media casually falls back on a stockpile of terms rarely used in general conversation, unless you happen to be Kelvin MacKenzie.
Personally, I love them: it saves me having to think too hard when reading a newspaper.
Once I see someone described as “cuddly”, or “jolly” that’s it – I can immediately recognise the shorthand for “overweight comedian or comedienne”. My other favourites, and I’m sure you have your own, can be categorised within the following headings…
Celebrity
The blood that moves the media body. If you read any newspaper, you are never allowed to forget that celebrity is very important.
Put it this way: missed a mortgage payment? Get over it. Broken a limb moments before a life changing job interview? Who do you think you are – Joan of Arc? Ejected an unruly noise pollutant from a reality TV cash cow? Crisis! It’s a crisis people! Man the lifeboats! Women, children and multi-millionaire smarmbuckets first!
If you’re a celebrity couple disagreeing over the colour of your Cath Kidston tablecloth, have my condolences for suffering a full-blown row.
If you’ve appeared on a TV programme for more than five years, or shown loyalty to a football club for more than five minutes – you may also charmingly know this as “doing your job” – this qualifies you as a legend.
Anyone with an addiction a notch or so below ‘Ardennes Pate dependency’ can be deemed as troubled.
And, celebrities don’t lose their job, nor do television series ‘end’. Where’s the drama in that? They’re axed, like an unsightly Dutch Elm-diseased tree.
Sports
To labour an analogy further, where celebrity is the blood moving the media body, sports is the liver. Possibly the kidneys.
That’s why even the most leaden-footed clodhopper in football is called an ace, represent your country in a sport you’re paid handsomely to play and you’re potentially a hero, and continue playing your sport into the hinterland known as ‘your 30s’, you’re classed as a veteran. I’m in my thirties having worked in PR for 15 years-ish now, and let me tell you this – if you call me a veteran, I will punish you.
Weather
We all know if it’s sunny, it’s assuredly going to be - phew! - a scorcher.
Also remember though, that anything you do in such pleasant conditions will be considered frolicking, be it walking, scratching your bum or clearing a blocked drain.
Hit the autumn or winter months, and expect to see squally showers freely mentioned as if we know what they are.
If it snows, conditions will almost certainly be treacherous too. Mind how you go.
Crime
Armed robberies usually feature gun-toting criminals – not gun-wielding, gun-brandishing and certainly not anything as mundane as gun-holding.
The shorthand for tracking down such miscreants is usually manhunt.
Go to court, avoid a prison sentence but receive admonishment from a judge means you must be, like a relieved Jay-Z producer up against a deadline, in receipt of a rap.
Business
Budgets cuts are bad. In a newspaper though, they’re Freddie Krueger-bad – hence budgets usually being slashed.
Companies plunge into administration, like Tom Daley into an Olympic swimming pool.
For any business doing better than bobbins, expect to be considered top, as in “top bankers”, “top accountancy firm” or “top New York paranormal activity investigation unit”. Earn lots of dosh? Then lose weight and consider being neutered, you fat cat.
Emergency services
Work in the armed forces? Male? Then you belong to us: you are Our Boys. Work in the armed forces? Female? Then you also belong to us, but make do with also being called Our Boys. Work in the police? Or the fire service? Or the coastguard? Bully for you. But you are not Our Boys. Perhaps you’re someone else’s Boys.
Relationships
Romp. Tabloids love a good,and, indeed, a bad, romp. Nevertheless, confusion will forever reign when considering what a romp actually means.
Does it mean what happens when mummy and daddy really like one another? Or when mummy doesn’t like daddy and likes someone else? Or when mummy and daddy like, um, another mummy and daddy?
Or does it simply mean, as it appears to in some red-tops, that a man has had a conversation with someone of the opposite gender? In which case, I confess to enduring a rather perfunctory romp at a petrol station earlier today.
An alluring woman can be a sexpot but a man cannot – he, instead, must make do with being a hunk.
And you’ll find the phrase sex war pops up an alarming number of times, as if the sky is strewn with missiles filled with bodily fluids.
So, that list of frequently used journalistic cliches will do for starters. Any PRs that wish to add to this list, especially those that have received withering comments from jaded journos, your cathartic contributions are welcome. I am delighted to be on your side, comrade.
* Keith Gabriel is a Birmingham-based PR account manager. His views do not represent those of his employer
