Asks Jim Horton here: Online Public Relations Thoughts.
The full post is worth reading – all PR professionals at some point will have to write a press release that includes a quote from a client. As Jim says: "My experience has been that clients don’t like directness. I favor short and sometimes, blunt quotes that make points clearly. Clients often soften these and just as often, my colleagues won’t let them out of the office. It baffles me why clarity is not desirable, but then, I have a bad ear for emotional tone. Quotations are never easy. They put clients on record when clients don’t want to be there. Quotations can define relationships when clients prefer ambiguity. They can give facts that clients might wish to avoid. No wonder so few are memorable."
How very true.
One reply on “If you write quotes for a client, how do you make them read?”
There’s a book here somewhere about how daft quotes in press releases can be. They are either meaningless or wholly understated. When I was a hack I rarely used quotes in press releases. Now I always try to spice up quotes and make them as colloquial as possible. It usually works for start-ups but corporate insist on more formal tones.