Fluff belongs on your dessert – not in your press release!

Working with a professional public relations agency can offer significant benefits for both large and small companies alike. So much so, in fact, that USC’s Annenberg Strategic Communication and Public Relations Center reports that 95 percent of all large public companies and nearly half of all small private companies rely on outside PR/marketing counsel.

In selecting a public relations firm with which to work, however, companies would do well to remember three words: Hold the fluff.

In media parlance, “fluff” is the term for the flowery language and effusive frippery in which some publicists drown their copy. Rather than simply stating the facts and letting their client’s product or project speak for itself, some PR reps seem to believe that applying a thick coating of hyperbole to their prose will catch the eye of that jaded reporter and score their client a primo placement.