PR Niblets

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Jesus is the Reason for the Season … Is That Less Than 140 Characters?

Tag lines and catch phrases are a lazy marketers dream … especially at this time of year. Cheese ball phraseology that packages, amplifies or encapsulates something we are trying to promote has a better chance of survival during the holiday season.

Editors are primed to accept hokey pitches for end-of-year summary stories and future trend pieces and most of us are slap-happy from increased exposure to wassail, iambic pentameter and tubs of caramel and cheese popcorn from colleagues.

The business world is feeling frisky and Twitter has sharpened our ability to dispatch pithy niblets and wonder aloud in less than 140 characters. No longer the province of Ashton Kutcher and PR firms who want to make a buck on social media, it has changed the way information is meted out by rewarding brevity and forcing us to describe complex occurrences in taut, evocative snippets.

While tag lines stick in the noggin - and the end of December is a jolly time to have a little fun -it’s important to remember that what we say now will linger beyond the glow of the holidays. When our defenses are no longer down and we are forced to face the scrutiny of a long cold January, we’ll need more than a phrase that is fun to repeat to keep our clients and causes in the public domain.

If the holidays are a time for lush and vivid previews, the New Year will be the time to parade our boring old support data in front of the critics and hope to take home the grand jury prize. Customer wins, executive changes and new products will all be dragged into the sunlight and examined to see if there is more to them than a catch phrase you can sing along to.

So carry on chroniclers of celebrity shenanigans, writers of campaign slogans and tweeters of hot new restaurant tips, just don’t forget how to write longhand again before the turkey comas wear off.