Press release ‘gems'

This first ‘gem' was sent to me a couple of weeks ago by a leading airline and hotel group. The spelling and grammar are exactly as received and yes, it's supposed to be like this – but WHY? The point is would anyone read past the first sentence?

Hi marion scher,if you're looking for an excuse to get silly, we will make it easy for you. come fun with us and spend some time with yourself. well, only if you want to. you might want to say to yourself ‘self, you're boring. I think I need a new self.' in which case you might want to keep the money you would have spent on these flights and hotel rooms and rather make an investment in yourself and see a shrink. (note: a shrink is not a little person in cling-wrap).

At this point I've rushed to the bathroom to kotch…

The second release I've had now for a couple of months and this comes from one of our local government departments. I've had groups of people howling over it at conferences and training so in actual fact have really had my money's worth out of it. Here is just a sample from it.

DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

COUNCIL WARNS DUDUZA RESIDENTS ABOUT CORN ARTIST(S)

The Metropolitan Municipality would like to warn residents of Duduza about an alleged fraudster (s) who has been going around promising to scrape or erase people's municipal arrears at a certain fee.

The Duduza Customer Care Centre has already received five complaints of this nature from local residents, who had been conned anything between R150 to R400 in this thuggery scheme.

Pensioners seem to have been the primary targets of the scheme. The Metro calls on the community to be alert for the fraudsters, and to report any similar incidents to the police.

And then from the sublime to the ridiculous – the release that is so complicated that you'd need a post-doctoral degree to work it out.

It has become a matter of mounting importance that we sharpen the spatial focus of government programmes. The macro-framework for this is already in place. The National Spatial Development Perspective (NSDP) has been developed, and was recently updated, with a view to guide us as we seek to direct growth-inducing investment in a coordinated and spatially-targeted way.This has implications not only with respect to attracting private sector investments into prioritised geographic spaces, but also with respect to social provision of sustainable modes of living to people who were previously marginalised. This means that we must keep a close watch on our fiscal interventions and the distributional dynamics which are unleashed by these interventions. The test is whether our fiscal interventions, including the way we distribute nationally-raised revenue to local jurisdictions, serve to buttress existing inequalities or they help hitherto marginalised geographic spaces to overcome their inheritance of disadvantage.

The point is if you want someone to read something then TELL them a story as you would a mate. And tell it as efficiently as possible, preferably one to two paragraphs. If you absolutely have to, go to three – but remember the second and third one will probably not be read. Talking recently to one of 702's presenters he said he has now created a special mail box for most releases to go straight into. Once they're in he presses a key and they're gone – forever.

If anyone has doubts as to the authenticity of these I'd be happy to forward the originals…