Example of a Product Rollout Press Release

****ATTENTION: ASSIGNMENT DESK

Are You Hot?

A “Cool” New Technology Helps Weekend Warriors and Serious
Athletes Beat Feet Heat

What: Sweaty feet. It’s not a pretty thought, yet foot moisture is often a very real problem for recreational and serious athletes alike, causing blisters, athlete’s foot and embarrassing foot odors…ugh! In fact, over 88 percent
of Americans recently surveyed felt that heat and humidity hinder
athletic performance.

Why: Believe it or not, your feet can produce nearly two tablespoons of perspiration per hour when you’re working out. Because approximately 70,000 sweat glands in the body are concentrated on the underside of each foot.

New “Cool” Technology 

ClimaCool is a first-of-its-kind new athletic shoe technology that dramatically reduces heat ad humidity – up to 20 percent! ClimaCool technology, created by adidas, allows air to circulate around the foot and helps athletes shed excessive moisture that can lead to blisters, fungus, overheating and…stinky feet. The result: decrease in overheating, and dramatic increases in foot dryness and performance.

A Few Tips for Keeping Cool:

* As a general rule, drink two cups of watered down sports drink with electrolytes two hours prior to activity, and drink one cup of cold water every 10-15 minutes during your workout.

*Choose fabric both light in color and weight to avoid overheating

*Eat a small meal no less than 2-3 hours before activity, allowing time for digestion while avoiding cramps and stomach aches. Eating too close to an activity can interfere with the body’s optimal cooling process.

(This release then offered technical information for capturing a satellite feed that included visuals of athletes working out and an interview with a doctor)

Contact Information including name, PR Firm, and phone number

Press Release Critique

Note: If I were teaching a class on how to write a news release for a product rollout, I’d use this one as an example of the “right” way. Here’s why:

Instant Eyeball Test: One sheet, grabber headline, good sub-headline, topic heading in bold, brief, clear, all the necessary details are there, contact information is complete and easy to find.

Headline Test: Sexual reference “Are You Hot?” makes you want to read further to find out what the writer means. Obviously, it won’t really be blatantly sexual or pornographic. But what will it be?

The answer comes in the sub-headline, which also defines the audience: anyone who exercises – which is a lot of people.

The headline and subheadline get the MDMs attention and also let him/her know there’s a substantial audience for the information that follows.

Hot Button Test: Health and fitness.

Body: First sentence of the What” section is a “Whoa!” The MDM is likely to think, “Whoa! You’ve got to be kidding. A story about sweaty feet?” But the writer of this release makes his/her case in the next 5-10 seconds:

 "It’s not a pretty thought, yet foot moisture is often a very real
 problem for recreational and serious athletes alike, causing blisters,
 athlete’s foot and embarrassing foot odors…ugh! In fact, over 88 percent  of Americans recently surveyed felt that heat and humidity hinder athletic performance."

True, it’s not a pretty thought, but it’s a fact. And just in case you don’t believe it, the writer backs it up with survey results.

The writer also does a nice job of reinforcing the idea that “this is a problem” by mentioning that the people in the survey felt that sweaty feet hindered athletic performance.

Then the writer hits us with more impressive stats in the “Why” topic heading:

 "Believe it or not, your feet can produce nearly two tablespoons of
 perspiration per hour when you’re working out. Because
 approximately 70,000 sweat glands in the body are concentrated on
 the underside of each foot."

The MDM at this point is thinking, “I didn’t know that…” Whenever you get an MDM saying those words to themselves, the release has done its job.

Then, finally, the product gets a mention.

"ClimaCool is a first-of-its-kind new athletic shoe technology that
dramatically reduces heat and humidity – up to 20 percent!  ClimaCool technology, created by adidas, allows air to circulate  around the foot and helps athletes shed excessive moisture that can lead  to blisters, fungus, overheating and…stinky feet." 

Okay, so ClimaCool is a shoe. But notice that before mentioning a company name, the writer explains what the show does for the person wearing it:

 “reduces heat and humidity – up to 20 percent!”

There’s definitely a sales pitch going on here…but notice the difference between this copy and so many others I’ve critiqued. The writer uses action verbs to tell the reader the benefits of wearing the shoe.

SO MANY news release writers use adjectives and “Advertising Speak” to describe what their product is. This one uses action verbs to describe what the product does for the person using it.

To me, the clincher is the tip list near the bottom of the page. This really shows that the writer has a lot of savvy.

Near the top, he/she stated the problem: sweaty feet hinder athletic performance. Now he/she gives some tips for solving the problem. These tips could easily be incorporated into a story about health and fitness by a medical reporter. A TV station, for instance, could show these tips as bullet points on a graphic.

Again, the writer has made the MDMs job easy by anticipating their needs. Doing that dramatically increases the chance of getting a story on the air or in print.

Medium Matching: It so happens that this particular release was part of a “VNR” or video news release from adidas’ PR firm. They included a satellite feed with video tape of people exercising while wearing the ClimaCool shoe. There was also a “sound bite” with a doctor talking about sweaty feet.

While this release was specifically targeted for TV, it could have also worked nicely for radio and print because it passed all the “tests.”

Perspective: This release was a good example of “selling the story, not the store” (see my ebook, Going Public, Chapter 1)

In other words, the release focused on information (the” story”) the audience would either need to know or want to know. The release did not focus on a new product (the “store”) being rolled out by a shoe company.

For an example of a release that focused on the product and the company, see the Magazine Rollout critique.