Hotel chain hires the Sandman and other poor PR

Here's a press release several of the team received yesterday from a big UK hotel chain's PR firm:

Leigh McCarron, XXX Sleep Director said: “As a retailer of sleep, we are constantly investigating innovative ways, on how we can help our customers attain a good night’s sleep."

This is a truly, truly awful press release. Can I really buy sleep? Why say attain when you mean 'get'?

That said, this isn't the worst press release we've seen this week. Hot on the heels of the hotel release came this gem:

 8 Tips to Help Your Child with SATs tests This May

Wow. Random capitalisation and a grammatical error in one headline. Impressive. The icing on the cake, though, was this release, which came via Sourcewire:

An innocent 48 year old Disabled Ex Serviceman has been labled as a conman and a crook by the MHRA for exposing the UK Labour Health Minister in the Cover-up of a natural cure for cancer ...   Keith XXX Solicitor Manchester 0161 XXX XXXX stated his client Andrew XXX should be given a Noble Prize Award for his efforts...

I'd love to get a Noble Prize Award, too, but I'm not sure about being labled.

Okay, so trying to be constructive here for those who can't quite see a problem in charging clients to send out this nonsense:

• First - don't capitalise job titles, especially not silly made up job titles
• Second - if your client runs hotels, they are not a "retailer of sleep", are they?
• Third - when using terms like SATs check what the acronym stands for 
• Fourth - don't make grammatical or spelling errors. It's Nobel not Noble, and companies investigate ways of helping customers, not on
• Finally - proof. The chances are the people who wrote these releases know all of the above, but just didn't proof read carefully enough before hitting 'Submit'
  

Comments

[niyah]

This is a good example of how easily mistakes can be made. As an aspiring PR practitioner I feel that I am supposed to have impeccable grammar and even better writing skills, but I don’t. I am constantly looking up the correct way to write titles and words in my AP stylebook and I find myself avoiding better ways of explaining myself because I am not sure about it grammatically. I think it’s because I am so afraid to make what seem like an obvious mistakes like the “of and not on” error in the press release. Sometimes I’ll proof read an assignment a few times and it will still come back with red marks all over. So I am wondering how do you do it? What are some tips on improving one’s writing skills and what are some good tips on proof reading, if you’d like to share. Thanks.