Picture the scene.
Your client has paid for a survey of 2,000+ adults in the UK, about their eating habits. Everyone knows that with the dawn of the age of Jamie Oliver, and the “obesity epidemic” healthy eating is a GREAT angle, so you’re going to do a survey about family eating habits, and use it to plug your client’s new beverage. Marvellous.
Except the results come back, and they’re not that exciting. Half of the people surveyed said they found it hard to find time to cook healthy meals from scratch. That’s okay, I guess, if a bit obvious. Ooh, but what’s this? Nine out of ten parents say they sometimes use chilled or frozen meals, takeaways and prepared foods from supermarkets. That’s almost interesting. How can we pep it up a bit?
Got it. Why don’t we write a headline that says 90% of all family meals are takeaways? Blatantly, it’s not true, but it’s quite attention grabbing. Oh, and if we can forget that we surveyed any men and replace the word ‘respondents’ or ‘adults’ with the word ‘Mums’ throughout, that’ll make for better headlines. After all, everyone knows it’s a woman’s job to do the cooking and worry about family nutrition, right?
Brilliant. Then we’ll rope in a celebrity “Mum” to provide some top tips on how not to feed your kids takeaways 90% of the time, and we’re all set. Nothing at all questionable, patronising or sexist about this ‘story’, nosiree.
Some days, press releases make me feel sad inside.
