At the beginning of the project, it is worth preparing company information that will be universal and useful when sending any press release. A boilerplate and media contact are an absolute must-have for every press release. It is also worth preparing a backgrounder.Â
Boilerplate is a short, about 8-10 sentences, piece of information about the company. It is worth including the full company name, founding date, as well as the scope of activity – that is, what the company does and its achievements. This allows a journalist who is encountering the press materials of a company for the first time to quickly obtain the most important information. An important element of the boilerplate is also the organization’s website address. It is good to link it so the journalist can easily be redirected to the company’s website. The boilerplate is a permanent part of every press release and is placed at the end of the information. It is the last paragraph of the material, often omitted in publications by journalists. Remember to update the data, especially dates but also achievements.
Another permanent element of every press release is media contact, that is, contact details for the company’s media representative, the PR person, placed below the boilerplate. In case of questions, the journalist can easily contact the person dedicated to media relations. The footer should include the media representative’s full name, position, PR agency name if they are not an employee of the organization, email address, and phone number.
The longest and most detailed description of the company is backgrounder (background release). This is comprehensive information about the company, usually 1-2 pages long. The backgrounder provides the journalist with more details about the enterprise, its achievements, and activities than the boilerplate. It is essentially an expanded boilerplate with added details. Here, you can also describe the company’s history, achievements, and scope of activities. It is also worth adding information about the company’s mission, vision, and goals. In the backgrounder, you can present key company members, describing their positions and roles. The backgrounder is most often a separate document distributed to the media along with the press release, not part of it.
Author of the text: Ewelina J.
