A Panoply of Information
Friday, April 10th, 2009

Exercising a haughty vocabulary – particularly in a sales piece – can be a risky move for a copywriter. I don’t know about you, but if I was writing promotional copy for a book touting effective communication with employees, I don’t think I’d use the word “panoply” in the opening sentence. PR News dropped me a line with an e-cycle today that utilized this hook. I’ve pasted the opening paragraph below. Notice the semicolon and yet another vocabulary stretch, “foolhardy”. The person who wrote this is trying to tell readers something – and I think it’s that they are more intelligent than us. Or maybe that know how to use a thesaurus. But that does that make you want to purchase the book?

“In PR News’ inaugural Employee Communications Guidebook, we offer a full panoply of information that can improve your skills for many scenarios. Whether it’s recruiting and retaining talent or greening the workplace, this Guidebook will hone your understanding on how you can craft and ensure effective messaging to employees; it will also give you the resources you need to streamline all channels of internal communications. Putting employee communications on the backburner during this challenging period is not only foolhardy but a serious misstep that can have damaging repercussions from which your company, agency or association may never fully recover.”

Tags: Business