Try writing a press release without these 10 words

Robin Wauters at TechCrunch let loose this weekend with a list of "10 Words I Would Love To See Banned From Press Releases." The rundown:

1. Leading/leader
2. Best/most/fastest/largest/biggest/etc.
3. Innovative/innovation
4. Revolutionary
5. Award-winning
6. Disruptive/disruption
7. Cutting/bleeding-edge
8. Next-generation
9. Strategic partnership
10. Synergy

I have to admit that I've used almost every one of these words in at least one press release since I started in PR.*

Wauters' points about these terms are mostly spot-on: if you have to say outright that your client is a cutting-edge, innovative, bleeding-edge leader in their industry, you probaby have not done a good enough job legitimately demonstrating what makes them so. Award-winning matters to no one other than the company that won the award. Disruptions and revolutions are presumptuous to predict in advance, and next-generation is usually just a self-aggrandizing way of saying new.

So why do companies and their agencies keep using these words in press releases? I think it's often a combination of two factors:

1. They're writing a release about something that doesn't really warrant one.
   If you've got truly interesting, head-turning, game-changing news, it should be easy to write about it without resorting to meaningless hype phrases. If it's difficult to communicate the importance of your news without these words, it's probably not incredibly newsworthy - at least, not to the mainstream media. It could still be newsworthy to customers, investors, or a small group of trade journalists... why not make the announcement through a blog post, newsletter, or personalized pitch instead?
2. They're trying to justify having written a release by overstating the importance of the announcement.
   Some companies just plain want to issue a press release, whether for better search engine optimization, for beefing up the "press" section of their website, or just for making the CEO smile. These are all perfectly acceptable reasons to put out a release, for some companies... but for some in this situation, there is a pressing need to rationalize the time it's taken them to write, revise, and get approval on a press release, and the cost of distributing it. What's so wrong with just sharing the facts? If you're uncomfortable putting out minor announcements without calling them "revolutionary," you'll risk diluting the impact of your more noteworthy announcements by earning a reputation with journalists as The Agency Who Cried Innovation.

* The one I've never used is "synergy." Do people really do that?