Anatomy of a news release: BMO announces a survey on Good Friday

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      Media outlets discharge a vast sea of information from corporate and government news releases without providing context.

      To try to roll back the tide, I'm launching a media-literacy project called "anatomy of a news release". In bold-face type, you'll see comments that a crafty p.r. adviser might make to justify each sentence in a news release.

      The first deals with a chartered bank's attempt to persuade you to borrow money:

      April 22, 2011

      (Timed for Earth Day and Good Friday. On Earth Day, media outlets are starved for anything with an environmental theme. Good Friday offers the added benefit of low staffing in newsrooms—thus an even greater appetite for our press releases.)

      REPEAT-BMO Survey: 45 per cent of Canadians Plan to Make Energy Efficient Home Upgrades in 2011

      (Surveys are good—they make this stuff sound authoritative. Also, nobody will oppose energy-efficient home upgrades. Even those lefty journalists will gobble this up.)

      - 92 per cent of Canadians Recognize the Cost Advantages of Energy Efficient Home Upgrades and Nearly Half Plan to Make this Type of Investment in the Next Year

      (People will feel like doofuses if they're not part of the crowd. The expenditure is an "investment" so borrowing from us looks profitable. Capital letters magnify the importance of the message. It makes it seem like the Sermon on the Mount.)

      - 58 per cent Cite Financial Savings as the Main Reason for Making Eco-friendly Upgrades

      (Eco is a great word. Nobody in the media will point out that BMO played an instrumental role in getting BP to invest billions into the Alberta tar sands before that oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.)

      - Homeowners in Rural Communities are More Likely to Make Energy Efficient Home Improvements This Year Compared to Those Living in the Suburbs

      (Millions of people in the suburbs are completely fried by their mortgages. But if we spin it this way, they'll take the bait because they won't want to feel like losers compared to bumpkins in the country.)

      - BMO Decreases Eco Smart Mortgage(TM) Rate 25 bps to 3.89 per cent - Limited Time Offer

      (After setting the mood, go in for the kill with the sales pitch. A limited time offer will get people in the suburbs off their asses and into the branches. Call the loan an Eco Smart Mortgage(TM) and people won't feel quite as guilty when they put their families deeper into hock.)

      The Leger Marketing survey was completed on-line from Thursday, March 10th, 2011 to Monday, March 21st, 2011, using Leger Marketing's online panel, LegerWeb, with a sample of 1508 Canadians, 25-45 years old, who plan to buy a home in the next two years.

      (The online survey involved people 25 to 45 "who plan to buy a home in the next two years". But the top of the news release makes it seem like all existing homeowners plan to make these investments, including the old geezers. Here's the explanation: we kept geezers out of the survey because they're far less concerned about the environment than young people. If we had surveyed them, the results wouldn't have given us the numbers we needed to set up the sales pitch for our mortgages.)

      Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.

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