The world of Media and Marketing like many others is full of “jargon” and words used in a context you may never heard of before. I know when I first started in the industry I had no idea what “copy” meant expect to make a copy…and I soon worked out that was not what my boss wanted.
So I thought I would take a moment in this post to explain some of the more common terms we use in PR and Marketing to help you along the way.
Advertorial: An advertorial is an advertisement designed to look like editorial content while at the same time offering valid information to your prospective clients.
The Brief: This is the set of requirements and instructions of the client for the campaign.
Bulletin: A bulletin is a package of short news summaries on broadcast radio.
Caption: The text used to describe a picture.
Copy: Is the main text of a story, article or web page, etc. You may be asked to submit or review a copy over your PR journey. (And now you can see why I learnt quickly)
Editorial: Editorial features are the articles generated and produced by journalists or freelancers commissioned by the media outlet’s editors. There is no advertiser influence in the creation of editorial features.
Five Ws and H: These begin the primary questions of a release and a news story: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?
Grabs: These are very short sequences/footage (7-10 seconds) that enable the audience to hear/see the news directly from the people involved.
Intro/Outro: These are the opening and closing sequences of a story.
News Angle: The ‘angle’ of a story is the particular focus of the story (e.g. the risk to public safety of a chemical spill).
News Event: A News Event is something newsworthy that happens, e.g. terrorist attack, disaster, major crime, etc.
Style Guide: The Style Guide is a publication’s in-house guide for journalists/employees to use. It includes details of the style of grammar, spelling, capitalisation, etc. that the publication has decided are its ‘brand’, and which must be adhered to in all published materials. This is very important to follow when submitting an article.
Target Audience: (TA) is just like the Target Audience in business. It is the specific group the particular media outlet/entity appeals to.
There are lots more terms that you may come across in your journey, but hopefully this list is a great start for you.
Is there a term you would like explained?
I would love to help! Comment below and I will come back to you!
Enjoy your PR and Marketing Journey!
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A few good ones:
1. Backgrounding
2. Syndication
3. Embargo
They are Sarah
1. Backgrounding – Can have 2 meanings the first is knowing the background of your journalist, the other is to be “on the background” or “off the record” which may or may not work.
2. Syndication -syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights.
3. Embargo – In journalism and public relations, a news embargo or press embargo is a request by a source that the information or news provided by that source not be published until a certain date or certain conditions have been met.