Copied from last quarter's release
An executive drafts a release for a software client by opening the previous one and replacing the middle. The boilerplate at the bottom says the company employs more than 200 people and has offices in three countries. That was true in the spring. It now has a fourth office, and the head count wording is something the client asked to stop using. The CTO quote in the draft is a reworked version of one he approved for a different announcement.
The client's marketing manager catches the boilerplate in review. Nobody catches that the CTO's job title changed last month. The release goes to 150 journalists with the old title, and the CTO asks why the agency does not know what he is called.
How out-of-date text survives
- The last release is the fastest template, so its errors are copied forward.
- Clients update their boilerplate on their website but do not tell the agency.
- Spokesperson titles change with promotions and reorganisations.
- Standard facts, such as founding year, customer counts or locations, drift between releases.
- Quotes approved once for one context get reused in another without approval.
Clients also have rules the agency learns slowly: words they never use, a trading name that must appear in full, a product name that needs a trademark symbol. Those live in someone's head or an email from last year.
Small errors, public consequences
A wrong title or stale fact in a release is repeated by every journalist who uses it. Correcting it means emailing everyone again and hoping syndication catches up. Clients notice, and it chips at trust in the agency's care. The review cycle also gets longer, because clients learn they have to check every line.
How we build the approved text library
- For each client we hold the standard text in one place: current boilerplate, spokesperson names and titles, approved standard facts, house style rules and banned terms.
- Each item has an owner on the client side, the date it was last confirmed, and a review date after which it is marked as needing a check.
- Approved quotes are stored with the release and context they were approved for, so reusing one elsewhere prompts a fresh approval.
- New drafts start from a template that pulls the current boilerplate and titles in automatically.
- A check runs on any draft, looking for old boilerplate versions, outdated titles, banned terms and stale facts, and lists them with the current approved text beside each one.
- When an item reaches its review date, the owner gets a short email asking them to confirm or update it, and the answer updates the library.
| Library item | Checked for |
|---|---|
| Boilerplate | Older versions still in the draft |
| Spokesperson titles | Titles that have changed |
| Standard facts | Figures or locations that differ from the approved version |
| House style | Banned terms, trading names, trademark marks |
| Approved quotes | Reuse outside the context they were approved for |
Drafting with the library in place
The executive starts a new release from the client template. The boilerplate and titles at the bottom are the current ones. She pastes in a paragraph from an old release and the check flags the office count as out of date and the CTO title as changed, with the current wording to swap in. The CTO quote she wants to reuse is marked as approved for a different announcement, so she sends it to him for a quick yes.
Clients start reviewing releases for substance instead of hunting for errors in the small print.
Are these familiar?
- New releases start by copying the last one.
- Clients correct the boilerplate in review.
- A spokesperson's title has been wrong in a release.
- Quotes are reused without fresh approval.
- House style rules live in old emails.