Cardline
Account
Articles
|
Cardline Stylebook
Guidelines and briefs checklist
- When writing a brief, the first thing to do is to find a press release for the original announcement. Google key words from the announcement and the word "release", or check the original company website. You can also call the company itself and ask for a copy of the release. Quote the release rather than a newspaper article, unless the newspaper has something particularly unique and interesting. Save the release in the Dabble database.
- Get a quote from someone. Either a company spokesman or executive (preferably an executive), or an analyst, or someone from a related company. When speaking to someone from the company, first ask them to confirm the information in the release. Here are some questions to ask in an interview (which should take 15-20 minutes):
- Why did they make the announcement?
- How does the announcement benefit them? Benefit their partners? Benefit their customers?
- How is the announcement different from other, similar projects?
- What is the current status of the announcement? (Did the already start the project? If not, when will they start?)
- Don't forget to confirm the spelling of their name twice, as well as title, full company name and quarters, company size (by revenues or assets), number of employees, and their phone number, email address, and website.
- Save the transcript of the interview in the Dabble database.
- If you can't get a quote, get a report. You can get the company's latest annual report from their website, and quote interesting statistics or promises from it. You can get a government report about the growth of their industry, or new regulations affecting the industry. You can get analyst reports or research reports. Google for the word "report" or "analyst" and the company name.
- You MUST have at least two different sources in every brief. If one of the sources is another publication, do everything possible to find alternate sourcing or confirmation for the information.
- If the brief mentions a credit card, find out if it's a MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, or China Unionpay.
- If the brief mentions a bank, find out the bank's total assets, and how many credit and debit cards they have in circulation.
- Calculating percents with rounded numbers: calculate the percent first from the raw numbers, then round.
- If the brief is about credit cards or debit cards in a particular country, find out how many of those cards total there are in circulation.
- If the brief is about growth, get the current statistics and the statistics for the previous year. Double check the percentage increase. Percent increase = (current year - last year) / last year.
- If the brief is about India, double check all numbers. An Indian lakh (or lac) is 100,000. An Indian crore is 10 million.
- If the brief is about smart cards, find out the following information:
- Is the smart card being used, or will be used, for payment?
- Is the smart card contact or contactless, or both (dual interface)?
- Does the smart card conform to the international EMV standard, which protects against fraud? (in most cases, this will be yes.)
- If the smart card is contactless, what specification does it conform to: Visa (Wave)? MasterCard (PayPass)? Felica (mostly found in Japan)? Something else? Unless you are talking about Japan, in most cases the answer will be Visa or MasterCard.
- Will the smart card run only a payment application? Or will have it have other applications: Building or computer access, for instance, or ID?
- Who makes the chip? Who makes the card?
- For every company mentioned, find out its full corporate name and the city in which it is headquartered.Also get the size of the company -- if it's a bank, get total assets. For other companies, you can use total revenues or total number of employees. Indicate how recent the information is. Some company names are confusing -- you might have to check legal filing for the full corporate name. China Unionpay is spelled two different ways in their materials -- CardLine policy is not to capitalize the middle "p".
- Now write a brief, between 150 and 250 words, that answers the questions who, what, where, when, why, and how. Make sure that every sentence is sourced -- either "according to the company" if the information came from a press release or company website, or "according to the company spokesman" or "Joe Smith tells CardLine Asia-Pacific" or "Joe Smith told the Times." Every single fact and quote must be sourced, every sentence must be original.
- After you write the brief, go through the following checklist:
- Confirm that every sentence is original writing.
- The full name of our publication is "CardLine Asia-Pacific." Note that the "L" in "CardLine" is uppercase.
- Include the US dollar amounts for all mentions of money, like this: 80 yuan (US$10). You can use xe.com to translate currencies. Except for US$, HK$, A$ and NZ$, all currency names are spelled out. Currency names like "yuan" are lower-case.
- If the brief mentions a new technology or product, briefly explain how it works.
- If the brief uses the word "solution" or uses other technology jargon, take it out.
- If the brief says that something is the best and that customers love it (unless it's an actual quote from a customers), it's probably a lie. Rephrase without the marketing hype. If they want an ad, they can pay for it.
- If you talk to a PR person or marketing or communications manager don't include their name in the brief. Just say "company spokesperson tells CardLine Asia-Pacific." Note the present tense of the word "tells." The words "said," "says," "told" and "tells" are preferable to any other synonym.
- In general, use simple, straightforward language. Take out words that don't add any meaning to the brief.
- If you don't completely understand what something means, rewrite it so that it makes sense. Rule of thumb: will your mother understand it?
- If you have a live interview, use the quote near the top of the brief, in the second or third sentence. Put quotes from press releases, other newspapers further down.
- Use the "%" symbol rather than the word "percent."
- If the story mentions a company announcement, get a copy of the press release from the company, or direct confirmation of the announcement, so that we don't have to quote a paper.
- Check again that every fact and quote is attributed to a particular company (if from a press release or company website) or agency or research firm or publication.
- Check the word length -- must be at least 150 words, not more than 250 words.
- Run a spell check and a grammar check.
- Double-check spelling of names, double-check all numbers.
|
|
Trombly Ltd. Corporate Brochure
Download our corporate brochure for more fast facts about us, our clients, our solutions and our results.
|
