CORPORATE BACKGROUNDER

This consists of an overview of your organisation and its products and services, and is specifically written for journalists who want to gain information about you quickly and easily. This could be for a feature they are putting together, in which they want to list examples of organisations involved in the topic concerned.

It must not be a sales document listing your products in a froth of ‘wonderfuls’ and ‘superbs’, unless you want to irritate the hell out of the journalist or editor (they don’t buy products, they buy stories – remember?). So the backgrounder is factual and informative, and written in a logical sort of order.

Start with a general overview of the organisation; for example, what it does, where it is based, how long it has been in business, how many people it employs (if the figure sounds impressive!), annual growth percentage (ditto) and so on. Then look at the market you are in – the sort of customer that buys your products, the size of the present demand, any statistics you may have about how fast the market is growing. Journalists love facts and figures about an industry. Finally detail your main products and services, pointing out any special or unique features about them without appearing to get over-excited about it.

Corporate backgrounders are also very useful for inclusion in press packs at exhibitions as well as in features work.