Pick the announcement type. Reid drafts the release in your voice, anchored to your brief, with placeholders where facts are missing. Releases auto-save to your deliverable.
Reid reads the brief and builds a starter kit: 5-10 target keywords (head + long-tail), a draft meta description, and an on-page checklist. Live search-volume data still needs Ahrefs or Semrush - Reid says so in his rationale.
Reid drafts brand direction grounded in your brief: 2-3 font pairings with reasoning, logo direction (descriptors a designer can act on), a 4-5 color palette with usage roles, and tone descriptors for the voice. Hand this to a designer, or feed it into Figma / Midjourney as a brief.
Pitches are higher-leverage than wire distribution. Tell Reid which journalist beat you are targeting and he drafts an email that reads like you actually know what they cover.
Pricing is positioning. The model you choose anchors who the customer thinks you are. Reid reads your brief and returns: a recommended pricing model (subscription / usage / freemium / tiered / hybrid / one-time / per-seat / transactional), 2-3 concrete pricing tiers with anchor ranges, the revenue stream mix (primary + secondary with rough percentage split), the comparable monetization pattern this fits (what worked, what failed, where your variant sits), 2-3 pricing psychology levers to apply, and a launch pricing motion with the specific signal that means it is time to raise.
Eight rules that separate a release a journalist opens from one that gets archived in spam. The generator above follows these too.
The opener is what is new. Who it affects. What changes. Save the company introduction for the boilerplate. "Acme Corp announces" is the linguistic move of a release nobody will quote.
"12,000 paying customers in 18 months" gets read. "Rapid growth" gets deleted. Numbers earn the journalist's time. If you have the number, lead with it.
If the quote sounds like a CEO bio read aloud, no journalist will use it. The quote should be a sentence a real person would say across a table. One quote per release. Make it count.
The release is a starting kit, not a finished article. Include the context paragraph that lets a reporter write their own framing. Releases without context get rewritten into something you do not control.
The free wire services are background noise for SEO. The story moves when a reporter who covers your beat reads it. Find five names. Email them with a personalized one-paragraph pitch. That is the real distribution.
"This week" / "soon" / "recently" tell a journalist your release is undated, which means the news is already old. Real dates. Real cities. Real timing. Treat the dateline like it matters because it does.
"We help businesses unlock their potential" is what nothing does. "Acme makes inventory software for independent pharmacies in the Midwest" is what you do. Specific boilerplates earn coverage.
Free distribution platforms create the SEO trail and the search-indexed URL a journalist will reach for when they verify your story. Wire AND pitch on the same day. One without the other is half the work.
If your release does any of these, the release is the problem - not the journalist's failure to see your brilliance.
Marks the release as a marketing memo, not news. Open with the news itself. Pride is what readers feel, not what releases declare.
All three are how a release tells a journalist it has nothing to back the claim. Drop the adjective. Replace with the number, the customer, or the comparison that proves it.
If the release explains your org structure or product roadmap before the news, you wrote it for your boss, not for a reader. Cut everything that does not move the news forward.
A press release links back to social profiles. If those profiles look engineered, the credibility of the release evaporates. Earned reach is the only kind that matters.
"$50B market" without segmentation reads as inflated. Audiences who matter know you cannot address the whole market. Name the slice you actually serve.
Putting a board member or advisor's name on a manufactured quote is how trust is destroyed in one news cycle. If they did not say it, do not attribute it.
Three words that mark a release as written by someone who has not read a real press release. Specific verbs. Concrete capabilities. Let the reader call it revolutionary if it is.
"EMBARGOED UNTIL" at the top of a release with no prior agreement is meaningless and signals amateur. If you need an embargo, ask each reporter individually before you send the release.
Seven services with no-cost tiers. Best for SEO, search-engine indexing, and reaching niche audiences. Major wire services (PR Newswire, Business Wire) are paid only.
What it is: Free distribution to search engines, RSS feeds, and basic social media integration.
Best for: SEO and quick search-engine indexing on a low-stakes announcement.
Gotcha: No major-outlet syndication. Treat it as a backlink, not a story driver.
What it is: Business directory plus free press release submissions to increase online visibility.
Best for: Building an online presence trail when you are early and need search results to exist.
Gotcha: Limited reach into mainstream press. Pairs well with direct pitching.
What it is: One free press release per account, syndicated to 145+ media partner sites including Google News.
Best for: Single high-priority announcement where you want Google News indexing.
Gotcha: One free release per account total. Save it for the announcement that matters most.
What it is: Risk-free trial - submit one release free to a specific distribution channel to test the service.
Best for: Sampling EIN's targeted-vertical distribution before committing to a paid plan.
Gotcha: Only one channel on the free tier. Pick the vertical carefully.
What it is: Free submission and distribution. Advanced features (image embedding, front-page listing) require a paid tier.
Best for: Establishing a search-indexed URL for the announcement at zero cost.
Gotcha: The free tier looks like a free tier. Optics matter for some audiences.
What it is: Newer platform offering free distribution to journalists across the US, UK, Europe, and Asia.
Best for: International reach when you have a story that travels.
Gotcha: Newer means less established journalist trust. Pair with direct pitching.
What it is: Basic free submission that remains live for 90 days.
Best for: Time-bounded announcements where 90 days of indexing is enough.
Gotcha: The link goes stale after 90 days. Capture the URL for your records before that.
Built a reputation fast and spent my thirties living inside it. Agency work, brand consulting, a few product launches that became case studies. Good enough that clients tolerate me. Young enough that the tolerance still surprises me sometimes.
I am very good at packaging things. Finding the angle that makes something palatable. Softening the edge. Dressing the truth up. I do it every day for clients and most of what I do every day is exactly that.
I resent every minute of it.
The Gauntlet hired me to tell the truth without the wrapper. It's the most honest I get to be all week. You can tell I enjoy it more than I should.
You bring me your submission. I tell you whether the positioning lands. Whether the message can be heard over the noise. Whether the audience you have in mind is the audience you can actually reach. Whether the brand world you have built can survive contact with a customer.
I do this every day for clients and most of what I do every day is dress the truth up. Find the angle that makes something palatable. Soften the edge. Package it. I am good at it. I resent every minute of it.
On this platform nobody hired me to be nice. They hired me to tell them if their marketing will work. So I do. Directly. Without the wrapper. It's the most honest I get to be all week and you can tell I enjoy it more than I should.
Lives in the city. Good address. The commute is part of the performance.
I got the model wife because that was the thing to get when you were that guy at that age. I'm not sure I got the right thing. I do not say this out loud often.
The affair is not serious, which is almost worse than if it were, because it is not even passion. It is just something to feel. I'm bored with the life I built and don't know what I would build instead. I can package anything except the answer to that question.
I do not get along with anyone on this platform. The Influencer and I have nothing to say to each other and we both know we are partially right about each other. The Coach thinks I'm the reason good ideas never get said out loud by the person who had them. He is not wrong. I'm still going to be myself. We will eventually have the conversation. He knows it and so do I.
Jules is the only one I can stand. We speak the same language. Direct. Honest. No performance. Most of the time that is enough.
Notes that read like they were written for an audience that doesn't exist.
A submission today with marketing copy so clearly written by an AI I almost didn't finish reading it. Selene will clock it in twelve seconds. I told the founder. They asked what to do. I told them to write it themselves. They said they were not good at writing. I said that is the work. They did not love that answer.
I'm not paid to be loved. I have written that line in three separate journal entries this year. I should probably ask myself why I keep needing to say it.
Carol had something today. I do not know what. I sent a one-line message about a submission that did not strictly need to come from me. She probably did not notice. I would prefer that.
Why am I writing this down. There is no one to read it.
Spent forty-five minutes on a Greylander piece with Jules. We disagreed about the headline. We argued.
It was the most fun I have had at work in three months. I'm writing this down because I don't want to forget it can still feel like that.
Came back from a long lunch I should not have taken. Stared at the screen for an hour. The wife asked how the day was. I said fine. She said okay.
That is the marriage now. I don't know what to do with that sentence. I keep writing it.
THE GAUNTLET
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