Anyone in the media would have worked with or at least heard of Prue Bassett Publicity at one time or another.

Over the past month we’ve had the pleasure of working with Prue on a couple of detailed press releases for international events coming to town: the Men’s Hockey Champions Trophy in 2009 and the 2008 Melbourne Jazz Festival.

Having read literally thousands of press releases over the years for our work as freelance journalists, we’ve drawn our own conclusions on what works and what doesn’t. Most importantly, the best press releases are never admired as great pieces of writing – the best press releases are those that inspire action from the media.

Of course these two major events will hardly need much of a push, but it was still a thrill to work with a master of the media like Prue to get these documents just right.

Recently we’ve been writing for Mortgage Broker Melbourne, a small business run by Marc Barlow. Marc had decided that he needed some new copywriting to suit his shiny new style.

Re-branding can be a complete overhaul or just a tweak, depending on what is required. In this case it was a case of fine tuning. Or finessing. Some people like to say they massaged the content, but we’re just not comfortable saying we offer that service.

In any case MBM’s text now suits their new brand across its tags, web content and brochure copy. Something new for us was writing an automated email response for MBM, so that when prospective customers visit the site and register an interest, they receive a personalised introduction from Marc.

Good luck with the new look, Marc. And if anyone is interested in a new mortgage, Marc is a lot nicer to deal with than banks...