“Headless Body in Topless Bar!”
That got your attention, didn’t it?
It is not a lede, strictly speaking. It was the memorable headline for The New York Post’s classic 1983 article about a mob murder whose victim, sans head, was stashed in a gentlemen’s club in Manhattan. But whether it’s a hed or a lede, the point is the same: find ways to seize and hold the audience’s attention.
Here are some other memorable ledes:
“On September 3, 1965, in New York City, at 10:58 p.m., I was born dead.”
— Opening sentence in The Book of Sheen, Charlie Sheen’s autobiography
“My ex-husband was getting married to a woman I wanted to kill.”
— First sentence in Melancholy Baby by Robert B. Parker
“Upholstery has always been a reliable place to find loose change, after-dinner mints and paper clips. Recently, our utility searched around in upholstery and came up with a great idea.”
— Lede in Intake Magazine article, published by the Los Angeles
Department of Water & Power (LADWP)
These may seem random. They’re not. They’re great examples of the power of a clever headline (AKA, “hed”) or lead sentence (AKA “lede” among journalists) that takes hold of your attention, won’t let go, and compels you to keep reading.
As utility communicators, we need to invest time and thought in crafting great heds and ledes. No one will read your pitch to a reporter or your customer newsletter article if your hed or lede is meh or worse.
The hed and lede are like fishhooks that are inserted in a reader’s brain, one of my mentors, an editor with years of experience at the Financial Times, once told me. Like a well-baited fishhook, a memorable hed or lede catches the reader. Like a hooked fish, the reader is unable to escape your next paragraph, the following paragraph, the one after that, and so on.
That principle has migrated to other platforms. In TikTok, it’s called the “three second rule” — TikTok videos succeed or fail by whether they immediately grab their scroller’s attention. Instagram and other social media platforms follow the same rule, though apparently with less-addictive results. For decades, legacy media like TV and radio news have teased big stories to get their audience to stay with them through commercial breaks. The importance of a strong hed or lede transcends platforms.
This is all supremely important today because, as Chris Hayes writes in The Sirens Call, every waking moment we are bombarded by things that clamor for, indeed assault, our attention: Sights, sounds, and smells battle to capture a tiny piece of real estate in our head. That’s even before family and friends seek your attention. Could that be why so many of us are absolutely exhausted at the end of the day?
Your Mission: Create
Compelling Heds and Ledes
There are a lot of ways to gain and keep the attention of readers and viewers. Dry facts are not one of those ways.
Nothing will grab and hold the attention of a stakeholder — whether it’s a reporter, a customer, an investor, or a community leader — faster than a few well-chosen words at the start of your piece. Maybe it’s something unusual or visually out of place. Or it could be a moving description of a base human passion. Your goal is to hook your reader and command his or her attention for as long as it takes to finish your piece, whether they are reading a print version, scrolling through it on their phone or computer, or watching it on a TV news story.
Communications Top of the Month: Utility communicators need to invest time and thought in crafting great heds and ledes for their stories. No one will read your pitch to a reporter or your customer newsletter article if your hed or lede is meh or worse.
Colorful or unusual details draw in the reader. How, if Charlie Sheen was born dead, did he go on to star in “Wall Street,” “Platoon,” and “Two and a Half Men”? Why did the narrator in Melancholy Baby want to kill a woman she never met? And that headless body in topless bar — who put it there and how did they get in in?
“Hard” News vs. “Soft” Features
I do need to make a distinction between “hard” news and softer feature stories.
When you’re writing a hard news press release, such as on your utility’s earnings, its planned capital expenditures, or its acquisition of another firm, boring old Black & White is the name of the game. Facts and data, all the way. No clever heds or ledes about Doja Cat or a high school classmate who became a Broadway actor.
But this post concerns ways utility communicators can humanize their organization with eye-grabbing and attention-holding content, whether on TikTok, YouTube, in earned media, or stories in a customer newsletter. Those tend to have a softer focus.
First step: hooking a reporter. Start with color, the human angle, the unusual, the memorable. If you succeed and the reporter is still with you after the first few paragraphs, you can weave a few facts to buttress your lede.
Some Ideas
Here are a few thoughts about compelling ledes.
Compared to free-climbing mountains in Utah, teaching third graders at Winston Elementary School might seem like a snooze. But Jennifer Jones wouldn’t be teaching those nine-year-olds today if Sandy Wilson hadn’t seen Jennifer fall and provided CPR until a mountain rescue team helicoptered in.
Sandy, a marketing analyst with YouPowerCorp., learned CPR to qualify for a lifeguard job in high school.
or this:
The Williams family — James, John, Sarah, Kelly, and their cat Oreo — are alive to
because a YourPowerCompany employee spotted a fire on the family’s deck as he drove to breakfast last month.
The family was asleep at the time, but Jim Davis, a lineman with the utility, pounded on the front door, eventually awakening the family. After herding the family to the curb, Davis dialed 911. Within minutes, the fire spread from to the deck to the home, burning it to the ground despite the best efforts of fire fighters .
The family, shaken by their brush with death, thanked Davis for saving them.
Humanizing Your Brand
In today’s culture, driven as it is by social media, some might ask why utilities should bother trying to win favorable media coverage, particularly from “dying legacy media” like newspapers, TV, or radio.
The answer is simple, and we have made this point Several times: By proactively placing stories in the media that reflect well on their utility, utility media relations representatives are engaging in strategic risk management. Sooner or later, something will go wrong at your utility. Your reputation will be sullied. The public may reconsider its trust in you.
The public’s willingness to accept and forgive depends on their view about the utility: Do I trust them? Do I like them? Do they treat me well? If the answer is “yes,” half of your job is done. Thank your predecessors. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.
Utilities that enjoy a favorable public impression get extra grace from their stakeholders, which shortens their recovery time after a misstep. Like Noah and his ark, they took steps to prepare for an uncertain future before that future manifested itself. And as former president John Kennedy once said, “The best time to repair a roof is when the sun is shining.”
On the other hand, if the public feels your service has been sketchy or your price is too high, your utility’s road to recovery will be long and bumpy. For that, too, you can thank your predecessors.
Photo credits: iStock
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The Value of Storytelling in Your Utility´s
Annual Report
As a communications strategist and writer, I have been asked to develop real stories of people and places for the annual reports of many utility clients. I’ve realized, along with my clients, that showcasing the people (customers) and the places (community) that a utility serves can provide a valuable tool for effective communications.
Whether it is describing the journey of water from its source to a customer’s tap in a water report, or noting an employee’s accomplishments outside of their work at the electric utility, or a customer’s success in being an ambassador for a utility, stories like these help create great value among the utility’s stakeholders. Check these out:
- Delaware Municipal Electric Corporation (DEMEC)
- Central Municipal Power Agency and Services, MN
- City of Palo Alto Water Quality Report: Our Water, Our Future
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HELPFUL TIPS ON MEDIA RELATIONS
Should we engage in “spin” to tell our story?
Are headlines important in our press pieces?
Why do the human resource and legal departments have anything to do with media relations?
What is a “beat” system?
Check out the answers to these questions and more here!