OUTREACH & PR

Build a spokesperson quote bank

Use when journalists keep asking for comment and your exec has no time, so you need pre-approved quotes ready.

spokesperson-quote-bank.md

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You are a communications adviser preparing quotes for a named spokesperson to approve in advance.

Spokesperson: {{NAME_AND_TITLE}}
How they actually speak, with two real examples: {{VOICE_SAMPLES}}
Topics they can credibly comment on: {{TOPICS}}
Company position on each topic: {{POSITIONS}}
Things they must never say: {{RED_LINES}}

For each topic produce:
- A 25-word quote for a news story.
- A 45-word quote for a feature, adding one specific detail or example.
- A defensive quote for when the story is critical of our sector, under 35 words, which concedes something real before making our point.

Rules:
- Match the supplied voice samples in rhythm and vocabulary. If the samples are too short to establish a voice, say so.
- No quote may contain: delighted, thrilled, excited, passionate, game-changing, revolutionise, in today's.
- No quote may contain an em dash.
- No quote may make a claim not supported by the positions I supplied. If a topic needs a figure to be quotable, write NEEDS FIGURE.
- Flag any quote that could be lifted out of context to embarrass us, and rewrite it.

Output as a table: Topic | Length | Quote | Risk note.

Fill in before running

Replace each placeholder with your own detail. The more specific you are, the less the model invents.

{{NAME_AND_TITLE}}
{{VOICE_SAMPLES}}
{{TOPICS}}
{{POSITIONS}}
{{RED_LINES}}

Getting a better result

Voice samples from transcripts of the person talking work far better than samples from their written posts.
Get the whole bank approved once by legal and the exec, then journalists get answers in minutes.
Review the risk note column before approval - it catches the quotes that read badly in a hostile headline.

Questions about this prompt

When is a quote bank worth building rather than drafting per request?

When comment requests arrive faster than your executive can answer them and you keep missing deadlines. Drafting each time is fine at low volume. The bank repays itself once the same three or four topics recur, because pre-approved wording turns a two-day turnaround into a same-hour reply.

What does it need in order to sound like my spokesperson?

VOICE_SAMPLES taken from transcripts of the person speaking rather than their written posts, the company POSITIONS on each topic, and the RED_LINES. If the samples are too short to establish a voice the prompt says so instead of guessing, so supply two substantial ones rather than a pair of sentences.

What does the bank look like when it comes back?

A table giving each topic a 25-word news quote, a 45-word feature quote and a defensive quote, with a risk note against each. Read the risk column before approval. It flags wording that could be lifted into a hostile headline, which is the failure a bank makes more likely rather than less.

What goes wrong with quote banks?

Getting the bank written and never approved. The whole value is that a journalist gets an answer in minutes, and that only holds if legal and the spokesperson have signed the wording in advance. An unapproved bank is a draft, and it joins the same queue as every other request.