“So much of it’s just, here’s our latest news,” he complained. “I mean, how do you build story into an announcement that you’re offering some purely mechanical benefit, like adding contactless payments?”

“Start with conflict,” I said. I always say that.

“You always say that,” he said. “But where’s the conflict? We’re adding contactless payments to our app. It’s a benefit. We’re letting people know. It’s just information.”

“Where there are human beings involved, there is always a conflict somewhere,” I told him. “It’s your job to find it. More importantly, any outlet that picks up your press release will be looking for a conflict, too. Conflict drives engagement. If there is no conflict, there is no story—just more boring information.”

“But it’s important information.”

“Important to you. But it’s probably not important to your audience unless they have an immediate use for it. And even then, they may still find it boring. The brain is an—”

“An information filter and a story sponge. I know,” he grumped. “So how do you suggest I find conflict in a press release?”

“Start by taking the essence of the benefit and asking what possible problem it might pose.”

“Contactless pay is a solution—not a problem.”

“Think about it in human terms. Contactless. Is lack of contact a positive thing emotionally?”

“Hey,” he objected. “We’re not talking about depriving people of human contact!”

“But that’s the essence of the benefit, isn’t it? Contactless. Lack of contact. And while that’s good from an efficiency point of view, contact is an emotional experience some people might miss.”

“But how am I going to make the benefit attractive if I frame it like that?” he asked. “That sounds like a downer.”

“I’m not suggesting you frame it like that,” I pushed. “But people want both things. They want efficiency and convenience, but they know it can come at the cost of connection. Everybody struggles with that. People want progress, but they don’t want it to leave them feeling alone and isolated.”

“Ok. But in a press release? And how do you do it so it doesn’t sound like we’re creating a problem instead of offering a benefit?”

“The trick is to look at it as a struggle between two good things rather than a battle between a good thing and a bad thing,” I said. “And you’ll want to frame it in a way that’s consistent with your brand voice. Your brand personality is ‘your playful uncle,’ right?”

“Yup.”

“How old is your target audience?”

“Mostly Baby Boomers and GenXers,” he said.

“Ok, good. So, what if you thought of your contactless pay announcement as part of a humorous struggle between emotional connection and convenient progress and framed it in terms of someone who had a pop hit about that when your audience was growing up?”

“Uh?”

“Do you know who Rick Springfield is?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “Jesse’s Girl.”

“And Human Touch,” I added. “How about something like…”