Q1’s Most Cringe Press Releases
Author
Kevin Dulaney
Leadership
04.25.2025
No one wants to be seen as cringeworthy. And yet, every day thousands of press releases go out into the world that are the epitome of cringe. You know the press releases we’re talking about. The ones stuffed with corporate terms, industry jargon, and hyperbole that, somehow, they say so much while communicating absolutely nothing.
Not everyone has a coworker or leader who can right these wrongs and avoid the cringe. So, we created a tool to solve it. Our Cringe-O-Meter is a ChatGPT tool that helps PR pros confidently create press releases that don’t make readers cringe. Marketers simply feed the tool their press release and the Cringe-O-Meter analyzes the content to return a cringe score” from 1-10. The tool also gives users editorial recommendations to improve their writing and, thus, avoid being cringe in the future.
The tool has been featured in PRWeek and has been used 624 times by communications pros worldwide all looking to avoid being the out-of-touch brand. To commemorate the inaugural quarter of the Cringe-O-Meter, we’ve analyzed over 5,300 press releases for the most cringe results from 2025 Q1.
Warning: The results below may result in eyerolls, audible gaps, and/or internal reckonings.
Q1’s Cringiest Offenders
The cringiest sector of FY25 Q1 might surprise you. The sector with the most cringe this quarter went to the Sustainability sector with an average Cringe Score of 8.0. Turns out, saving the planet doesn’t save you from bad PR. These releases were often hard to read, unnecessarily long, and lacked a clear tone.
The industry with the most cringe in Q1 was Gaming, with an average Cringe Score of 6.0. For a fast-paced industry, the releases we saw were far longer than they needed to be and riddled with hyperbole. Although one thing is consistent – this industry takes gambles on everything from products to press releases.
The Ones That Did Too Much
Then there were the releases that did so much while simultaneously doing so little. The award for the releases with the most hyperboles easily goes to Banking and Insurance. We’re all for hyping up achievements, but there are only so many times you can call financial services and products “groundbreaking” and “extraordinary.” Not every minor feature update is a “world-changing innovation.”
Often, less is more. No one should take that advice more seriously than the Hardware and Electronics sector, which ranks highest for excessive wordiness in press releases—essentially being long-winded without clear justification. Brevity is a useful skill. If your press release is longer than the script of Oppenheimer, it’s too much.
And The Ones That Didn’t Do Enough
On the opposite side of the spectrum were releases that seemingly didn’t expect they would ever be read by other humans. While many press releases become cringe because they feel unhuman and overly professional, attention to detail is still incredibly important.
Hardware and electronics, in all their word vomit, led the charge in grammar mishaps. If you have a novel’s worth of words in your release, the least you can do is make sure your grammar and language is correct. Spellcheck is free, please use it.
To little surprise, the industry with the worst tone also took the prize for most unreadable content. And the winner is: Banking and Insurance – a multifaceted cringe leader, as our analysis seems to indicate. These releases were somewhere between corporate robot and overly dramatic. They completely missed any sort of human tone that would make a reader care about the news they’re relaying. The releases were so dense, they felt like loan agreements (and hey, maybe they were, we stopped reading). Releases are meant to be read, otherwise your news won’t get disseminated in the way you intended. Make sure they’re something people would want to read.
How To Avoid Cringe Press Releases in Q2
So, how do you avoid being on this list in Q2? Don’t be cringe. But really, the concept of being cringe isn’t just a trend. It’s rooted in how press releases impact your overall promotional strategy, how you can capture attention, and how you can relay your news while being mindful of where it fits in the world.
In more tactical language, here’s how to avoid being cringe:
✍️ Write like a human. Seriously, don’t make it weird. Ask yourself if the average reader or your target audience would understand what you’re saying. Not everything needs to be in corporate jargon or legalese.
🔍 Keep it clear. Get to the point of what you’re trying to say. Don’t skirt around the details, explain them. If something is too hard to explain or off-limits, don’t include it. Obfuscation helps no one.
🎭 Drop the drama. We’re sure your relatives back home think your new product is “revolutionary,” but let’s be real. Allow your actual features and news to be the star of the show instead of a bunch of useless hyperboles that everyone can see past.
🚀 Be better next month. Make a cringe misstep? Shake it off and start again. We’ve all written an overly corporate, unnecessarily long press release. Learn what doesn’t work and iterate next time.
Need help learning how to iterate? Try running your past press releases through our Cringe-O-Meter to learn how your content stacks up and identify common issues, or consider running your next release through the GPT to avoid mistakes.