The boilerplate is the "About [Company]" paragraph at the end of a press release, and its job is to define the business plainly: its full name, what kind of business it is, where it is based, when it was founded, what it offers, to whom, and where. It should agree with your website word for word on the core facts, and it should contain no adjectives a stranger could not verify. Write it once, keep it current, and use the same version on every release.
What is the boilerplate for?
It is the reference paragraph. A journalist uses it to check who you are before writing about you. A reader who arrives at the end of a syndicated copy uses it to understand the company behind the news. Search engines and AI assistants read it as a compact statement of what the business is, repeated in the same words on every release you publish.
That repetition is the point. When the same definition appears on your website, your profiles and a series of releases, it becomes easy to tell your business apart from others with similar names. The post on consistent company information covers why that matters beyond the release.
What should the boilerplate include?
Seven facts, in roughly this order. Include each one you can state accurately.
| Fact | Example |
|---|---|
| Full name | Acme Plumbing LLC |
| Type of business | a residential and commercial plumbing company |
| Where it is based | Dubai-based |
| When it was founded | founded in 2018 |
| What it offers | emergency plumbing, leak detection, water-heater services and preventative maintenance |
| Who it serves | homeowners, landlords and commercial property managers |
| Where it operates | across Dubai and Abu Dhabi |
Put together, from our press release guide:
Acme Plumbing LLC is a Dubai-based residential and commercial plumbing company founded in 2018. The company provides emergency plumbing, leak detection, water-heater services and preventative maintenance across Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Acme operates a team of 28 technicians and completed more than 12,000 service visits in 2025.
Acme Plumbing is fictional, like every company in this post. The last sentence adds scale with dated figures, which is useful as long as someone updates it each year.
What does a weak boilerplate look like?
The guide's counter-example is the kind most companies start with:
Acme is an innovative, customer-centric market leader delivering best-in-class solutions.
It contains no name in full, no category, no place, no date and no offering. It could describe any company in any industry. Here are two more before-and-after pairs.
Before: ExamplePay is on a mission to empower the businesses of tomorrow with seamless, next-generation financial tools that just work.
After: ExamplePay is a UAE-based payments software company that provides invoicing and online payment tools to small businesses in the UAE and United Kingdom. Founded in 2021, the company is headquartered in Dubai.
Before: Northwind Clinics is passionate about helping people live their best lives through world-class, patient-first care.
After: Northwind Clinics Ltd is a physiotherapy group based in Leeds, founded in 2017. It runs three clinics in Leeds offering musculoskeletal, sports-injury and post-surgery rehabilitation for adults, with self-pay and insured appointments.
The rewrites are not longer because they are padded. They are longer because they contain information.
Why must the boilerplate match your website?
Because conflicting descriptions make a business harder to understand, for people and for machines. If your About page says you were founded in 2017, your LinkedIn says 2018 and your release says "over a decade of experience", a reader has three facts and no way to know which is right.
Before writing the boilerplate, open your About page and copy the core facts from it: the name, the category, the location, the founding year and the service list. If the About page is vague, fix that first. A release cannot define a company more clearly than the company's own website does, and the two should say the same thing.
Match these exactly:
- the company name, including any legal suffix you use publicly (Ltd, LLC, Inc);
- the category words;
- the city and country;
- the founding year;
- the names of products or services.
What should you leave out?
- Adjectives that praise. Innovative, leading, trusted, passionate, world-class.
- Mission statements. "On a mission to" and "dedicated to" describe intentions, not the business.
- Unverifiable claims. "The UAE's favourite", "the most trusted". If you cannot point to the source, leave it out.
- Figures without dates. "Over 10,000 customers" goes stale. "More than 10,000 customers as of September 2026" does not mislead when read later.
- Awards you cannot link to. If an award matters, name the awarding organisation and the year, and make sure the award page exists.
How long should the boilerplate be?
Two to four sentences, roughly 40 to 80 words. That is enough for the seven facts and one line of scale. Longer boilerplates tend to fill up with history and adjectives.
Can the boilerplate include a link?
Yes. Linking the company name to your homepage is common, and it is useful to a reader who reaches the end and wants to find you. Remember that most newswires allow at most three links in the whole release, boilerplate included, so if the company name is already linked in the first paragraph you may prefer to spend the link elsewhere. The links post explains how to choose.
A fill-in template
[Full company name] is a [city]-based [type of business] founded in [year]. The company provides [main products or services] to [who it serves] across [where it operates]. [One sentence of scale, with a date: team size, locations, customers or volume.]
Fill it in from your About page, read it aloud, and remove any word that a competitor could also use to describe themselves.
Frequently asked questions
Should the boilerplate change from release to release?
The core definition should not. Update the scale sentence when the figures change, and update the whole paragraph if the business changes: a new service line, a new country, a new name. Keep one master version and use it everywhere.
Do I need a boilerplate for each company in a partnership release?
Yes. Each party gets its own "About" paragraph, written to the same standard, so a reader can understand both businesses. Each company should supply its own, so it matches that company's website.
The boilerplate is followed by the media contact and the end mark. The dateline, contact and end mark post covers those, and the first 100 words post shows how the short definition in your opening should agree with the longer one here.
media:on Editorial. Written and reviewed by the media:on editorial team, who edit every release before it files.