A quote lock is an agreement with a source (executive, expert, client) on the exact wording of a quote that will be attributed to them in coverage, negotiated and approved before the pitch goes to press. The PR professional and source settle on precise language that serves both the story (it's newsworthy and quotable) and the client (it says what they need to say).
Quote locks are a staple of professional media relations, especially when placing executives in major publications. A CFO preparing for a WSJ profile will typically have their PR team and the company's legal counsel review and approve proposed quotes in advance. The risk of an executive being misquoted or quoted out of context is too high to leave it to chance.
The mechanics vary. Sometimes the PR professional proposes language and the source approves it. Sometimes the source proposes language and the PR professional ensures it's on-message. Either way, the quote goes into the pitch ready to use, reducing friction in the reporting process and improving the likelihood that the exact approved language appears in print.
In the AI era, quote precision affects how AI engines extract entity information. A carefully crafted, on-message quote that appears in Tier-1 coverage retrieves as a high-credibility entity description. A rambling or off-message quote from the same publication retrieves as lower-credibility. Quote locks are a direct input to Citation Share quality.
