Trick or treat? In light of the holiday, we thought we’d share a truly scary, real-world PR scenario … but don’t get too spooked because we also have three solutions to help you navigate tricky situations like these. Enjoy!
Sunday morning I woke up to two emails buzzing on my phone. The first one from a great journalist who I just recently started working with; the second one, sent about 3 minutes after, from an angry and outraged client.
The journalist had emailed my client and CC’d me letting us both know about an unfortunate media mistake that had occurred. The day before, he had interviewed my client at a tradeshow and had written a sizable and glowing article in the daily tradeshow publication about a new technology that my client was introducing. What glorious coverage!
One problem—my client’s company name was wrong throughout the entire article and in the headline. In my experience, mistakes like this don’t happen all that often, but they do happen. It’s an unfortunate risk of doing public relations as opposed to placing an ad.
Below are three tips to help PR pros navigate this tricky situation while keeping both your journalist and client relationships on track:
How to Handle Mistakes and Keep Your Media and Client Relationships in Tact
1. Keep your cool and think through the consequences.
First and foremost, stay calm. Your client is already upset, so you jumping on the panic bandwagon will not help anyone. Second, think through the potential consequences of this unfortunate error. Was the article published anywhere else in print or online? How can it be corrected? How damaging is the mistake for your client?
2. Perspective and relationships.
You have two relationships to balance and keep in tact in a situation like this—the journalist and your PR client. Understand that it’s a bad day for you and your client, but it’s an even worse day for the journalist. Be understanding—journalists are humans too and humans with whom you still want to have a positive working relationship.
Reach out to the media member and suggest a few potential solutions—In addition to a correction, can the article be rerun correctly in a sister publication and online? Can the client be included in another article that the publication has in the works?
3. Pick up the phone and make it right.
Call your client. Put the media mistake in perspective and be empathetic—this isn’t the end of the world although it’s definitely unfortunate—and explain how the error is going to be corrected. Then get back in the saddle and get your client a couple more interviews.
Again, media mistakes don’t happen everyday and the ROI of media relations definitely outweighs these potential downfalls.
Have you or one of your clients been misquoted or misrepresented within the media space? How did you navigate that tricky situation?
