Owning It
Remember when Edelman screwed up and I called ‘em on it? Remember when Racepoint screwed up and I called ‘em on it? During that more recent episode, I predicted that we’d screw up at some point, too, and, “when (not if) that happens, all I can promise is that I’ll acknowledge it here, ASAP, and share the lessons learned.”
Welcome to my “we screwed up” post! It’s even got a screencap!
SHIFT was one of 5 other firms outed for some blogger relations gaffes, in Marshall Kirkpatrick’s blog. Here was our entry:
(I’ve redacted Margaret’s name cuz I see no reason to mess with what is assuredly a bright career in PR. It’s a rare and terrible thing to be called out publicly like this, especially when you’re a twenty-something who simply messed up while trying to do the right thing. Just one more peril we face as we engage in blogger relations.)
Margaret’s Mistake: Her pitch is too vague. There’s no value-add to Marshall, no relevant personalization, no news. Forget about Facebook, forget about blogger relations: this is PR 101. I’m owning and will fix it.
That doesn’t mean we won’t screw up again. Despite all the official and unofficial training, we will screw up again – it’s the nature of the beast. We’ve got 100 folks now, and many more queued up in the hiring process… as we get bigger, it will be harder & harder to ensure 100% awesomeness. (But 100% awesomeness is the goal.)
By the way, and for what it’s worth (not much), I think Marshall’s being mean with that FB response. For a kid just getting started, the dripping sarcasm in his reply might have been lost. He was ostensibly being “nice” to Margaret in his FB post; he’s egged her on, despite intending to call her out on her lackluster pitch.
Isn’t that how the mean popular kids in every-teen-movie-ever-made tend to act? I’m cool with learning lessons from constructive criticism — and I know Margaret will paste a smile on her face and soldier on — but let’s keep it all constructive, eh? (And yes, sure, I am being defensive on behalf of a valued staffer.)
Have at it in the Comments. I’m braced for it.
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I think the biggest mistake was “I know you.”
A minor error in the grand scheme of things. I think we are all guilty of this one, present company included. When I or someone in my firm does this, it tells me we are moving too quickly and trying to hit a quota or number instead of taking the time to customize pitches to bloggers.
If anyone out there claims to have *not* made a mistake like this, he or she is full of shit. Or was just hired yesterday and is still in orientation.
I made a nice little blunder myself this week (not of this variety but certainly stupider), but if you can’t slug through the tough times, well…
Give Margaret a high five or a hug or a pat on the back or a [whatever's considered appropriate] for me. Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
Todd, you stuck to your word and this is a great post for people to read. We all make mistakes in our career, it’s too bad how some people use it as a platform to be cruel and not for constructive critiques.
Tell Margaret to put it behind her, she has plenty of things to look forward to in her career. I would need a whole separate blog to talk about the mistakes I made during my PR career
Keep on doing what you are all doing!
/kff
[i]Isn’t that how the mean popular kids in every-teen-movie-ever-made tend to act? [/i]
Like I’ve always said: Ninety percent of the world never leaves high school – they just leave adult supervision.
As others have said, *everyone* has made a mistake like this in their career. I’m sure that if we were forced to re-read the pr pitches or ad copy that we wrote early in our careers, we’d hang our heads in shame.
And as a bad pitch, this nowhere near as bad as some of the examples sitting in my own in-box from a variety of companies.
The mistake, as you rightly called it, was the vagueness. We don’t know if what she was pitching is appropriate for Marshall, and neither does he, because there’s not enough information.
Not good PR practice, sure but nothing to fall on your sword over
See, what I love about this post is, now you’ve mea culpaed — on something very minor. That way, when you really mess up you can keep mum, because no one can say you never acknowledge and share lessoned learned. Ahh, PR.
First off, it was great to see that the first comments were kind & considerate. I care about this more for Margaret’s sake!
It’s true that the error-of-vagueness (and FB “friendliness”) was pretty innocuous in the grand scheme. Still, it’s something we’ll discuss & work on here.
As for “Ms. Sticks” (I presume that’s code for “mistakes”?):
I respect your sarcasm but if you are a long-term reader of my blog I’d hope you’ve seen enough transparency to think twice about suggesting I’d cover something up in the future.
To be helpful, feel free to poke even more fun of me after reading these posts about past screw-ups (but just be sure to give me credit for the transparency!) …
http://www.pr-squared.com/2007/09/blogger_relations_good_intenti.html
http://www.pr-squared.com/2007/07/not_sure_whether_to_laugh_or_c.html
http://www.pr-squared.com/2006/11/errors_in_the_echo_chamber.html
Good post and way to own up.
I’ve been working in PR for close to a decade now and all I can say is thank heavens blogger relations wasn’t a part of PR bootcamp when I was just starting out.
The fact is, we have ALL made mistakes. Some minor and some much worse than this. I can only imagine the reaction some of my first pitches elicited from journalists. Luckily for me, the worst thing I endured was an irate reporter yelling at me over the phone about how inconsiderate I was for wasting his time and to call him back when I actually knew what I was talking about. It made for some good laughter with my teammates later (much later-it took weeks for me to fess up to what happened), but I was still horrified!
Unfortunately for this next generation of PR newbies, they don’t get off easy with an earful of crankiness. Nope. In the new social media-facebook- twitter-blogosphere age, they get their mistakes broadcast to millions of people over the Internet, their name AND face included in the public flogging. Yikes!
When it comes to mistakes, we’ve all been there regardless of the industry we work in. The key is to avoid nursing a bruised ego for too long. Most of us will work for 40+ years. There are still many missteps, blunders and bloopers for us to make and learn from!