It’s impossible to follow journalists on Twitter and fail to notice frequent, and frequently hilarious, Tweets related to a condition that is probably best described as bad PR. There’s a Twitter feed devoted to the most glaring examples of this, some reporters actually have blogs that document bad/annoying PR tactics.
You know it when you see it, the overuse of jargon or clichés in releases and statements, putting a customizable placeholder in the salutation of a pitch - and then failing to customize, the impassioned suggestion a reporter write about something that is way off their beat or area of interest, which is basically inexcusable since they file stories for a living, in public, about the things they’re interested in, calling someone 30 seconds after pushing “send” on some form of outreach just to “make sure they got it,” which is really code for checking the “made contact, considering” box next to that person’s name.
It’s all very funny, entertaining and - for those of us on either side of the media relationship - real. But there is one common attribute these egregious examples share. They are typically signs of haphazard work. Anyone, in any field, can make a mistake. But the thread that runs through these (increasingly public) manifestations of bad PR, in one way or another, is carelessness.
Everyone’s busy, especially today. Everyone’s been guilty of moving too fast for their own good. Every junior person at a PR agency has had the experience of trying to find salvation in a 200-row Excel spread sheet media list while a dictatorial Assistant Vice President stands over their shoulder yelling something along the lines of, “Where are the hits!” - but none of this is an excuse for sloppy or indifferent work in a field that is, by name and definition, public.
I’m not talking about big strategic missteps here, providing bad counsel or flawed implementation on a big stage. That’s another post, probably a whole other Tumblr. By and large, the PR misfires that spark the communal chuckles are conducted in the normal course of business, routinely, not during periods of crisis or duress. Taking the easy way out on a quote (read it out loud and see if you can picture anything other than an acronym-generating robot actually speaking the words), shotgun blasting a release out to 100 writers and hoping for the best, instead of talking to the three or four who might actually care about the story, expecting a credible journalist to take e-mails or documents riddled with typos or grammatical errors, well, credibly. Wasting people’s time.
Most jobs in the world are not “best efforts” type deals. Reporting certainly isn’t, and neither is communications work. I guess we’re all lucky there aren’t Twitter accounts and blogs devoted to “bad brain surgery” or “funniest *almost* air disasters,” but a little bit of time and attention, it would seem, could go a long way to preventing the bad PR crash and burn.
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