A rough day in the life of a PR

There’s good days and bad days, and days in between. Working in marcoms (marketing and comms) is often filled with highs and lows. And I learned some good rules of thumb today, although with a walloping truckload of humble pie.

I sent out a press release this morning. A really great human-interest, positive story. I’d been given the story by a colleague, had quotes signed off, had CEO approval, and yet… I had missed a crucial step. I hadn’t sent the release to the people involved in the story for fact-checking. This is a vital step. There’s always mistakes. And worse, because it was about saving a colleague’s life, I hadn’t personally checked with the colleague that they had given their consent for us to do any promotion about this. I’d simply trusted the words of my colleague who’d told me the story.

I didn’t even think of this, of my not chasing down consent or fact-checking which is a big issue. It’s literally my job to represent my organisation and avoid any reputational risks. Here, I created one. I sent out the release, and a major national news outlet got in touch. They wanted to interview two of the people involved in the story. Great. I prepped the spokespeople, organised the interview, sat in on it, it all went well. But… they asked the journo not to mention a key detail, which I had been initially told was okay to include in the story. That’s a red flag.

The story was also being quietly picked up by regional outlets and gaining momentum. I flagged all of this to my manager, who quite rightfully, raised an issue. Cue a very rushed teams call to the colleague who first told me the story, to see if there was consent from the main person involved. As it turns out, no, there wasn’t. They had all told the colleague they wanted to promote this, and he knew the person quite well and said they would love for it to be promoted, he was sure. But actual consent? No.

So we pulled the story. We didn’t wait. I had to contact the journalists who’d written about it, including the national one, and apologise and ask for the story to be pulled, explaining the consent issue. It’s being pulled. I’ve also had to inform the CEO we can’t do anything about this story.

My manager has said that once we get consent (if we get consent) from our main colleague in question to run a story about them, then we can. But this story is already almost a week old, and by the time we hear from them, it’s definitely old news. We also have lost that element of trust with the two journalists, who I would not expect to trust us again. We’d come across as unreliable, and I wouldn’t touch the story, personally.

My manager explains that ‘we are journalists’ and need to fact check, look into media law, as this could have been a big GDPR issue. The fact of the matter is, I’m not a journalist. I’m not a trained journo. I just get a buzz out of working with them. I was so happy to be working with them. But the flags kept mounting, and now I wonder if I’m actually good at this PR gig at all. If I were to start a substack, I feel like readers would read it (if any) and wonder, ‘what mistake will she make this week'? I honestly can’t believe I made those mistakes. They’re classic errors. My manager also has asked for me to run all press releases past them, which I gladly agreed to. I always offer, they always say ‘no, I trust you’, until today. So it feels like some of that trust is lost as well.

Ugh. And now I have to face all my colleagues tomorrow in meetings. The issue will come up. It’s going to. I’m very embarrassed. Happy Wednesday.