Not so professional: My top five most embarrassing PR moments
Being a student trying to make a name for yourself in a professional industry is hard. There is so much to learn, and although you have peers and mentors to help you along the way, a lot of it you can really only learn through trial and error.
Throughout my short career, I have already experienced a handful of embarrassing moments. A lot of which have made me want to curl into a ball and never leave my house again. Unfortunately the bills need to get paid, so that wasn’t an option. My only choice was put on my big girl pants, learn from these mistakes, and move on.
This blogpost is dedicated to sharing these moments with aspiring public relations practitioners, in hopes that they will push you to keep moving forward when they road gets rocky.
My team and I were doing a fundraising event for a project management class. Part of the event was to secure a sponsor to provide light refreshments for the families who were attending, as we had no project budget. We found an awesome local caterer who was interested! However, the owner had a very hectic schedule and only one of our team members could meet on the requested day to go over menu options and pricing. To ensure we did not miss out on the opportunity, we followed through with the meeting.
About a week before our event, we hadn’t heard from the caterer and called to check in. The caterer explain everything was good to go, and at the end of the phone call expressed that there was going to be a $500.00 charge…
There was clearly miscommunication with the sponsorship agreement. We had no money, how were we going to pay this? On top of that, some of the food had already been prepped and we had no back up plan for refreshments.
The sponsor was not happy, but eventually we were able to work out an agreement of $150.00 for the services, Can you imagine the frustration of thinking you were getting paid that much and only getting what we could offer? Good thing we had a contingency fund that we cleaned out, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to offer the caterer anything.
Moral of the story, send more than one group member to meetings with sponsors. Send follow-up e-mails immediately after meetings to ensure everyone is on the same page.
I was volunteering at Waterloo We Day as a Photo Op Facilitator. It was my job to take attendees in the sponsorship booths to their meet-and-greets with celebrities during the event. JRDN, Kardinal Offishall, Shawn Desmond, Taylor Conroy, Alyssa Reid, Karl Wolf, Spencer West, and Captain Phillips were just some of the big names visiting the Region.
Captain Richard Phillips is the United States Merchant Marine, author, and inspiration behind the true story turned film ‘Captain Phillips’. Tom Hanks plays his character throughout the film, and if you don’t know much about him, he is a big deal in the marine world.
After the meet-and-greets were done, each volunteer was allowed to take a photo with the celebrity if they were interested. You only had about five seconds to take the photo until being rushed to the side so the next person could jump in. How did I manage to embarrass myself in five seconds you might ask? Well, I had the opportunity to make a long lasting impression on a globally recognized hero and you know what I said? I walked up, shook his hand, and blurted out, “Captain Phillips, I loved that movie!”
Moral of the story, come up with something meaningful to say if you know that you are meeting an influential person. Mr. Phillips will probably always remember me, but by being the girl who made the most insensitive comment ever. Great.
I was given the opportunity to gain media relations experience during one of my co-op terms and was so excited! Little did I know how tedious and repetitive e-mailing a pitch to reporters could be. Although I got a few nibbles on the story, no reporters would bite.
I started getting lazy with my e-mails and eventually began to copy and past the pitch to each reporter, making slight changes to make it more personal. Still no major interest in the story I went back to review the e-mail trying to figure out where I could make improvements, and that’s when I realized…
I sent two e-mail’s to well known reporters with no greeting or subject.
To say the least, my pitch definitely went to the junk mailbox along with my credibility.
Moral of the story, it’s hard enough making a name for yourself so don’t blow your first shot. If you’re getting lazy, take a break and come back to it before you make a major mistake like this. You also want to cater the entire pitch you are sending to that specific reporter, so copy and pasting shouldn’t even cross your mind. I wish I had a better excuse looking back on it now, needless to say I will not be making this mistake again.
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more embarrassing than getting someone’s name wrong in public relations.
Second year during our project management class I spelled our professors name wrong on a final document.
He called me out in front of the entire class while we were presenting and discussed how unprofessional it was. He continued, and explained how if you ever did that to an actual client your project could potentially face severe consequences especially because they need to be treated like royalty.
Moral of the story, develop tricks! The best advice I’ve ever gotten was to put a familiar name to someone that you are meeting for the first time. For example, I love Ryan Gosling, so anytime I meet someone named Ryan I associate my new acquaintance with my favourite actor.
Rhymes, movies, objects, pets, literally anything you need to do to remember that name and never forget it. You never know when you might run into them again!
Teachers always tell you in school to proof read, proof read, proof read. And they aren’t joking!
I was working for a local newspaper and one of my monthly tasks was to fill a philanthropic initiatives section. Pretty straight forward and I enjoyed doing it, but on top of my other tasks it was usually the first thing to get pushed aside. The deadline for it quickly approached and I completely forgot about it so had to do it in a hurry. Didn’t proof read the final because I had to do it so fast, and sent it on its way.
The worst part wasn’t that it was riddled with small grammatical errors, the worst part was that it got published in the newspaper. My name wasn’t anywhere on it, but it damaged the credibility of the section I was in charge of.
Moral of the story, always listen to your professors when they tell you to proof read. The best trick that I’ve learned is to print off whatever it is that you wrote and read it on paper. You’ll be surprised how much easier it is to pick up mistakes on paper than it is to on your computer.
So there you have it people, my most embarrassing moments.
It took a lot for me to share these, but I wanted to because there is no greater lesson in life than experience. Your peers, parents, and mentors can tell you all they want, but you will never truly understand until things don’t turn out the way you expected.
Remember, no professional got where they are today without making a few mistakes. A career in public relations is full of tough love, but if you can learn from these moments and move on, you’ll be just fine.
