Today is Halloween, aka the scariest day of the year. For most people, their biggest fears involve vampires, ghosts, haunted houses…the usual. But PR people are different. Our biggest fears differ from the norm, and unfortunately we’re at risk of facing our biggest fears not just on Halloween, but 365 days a year. The evil clown from IT doesn’t make me bat an eyelash, but here are a few things that haunt me and every PR professional year-round.
- Your client calls you at 8 p.m. Seeing your phone light up after hours is typically not a good thing. Generally, if a client is calling in the middle of the night, they’re not just giving you a ring to say hello.
- You send a pitch with a placeholder in it. Early in my career, I emailed a reporter and said “Hey XX” instead of their name. That moment still haunts me to this day (I’ve never made that mistake again, for the record).
- You forget your headphones at home. This might just be a personal fear, but in an open concept office, headphones are essential for my concentration. Spending an entire day trying to write a press release without having my headphones on is pretty much my idea of hell on earth.
- You get an email and the subject line says CRISIS. Self explanatory.
- A reporter ghosts you. Ghosting isn’t just a phenomenon that happens in dating. There’s nothing worse than a getting a reporter interested in doing a story on your client, coordinating an interview, and never hearing from them again. Stephen King has nothing on this nightmare.
- When your story gets cut because a huge story breaks. True story, one of my fellow Fishies got a Today Show segment cut because Prince died. It’s difficult to convince a producer that our client’s news is more important than the death of an icon. (RIP Prince though).
- Your client goes off script and says something controversial. Cue the damage control.
