The PR Hall of Fame
I have a document in my possession that always makes me smile.
Working on a monthly magazine, I spent years processing press releases for editing and publication. In the early days these were hard copies - paper! - sent in the post! - and edited with a pen! - before being typed out by the dim light of some burning whale fat (not really).
The ‘face-palm’ - a timeless human gesture.
But soon these press releases were arriving as emails - dozens of them, every single day - and we’d go through them all. Some would be selected for our daily news website, and a few each month would make it into the magazine. We saw thousands of press releases in this way - and most of them were scoured by several pairs of sharp eyes.
It was part of our job to spot and correct errors - typos, misspellings, unfortunate word choices etc. Sometimes these would raise a chuckle and be shared around, and at some point they began to make their way into our ‘PR Hall of Fame’ document . . .
Most mistakes were quite simple, but no less jaw-dropping for that. A PR agent getting their client’s name wrong, for example, was a classic that always made it to the PR Hall of Fame - and the document I have today carries no fewer than 14 examples of that particular degree of upcock.
“A new product announcement admitted that it had been designed “with the aid of chemical enhancements”. Probably not the first, I’d wager.”
Sometimes a wrong choice of word tickled us. To be fair, these had often been translated from another language, the brave choice of words by a non-native English speaker not always successful. “This product never seems to amaze us!” was one glowing endorsement I’ll never forget.
We were told (by a native English speaker, I should add!) about a visiting fire safety officer from a European city’s “Fire & Rescue Derision”. A new product announcement claimed that it had been designed “with the aid of chemical enhancements”. Probably not the first, I’d wager. A story citing musical influences said, “from reggae to rock, Mowtown to country & western.” ‘Mowtown’, we thought - that must be a Lawn Care Superstore in Detroit.
Product flexibility was ever important, and one announcement said that although a new controller had a limited feature set for simple events, it could also be used “for more pretentious shows.” Another raved about how a client’s new lighting fixture could create not only dynamic effects, but also “stagnant looks”. I’ll take half a dozen!
One description of a new control system drew particular attention to its “fiendly user interface” - scary! - while another fab new product was summarised as follows: “There are great advantages which are far outweighed by the disadvantages.” I’ve always just assumed that that was not quite what they meant.
In other product announcements, we had a Spinal Tap-esque “1’ neodymium compression driver” (that’s 1 foot, for the metrically minded - 1 inch would have been more like it) and, on behalf of automated lighting manufacturers, numerous references to “moving jokes” and “moving yolks”.
Our PR friends coined names for new tribute acts, including ‘Bob Jovi’, ‘Jules Holland’, the ‘Eurthymics’ and ‘Dave Graham’ of Depeche Mode. Then there was the children’s author, “Michael Morpungo” and a photographer, who must have been an astonishingly young achiever, “born and died in 1908”. Events were “star-studied” and “breakthaking”, products were “competetitive“ and provided “piece of mind” while venues were “sophisciated” and had clear “site-lines”.
Some press releases were clearly work in progress: “I think a quote from someone would be good here,” said one. “Please find below a press release and image detailing XYZ about ABC,” said another. Probably not the most up-to-date versions.
The important thing to realise about these slip-ups is that they were made by some of the best and/or brightest PR reps in the business (I say ‘and/or’ because the Venn diagram of the Best and Brightest PR people is not quite a single circle).
The point is, anyone can make a mistake like this, and while it’s hopefully no worse than mildly amusing, it could easily be embarrassing or damaging. The key thing is to spot it before it does something worse than make a bunch of sub-editors giggle.
To end, here’s my favourite ever message from a (lovely, wonderful and much-missed) PR guy, and one of the stars of the PR Hall of Fame:
Dear Editor,
Please use version 8 attached herein. There were too many typos for my taste on version 7 sent earlier.
Thanks.
