The #PRFail
I read over Matthew Watsons post last night on whether or not #PRFail is a #PRFail and I started bashing out a bit of a comment and it ended up being a bit of an essay, so I thought I’d write it here and then link Matthew up to the eyeballs.
The premise of Matthews post is that the #PRFail website (set up by Jonathan Hopkins to amalgamate all of the #PRFails) and highlighting PR mistakes so aggressively might be seriously damaging – not just to the PR, but to the agency and their client.
This got me thinking ‘in what other industries is it deemed acceptable to highlight someone else’s failure?’. Erm, anything in the public eye, pretty much. Sports, check, news, check, advertising, check, the list goes on. And what is PR? Public relations, which, surprise surprise is in the public eye. So, while it’s not particularly nice to name and shame, the PRO or agency should be confident enough that when they hit send, reply or chat that what they’re saying is appropriate and acceptable. It’s their choice to put it into the public domain – they can control what they say.
Naming and shaming is a blood sport. We’ve all had the chance to do it, and some of us have done it. If you play then you might get hurt yourself, but then again, it’s your choice to put an opinion out into the big wide world and your in charge of your own image. You control what you say. Again, if you’re not comfortable then don’t put it!
As everyone (or most people) will know, I’m not really one for self-moderation, and it’s got me into trouble before (but I wont point out where and when, that’d be silly (journalism and PR are the same, anyone?!) but I listened to what people said, stood up (had stuff thrown at me!) and then made a bit of an awkward joke about it! The intimacy of social media is often a bit of an issue, not the conversation or the context, but like Matthew said, the after effects of search.
While #PRFail’s will continue, the biggest issue really is that the people that commit the FAIL’s aren’t usually savvy enough (read: care enough (brash generalisation)) to see that their work is being scrutinised. So we just end up laughing at people from inside our little bubble while the few on the outside continue to slip up without consequence.
So, what do you think?