The Colab Brief: 023 - Spookiest 👻 PR Stories [Halloween Edition]

You’re all in for a (trick-or) treat 🎃 this week. In honor of Halloween, we asked our network to provide us with their spookiest PR stories. And boy did they show up.

It’s easy to think that PR is always glitz and glam - after all, PR people usually make everything look seamless. 🔮

But what’s going on in the background is usually anything but. From campaign and client catastrophes to media mishaps and everything in between, we’ve seen it all. And now, for your reading enjoyment, you will too.

So grab your potion coffee, snuggle up, and enjoy these stories from the trenches.

Disclaimer: These stories have been paraphrased and anonymized for your reading pleasure.

Read Time: 10 minutes? Depends on how hard you’re laughing/crying/crawling out of your skin.

RIP? 🪦

I was in the room with an unnamed agency executive in the middle of an in-person new business pitch. The team was trying to win the business on a strategy that leveraged the founder of the organization as part of an influencer campaign. After so many minutes the prospective client interrupted to clarify that the founder had been dead for 30+ years. ⚰️

You might have to read this one twice 📠

While I was still young and definitely had a lot to learn, I took a job below my pay and capability grade at a big-name PR firm because of a bad recession in the early 90s. I was managed by a guy on a power trip who delighted in over-editing everyone's work. This was the era of the faxed press release and he was managing a big one for a client. He made the drafting process way harder than it needed to be. Regardless, he added the finishing touches on his own, including his name and contact info. Not the best day for [redacted] Pubic Relations. 🍆

Out Of Office 🙊

I worked at an agency with a colleague who was going to take time off for the first time, maybe ever. He set an OOO message that poked fun at his (now ex) wife. Unfortunately, he configured the settings wrong, and rather than acting as an OOO it instead sent, as a reply, to every single email he had ever sent. Once the emails started sending the system froze up and he couldn’t stop it. 💌

And the Academy Award goes to…🏆

I was 22 and working in comms at [a highly prestigious] Film Academy. I sent a newsletter out to 400,000 film students and people considering film school, unknowingly spelling Steven Spielberg's name wrong in the subject line. I’m fairly certain that’s the closest I have ever gotten, or ever hope to get, to celebrity hate mail. 🎥

In the line of fire 🔥

I had a company go public on Nasdaq, and the Board fired the Founder/CEO while he was in the makeup chair at CNN. 💄

Monkey see, monkey do 🙈

I was part of an important new business pitch with one of the first PR agencies I worked at in Boston. There was a part of the proposal entitled "Guerrilla PR Programs" that contained competitive de-positioning, getting quoted in their launch coverage, etc. Well, the CEO went out and bought every member of the pitch team rubber gorilla heads and forced us to put them on for this portion of the pitch. I did my best to explain the difference between "Guerrilla" and "Gorilla" but she did not care and felt certain creativity would trump accuracy. It didn't. 🦍

XYZ 👖

I had to tell three different male execs on three different occasions that their fly was open before TV or photo ops. And disliked one so much that I internally flirted with not telling him. 🤔

Is this thing on? 🎤

I was a junior media aide for Senate Majority Leader [redacted] and was staffing the Senate Democratic Offsite. President Obama came at the last minute to give short remarks and answer questions. He asked for a handheld microphone. I handed him one and it wasn't charged or working. I handed him a second one and it was dead. The third time was the charm and he graciously laughed it off. I will never, never forget to check the batteries in a mic again! 🪫

Paper Problems 🖨️

Back in the day when we still faxed press releases and announcements, I worked with the IT guy to be able to fax from my computer so I didn’t have to come in at 6 or 7 a.m. One day, the program got stuck in a loop and sent one of the industry analysts 200 blank pages. He sent me an irate email, I responded with a mea culpa and FedEx’ed him 2 reams of paper which highly amused him and we became friendly. ♼

WFH Woes 💪

I was overseeing embargo briefings for a client’s product launch years ago. We were waiting on the Zoom line for an interview and the reporter (male) dialed in, working from home with their shirt off. They were stunned and frantically tried to shut their video off. We pretended we hadn’t seen anything.  👔

Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning 🌟

Early in my career, the PR firm I worked for represented one of North America's Largest Acrylics Manufacturer. They were supposed to hold a press conference at a major trade show at the Anaheim Convention Center and barely anyone showed up. So, the Founder/President of the firm asked me to "just pretend you're a reporter so we don't look so bad." I left the press conference, promptly went to Disneyland, and resigned the next week. 🎢

Oh baby 🍼

The agency I worked at represented a permanent contraception company. We had a celebrity endorsement that was really well received so, naturally, the client wanted more. We offered up options for a second celebrity but the company didn’t want to pay our agency to manage it, so they handled all the negotiations themselves. Long story short the celebrity didn't follow instructions and ended up getting pregnant during the media tour (for a permanent contraception company). Her hormones got the best of her and she ended up crying during a Wall Street Journal interview, and we ended up as a punchline on the Chelsea Handler Show. It was a bit of a horror story and, of course, we were left holding the bag with the inevitable crisis communications. 👶🏻

Just the fax 📝

I was interning at one of the country’s largest PR firms representing a global hardware and software company. One day, I was tasked with faxing a piece of news to the press because my entire team, execs, and the client were in the air. My boss at the time gave me very explicit instructions to send Document 1 of 2, which contained highly sensitive and confidential client numbers and an internal FAQ. I’m still shocked I didn't get kicked off the account. ✈️

You sure about that? 🤨

When I was working at an agency, a colleague was communicating with a reporter and mistakenly attached a client’s entire product/announcement roadmap for the next 6 months. I think he ended up promising exclusives on nearly all the announcements so the reporter wouldn’t just publish the roadmap. 📍

And finally, just a few of the best responses received from journalists over the years:

A response from a TechCrunch reporter when an executive I was working with wouldn’t stop bragging about the time he was named one of Silicon Valley’s Most Eligible Bachelors by People magazine over a decade earlier. “Okay, can we shift gears back to your new company?” 🤦🏾‍♂️

A Business Journal reporter who was upset he wasn’t pre-briefed on a highly confidential and sensitive global announcement for one of the biggest accelerator programs in the world: “Your PR team is trash. A classless bunch. We will never work with them again.” 🤬

A response from a journalist who just needed more time (despite us reaching out as early as possible): “In the future please just send the materials, I can’t stand this teasing behaviour by PRs. If you want me to read something, send it, don’t require me to chase you, it really doesn’t help. Also, if you want journalists to write about something, send it to them under embargo with enough time to examine it. The fact you’re not doing so shows me you’re not serious, and that you’re trying to manipulate me.” 🕰️

A sweet little response for thanking a reporter for covering a funding announcement: “DON’T thank me. I hate it when PR people thank me. I am doing my job, I’m not doing you a favor.” 🙅

Response from a CNBC reporter during a live, on-air segment of a client, who decided to take the interview from her bed: “Are you eating a sandwich?” 🥪

Until next week -

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