A Lost Opportunity Can Be a PR Blessing
I’m still on a roll. Can’t help it. Forgive me. Every time I open the newspaper (yep; I still do that) I see something about a big mouth Twitter faux pas or someone’s talked trash while secretly being taped. So I want to say a few words about that out-of-body experience when you discover that something you’ve said was taken out of context. I don’t believe taken out of context is a very good excuse anymore. Just as we must be careful what we say and to whom, we must understand that once we say it we can’t take it back. We can’t edit the spoken word, even the written word for that matter, since everything can be captured and stored on the Internet. There used to be a time when corrections were made and I guess occasionally this still happens, but it sure feels old school to me, which is why we must constantly edit ourselves.
A while back I wrote about the notion of anticipating what can go wrong, living with that “what if” state of mind. I learned about this a long time ago, in one of my early PR jobs. Before we would send out a press release or publish a newsletter (with blueprints and everything!) I would ask my colleague, “Okay, before we mail this out [as in the real deal snail mail version], who are we going to annoy?” Except I didn’t really say “annoy.” I used another word. And we’d go over our imaginary list of people along with possible consequences, outcomes, etc. This is the precise kind of thought that should cross our minds before we extend the reach of our brilliant thoughts to the world via Twitter, Facebook, email, whatever.
“But that’s not what I meant” we hear the offenders say. “My words were taken out of context,” they whine. So? What else is new? It’s called a trade-off. Whenever you get something extra, a bonus, you’re probably losing something, no matter how miniscule it might be, that you may never get back again. Why don’t we remember to consider the trade-offs? Is it too horrible a thought? It’s a negotiation of sorts. Too often, though, publicists, business owners doing their own PR, and others seeking to broaden their platforms neglect to conduct a little risk-benefit analysis, because they might discover something that will prevent then from moving forward. To many of us, that’s a good thing. In some circles, that’s called covering your rear end. But to others, it’s a lost opportunity. Sometimes, though, lost opportunities are a blessing, especially if you come to find out that whatever you passed up on has the makings of a disaster.
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