We've been told about it at least a million times, from every PR tutor we've ever had.
But you never really understand something in full until it's sitting there, in the outbox, staring at you. The media release email you've sent out highlighting an upcoming event with the
WRONG NAME OF VENUE.
Absolute nightmare!
I was working alongside Lauren, the account support at Devahasdin. Her job was to show me how to send an introductory email with a media release attached to prospective media outlets. It seemed like a job that would run quite smoothly. The release and email had been written, we now just had to cater each email to each individual outlet. Other members of the office had read the release, Lauren and myself had read the release and nothing clicked to any of us until it had been sent out.
I was reading the release one last time when I noticed the venue name was 'The Deen Hotel'. I then suddenly remembered my girlfriends saying 'The Deen' was no longer 'The Deen' and was now some sort of sports bar. I brought this up to Lauren who quickly did a google search and there it was: 'The Game Sports Bar, 90 Aberdeen Street, Northbridge".
We both looked pretty shocked. I, for two reasons. The first is that, this is a fairly big issue that hadn't been noticed until now and second, I was the one who has spotted the error.
Aside from stressing about how to send the correction in the fastest way possible, I was also quite pleased that I managed to stop an even larger crisis from happening. No venue wants to host an event without having their correct name sent to the media!
As soon as it happened I immediately remembered countless tutors of mine reiterating the importance of fact checking and there it was: proof that it really is a number one priority when working in PR.
Thankfully, I had noticed the error in time and the issue was resolved in a very efficient manner but once again, my placement taught me a practical lesson to the theory I have been learning in the classroom.
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| Event Listing on EventFinda.com.au |
Thanks again guys!
Let me know any other dramas you've had to face during your placement :)
Claudia x
1 comment:
Hi Claudia,
You're very lucky in actually noticing the venue change. Imagine if you weren't actually at the firm and no one realised the venue was incorrect until it was too late to change?! Great to read that you were able to cope with the issue in a professional way and ensure the correction was done in a hastily manner. It certainly could of been detrimental towards cliental relationships or stakeholder trust by producing something that may be deemed unprofessional. In other words the recipients of the media release would not believe your work capabilities by making such an easy mistake and not noticing it. It's quite remarkable that a lot of people read the release before publication and yet no one noticed the mistake!
It happened to me as well at my internship, where I was a part of the organisation of an event that is to occur in July, and we produced a poster outlining the details of the night and spectacles that will be on display. However we made an easy blunder like yourself, by sending out these posters to sponsors and donors without realising the date and day was incorrect. For example the event is on the 4th of July, which is a Saturday, but the poster stated it being on a Friday which can certainly throw people off in coming, etc. Also could of been an issue towards the venue we are holding the event. If they read the poster and wrote it down on a wrong day, there would be a lot of unhappy people. Thankfully I, like yourself, identified the miss print and quickly changed it. We also re checked everything else to ensure the whole poster was correct and displayed the correct information.
Again nice work on fixing an issue that could of been worse. Best of luck in the future!
Sam
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