A press launch for Burger King, which exclusively serves Pepsi, was undermined when the hotel venue served Coca-Cola to guests. This simple oversight—failing to check a supplier's brand affiliations—damaged the client relationship and the event's credibility.
After an associate director misspelled a major client's name (Trust House Forte) on a press release, his boss didn't fire him. Instead, he was sent to apologize in person to the CEO, Lord Forte. This high-stakes accountability forged a powerful lesson and ultimately saved the account.
An agency's pitch to Nationwide Building Society was immediately lost due to a single, catastrophic typo. Their leave-behind document consistently spelled "public relations" as "pubic relations," leading to ridicule and failure, proving that minor details can have major consequences.
A PR veteran argues for blind recruitment—removing names, photos, and even specific experience from applications. He believes the best communicators often come from unconventional backgrounds like dance or comedy, and this method would increase true diversity of thought and talent.
In its heyday, Burson-Marsteller enforced weekly training for all staff, from junior executives to board directors. The CEO considered training non-negotiable for performance reviews, creating a powerful culture of continuous learning that vanished after its acquisition by WPP.
A PR veteran argues that industry bodies like the PRCA and CIPR have failed to hold any senior PR professionals accountable for their complicity in major disasters like the Grenfell Tower fire and the Horizon IT scandal, revealing a critical lack of ethical enforcement.
A PR lecturer's experiment revealed blatant hiring bias. Students with Muslim-sounding names received no responses to job applications. When they changed their names to Christian-sounding ones on the exact same CV, they immediately started getting interviews.
A PR pro hired a "funky" grunge band for a stuffy Diners Club corporate event without listening to their music first. The band proceeded to use a pneumatic drill on stage during their set, causing all 60 executive guests to flee within five minutes.
A PR veteran working with the NHS observed that most hospital issues stem from poor communication between siloed departments. He contrasts this with the successful "whole egg" agency model where disciplines like design and PR are fully integrated, leading to better outcomes.