I rarely watch movies, I just can’t seem to sit still long enough to take one in. There’s so much to do away from the TV. But sometimes I’ll be in the right mood and I like to get comfortable and watch pretty much whatever happens to be on. That’s what I was doing one day, several years ago, when a movie–I have no idea what the name of it was–began and as I was waiting for the title, the credits appeared and said “And introducing Rob Lowe’s younger brother Chad Lowe.”
My husband, channeled Jan Brady, who was infamous for being jealous of her popular older sister, when he jokingly said “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!” I mean it’s got to be hard to be in the shadow of a sibling like that.
I started laughing out loud. I thought, wow, not only are you living in the shadow of your older brother, but then as you try to make a name for yourself you still get linked to him. Well I guess that doesn’t just go for the movie business. I got a press release last week about an artist event. It was a sculptor and he was going to sculpt the likeness of several people right there on the spot. Cool event. The kicker was that he was the brother of a famous current musician.
Now I understand writing a press release and leveraging the popularity of the musician brother. But what I read next made me really feel bad for the artist. Not only did the headline call attention to the fact he was the little brother of the musician but the first paragraph introduced said brother, and then every subsequent paragraph refered to the artist by his famous brother’s name. So if the famous brother was Tom and the brother was Larry it started off as:
“Sculptor Larry Smith will show off his skill at the benefit for St. Francis Hospital. Tom has been a sculptor for 25 years. Tom has sold his sculptures worldwide …”
I quickly sent off an email to the publicist to point out the mistake so they could correct it as soon as possible, however, the damage was done. Their email blast was already sent out and who knows how many reporters were already thinking the same thing I did about that press release goof up.
Though grammar, spelling and structure in press releases doesn’t have to be perfect to get media attention, names are another matter. So often I get press releases without contact names or information, or wrong contact names. Press release writers often think having a significant event is enough to get a reporter interested and that we’ll hunt done any needed information because the event is so appealing. It doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes if there is missing information or incorrect information we’ll simply ignore the press release.
It’s really important to check those names when writing a press release. Check them and double check them and if need be, read the entire press release out loud. Getting your client’s name wrong in a press release can be detrimental to your publicity efforts by making the press release, well, honestly, a joke. We all make mistakes, but names are a sacred thing and reporters are taught in journalism school that that’s the one area not to get wrong, no matter what. Reporters hold that same standard for press releases.
Have you ever made an embarrasing mistake in a press release? How did you recover from it?