What a gas!

08Dec06

I have written many a headline, press release, product description and pitch. In my ten years doing public relations, I had yet to commit the grand daddy of PR blunders, though. Alas, there’s a first time for everything. I learned the hard way that typos are a real stinker.

PR professionals (a.k.a. flacks, spin doctresses, etc.), live by Merriam-Webster and the AP Stylebook, but even with spell checks and balances in place, there are some typos that can outsmart even the most diligent editor. Outlook users beware: spell check is no match for symbols typed in the subject line of an email.

At the time I was working for a gaming company. On this particular day, I had spent most of it doing the press release shuffle, including tug of war over messaging, incorporating revisions, writing quotes, re-writing headlines, gaining buy off and securing approvals. It took forever. After all, the press release shuffle is a multi-player game with about fifteen people. As the day progressed, my blood pressure began to rise. The European release had already been issued that morning, but due to a messaging snag I was still making edits as the European release circulated. Finally, at 5:00 p.m. the U.S. release was ready to go out..

I copied and pasted the body of my release into the body of an email. I then copied and pasted the headline into the subject line and completed the process by pulling up my distribution list of approximately 500 journalists. I fired it off. “XXX Attacks the Action-Horror Genre with Cold Fear ™” had crossed the wire. I was elated—there is indeed an “end” in “send.”

As is often the case, journalists began to reply to thank me for sharing the information. It was then I learned the power of the symbol. The “TM” was nowhere to be found. Email after email came back with a different subject than the one I had pasted into the subject line. Much to my horror, they read “XXX Attacks the Action-Horror Genre with Cold Feart.” Seconds later it occurred to me that I’d just announced a video game about a cold fart.

And so goes my story of the embarrassing typo. I only wish I’d stayed through the product launch. Given the game’s nautical theme, I would have proposed a press event on a poop deck. I’m certain it would have been a gas.

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