Rock Head PR Move: Proofing nightmare

An advertiser’s worst nightmare hit South Bend, Indiana, when a billboard promoting the city’s public schools urged people to look at the “15 best things about our pubic schools.” The oversight of mistaking “pubic” for “public” is even worse when it’s written in three-foot-tall letters near a busy intersection and for an educational institution.

A picture of the flawed billboard circulated around Facebook before Blue Waters Group, the company that created the billboard, claimed responsibility for the proofing error and fixed the billboard.

While the Blue Waters Group made the right PR move by admitting its fault, it is no doubt wishing it would have caught the error in the first place.

Read more from the South Bend Tribune.

(Photo courtesy of the South Bend Tribune)

Rock Head PR Move: Via-bomb

Even if you’re one of the most powerful media tycoons in the world, you can’t pressure a reporter via voicemail to divulge his source and expect any good PR to come of it. Viacom czar Sumner Redstone is being haunted in today’s headlines by a voicemail recording of him telling a reporter to divulge the source of an anti-Redstone story. The kicker: he assured the reporter, “We’re not going to kill him. We’re just going to talk to him.”

Oops.

A spokesman ineffectively attempted to dismiss with flap with a “That was just Sumner being Sumner” quote.

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Rock Head PR Move: Another Live Mic Mishap

California gubernatorial candidate Carly Fiorina committed a classic media faux pas while prepping for a recent television interview. Unaware that her mic was on and the camera was recording, Fiorina was caught ridiculing rival Senator Barbara Boxer’s hairstyle and media interview strategy. As the former CEO of a Fortune 500 company who has done hundreds of interviews, Fiorina should have known better.

Fast forward to 4:05 to see the rock head moment.

Rock Head PR Move: Freshly Ground Proofreader

A proofreader for Penguin Group Australia must have been snoozing on the job when he or she missed an incomprehensible and grievous error. A recipe in the cookbook, the Pasta Bible, called for “freshly ground black people” instead of “freshly ground pepper.” What the publishing company called a “silly mistake” will end up costing it 20,000 Australian dollars ($18,500) in reprinting costs and thousands of words of international bad press.

Penguin Group should have hired a better proofreader, like ours.

Click here to read more.

Rock Head PR Move

While we GH Spin bloggers love to point out Rock Star PR Moves, we’re sometimes so moved by a media gaffe that we must comment. Let’s just say we’re feeling for Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s media handlers today as they try to stuff the words “stop driving your Toyota” back into their boss’s mouth. It seemed only seconds after LaHood made the statement that he tried to undo it. And he’s quickly learning how difficult – impossible? – that can be.

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