Can Lemonade be Made after This?

Written by Melanie Wilt

Saturday, 09 May 2009 23:48

The neighborhood farmers who used to stop at the end of the Flax farm lane for 10 cent glasses of sugary, lemon refreshment would be proud that I turned that business into a full-time career. No, I didn’t start the Countrytime dynasty, but as a public relations professional, I do turn my share of lemons into lemonade. Most of the time, I get to help my clients adjust their reputations either in anticipation of, or after the formation of, a negative public perception. This week, I’m working to adjust my own reputation after I realized I had sent the wrong message to a group of valued potential customers.   I received a call last week from a colleague (who will henceforth be considered a good, dear, honest and trustworthy friend) about a mailing I had sent to her company. She had been handed the mailing by a colleague with a sentence underlined and asked to file the information. Instead of praise for my witty prose, she informed me that my letter contained the following sentence “Why are you are you important to us?” – a glaring, unnecessary and potentially unforgivable typo for an up-and-coming communication company. I take great pride in my work and hearing this – after having personally reviewed this letter at least 15 times – was quite a blow to my psyche. After brooding about how to fix this and coming to grips with the fact that it was much too late to recall 86 letters, I decided it was best to put my PR experience to work. So, I evaluated my options: 1) do nothing (and hope that 99 percent of the people read the same way I did – the way it was supposed to read), 2) fix it and improve my company’s quality controls to ensure we don’t make the same mistake again, or 3) send another letter to the contacts with an admission of the error and beg their forgiveness and understanding. I decided to go somewhere between options 2 and 3 and settled on sending a letter to the entire mailing list mentioning my mortification of the mistake and refocus my audience’s attention on something more positive – that a good PR professional is honest, transparent and proactive about managing their clients’ and their own reputations. And, sometimes that means admitting our errors to diminish the long-term impact of regretful communication. So, I’m dying to know whether you think this was a crazy response that drew even more attention to the error – or a noble attempt to regain trust and credibility. Feel free to share your own stories of regret recovery here, too. And finally, if you find any errors in this blog post, I apologize in advance.

Last Updated on Tuesday, 14 July 2009 22:32