You'd think that PR professionals would have realised that both (a) social media is now a key channel for talking to the press and wider audiences and (b) it is public and once in cyberspace will be there for a long, long time.
But no, following negative reviews of the new Duke Nukem game, US PR agency Redner Group publically tweeted that, essentially, those that gave bad reviews wouldn't get copies of the next game. The agency quickly realised its mistake, took down the tweet but not before it had been captured by the likes of Wired.
The result? Duke Nukem's publishers 2K has fired Redner, losing the agency its largest client.
What amazes me, beyond the poor judgement in not realising a negative tweet would be picked up, is that this is really poor PR practice.
One of the primary functions of PR is to promote a positive image of a client, and in many cases, that involves long term relationship building with journalists that may not understand or like your client or what they are doing.
Taking your ball away is not only petty but counterproductive as well as it reinforces press perceptions. That for me, is the biggest lesson that PR people need to realise after the Redner debacle.
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Image via Wikipedia