Embargo Horror Story - Beware Twitter

At a recent conference I heard a real horror story on the danger of not being explicit that a release sent out under an embargo must also cover social media.

The victim in this case was the PR director of a major research firm that covers a highly regulated industry. To protect the innocent, lets call him him Josh and his company Research Co. Every quarter, this firm publishes a report on the industry it covers that is hugely influential.

As normal, on the Friday before the report was published by Research Co, Josh sent the report under embargo o reporters he has worked with for a long while.

Some time late on Friday afternoon, Josh got a call from Kevin, a reporter at a major newspaper with some bad news. Kevin said that one of the reporters who had received the report, Jenny, had tweeted that the report was coming out on Monday and there was big news about the industry. The tweet had a link to the embargoed release!!!

This was bad enough. To make matters worse, Kevin told Josh that his editor has said that as the embargo had been broken, it was fair game and they would be running an article the next day, 2 days before the news hit the market.

Josh managed to get hold of the editor in question and persuaded him not to run the article before Monday. He then called, Jenny to find out what she was thinking. Jenny responded that there was nothing in the embargo, covering social media. Despite this Josh persuaded Jenny to pull the article down.

Two lessons:

1. Relationships Matter - No news here but had Josh not had a good relationship with all those involved he would have not been as persuasive. Relationships are two way street. It was equally in the reporters interest not to alienate Josh given who he represented.

2. Explicitly Include Social Media in Your Embargo: This is the key point. Now Josh spells out clearly that the embargo covers online and specifically, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Adam Turinas