Good public relations training teaches you to check the detail before a client does. Robert Minton-Taylor, a PR lecturer for 24 years, lost a board promotion over one misspelt client name and watched a room empty at a drilling band. His rule is simple: do your homework every single time.
Robert Minton-Taylor has spent six decades in journalism and PR, and the stories he tells against himself are better than most people’s best case studies. He joined Will Ockenden and me on Embracing Marketing Mistakes to walk through four of them, and every one comes down to the same boring habit that nobody enjoys.
Townsend Thoresen: walk the event before the guests do
Robert’s first big lesson came from a ferry company. He learned to walk an event, not just write it down, counting the steps from the coach door to the lift and asking what happens when delays hit.
He remembers one question in particular: “Have we got a separate tie and shirt for the CEO in case that happens?” That is the standard I wish more event briefs were held to. He then joined Burson-Marsteller in 1979, where he later became a board director.
The band that brought a pneumatic drill
The mistake Robert chose to share first happened at a Diners Club launch at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The card was seen as a bit grey, so the idea was to make it funky, and he booked a band from an agent’s recommendation. Nobody listened to them first: “I just believed all the stuff that was sent to me.”
Then, as he tells it, “they got out a pneumatic drill and started drilling.” About 60 guests were in the room. About five minutes later it was empty, and Robert had hidden in the loo, which is leadership of a kind lol. When I asked how the audience took it, he said: “they all left.” I did laugh out loud at this point – he is a great story-teller.
Burger King and the wrong fizzy drink
Robert’s second event story involved a Burger King press reception at a smart hotel, with a proper chef in whites to show off the flame grilling. The hotel bar served Coca-Cola, apparently while the client’s restaurants poured a rival cola. The client, in Robert’s words, said he had not done his homework.
His lesson was practical: “check what else does that company you’re working for own?” A launch for one brand in a venue tied to a competitor is an own goal that no amount of charm can fix.
What happens when you misspell the client’s name?
You apologise in person and own the mistake, even if it costs you. Robert’s first press release for a huge new hotel and catering client spelt the company name wrong, and within twelve hours the agency’s legendary boss, Bob Leaf, had called him in. Robert was an associate director at the time.
Leaf then listed the consequences to him. The board promotion was off, so was a bigger travel and leisure role, and the bonus was gone. Robert then had to apologise to the client’s founder with a £175 bottle of champagne, having rung ahead to find out his favourite.
In the founder’s office he took the blame completely: “it’s entirely my fault. No one else in my team. I’m really sorry.” He did not sack him. He set a condition instead: “you’ll keep it as long as we think that you’re delivering it.”
The mistake: Treating the final check as paperwork, something seniority excuses you from doing.
Why it happens: Confidence grows with experience, so reading your own press release one more time starts to feel beneath you.
The fix: Walk the event, read the launch material aloud, and check what else the client owns before anything is ordered.
The leave-behind that said pubic relations
Robert’s last confession was a pitch to a building society. He thought it went brilliantly, then a member of the client team asked him to check the spelling of his own profession. He had left the letter L out of “public” in the leave-behind document, and the whole room laughed. They did not win the work. His consolation, from the client, was that “it’s consistently spelt wrong”.
Will summed up all four stories in one line: “It’s one tiny thing that has huge importance.” For anyone building a team, that is the case for proper public relations training for your communications team, because checking is a skill you can teach and a habit you can set.
My personal view on this: telling the truth can cost you work
Robert’s boss dealt with the mistake very differently from how I would have, and I said so on the recording. What I liked was that he took the blame and nobody else was blamed.
I told Robert that I will be honest with somebody, and we lose clients; we lose work out of telling somebody what they don’t want to hear. I still think that is the right trade. Honesty only counts as a value if it has cost you something.
Listen to the full episode
Watch the full episode with Robert Minton-Taylor on YouTube, find every episode at embracingmarketingmistakes.co.uk, and read how Leeds Beckett recognised Robert’s work in public relations.
Embracing Marketing Mistakes is the weekly podcast I host with my Prohibition PR co-director Will Ockenden, where marketing and PR leaders share the career mistakes that taught them the most.
Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.
