5 nightmares that haunt PR pros

Public relations pros certainly have their share of nightmarish experiences.

Those debacles can, however, offer an opportunity to learn and improve.

PR is consistently ranked among the top 10 most stressful jobs, largely due to emerging crises, tight deadlines, steep learning curves, demanding clients and busy journalists. Those are fairly standard in a given workweek. Then there are the other, career-scarring events.

Here are five nightmares—incidents beyond the PR pale—that top my list:

1. Having your pitch called out in an article

For most PR pros, this is the ultimate embarrassment. This is not just the lazy journalism that occurs when a reporter copies and pastes your pitch as the intro to their article, or maybe even uses the subject line as their title. (Hey, we’ll take it; that’s controlled messaging right there.) No, this is when a journalist calls out your pitch for its ineffectiveness, buzzwords, lack of embargo, or anything else that ticked them off.