The fracas at the Democratic convention because of the WikiLeaks emails once again proves what I’ve always preached to PR practitioners: Always be careful of what you put in writing and what you say, in person or over the phone. With all the hacking going on it’s now more important than ever to remember that “mum’s the word.”
Here are some do's and don’ts that should be practiced by people in our profession.
Emails: Never email anything that a client says is confidential to others in your agency. Walk it over to members of your team. If you have to relay the information to other offices, don’t do it via office phones or smartphones. Overnight the information.
Discussing confidential information: This should never be done in a setting with other people nearby, even members of your agency. Take a walk around the block and discuss it outside of the office.
Your briefcase: It’s dangerous to carry confidential information in a briefcase filled with other documents. When looking through your briefcase it’s easy for the confidential information to be misplaced or fall out.
Marking an envelope with a confidential stamp: Handwriting on the envelope “personal” is my preferred method, but there is no guarantee that the envelope will not be opened only by the person for whom it was intended.
Receiving confidential information by mistake: Don’t mention it to anyone in your organization. Instead, inform the individual who sent the information and let that individual dictate what should be done. Also, as soon as you see that the information wasn’t meant for you, stop reading it.
I once received by mistake a transcript of a telephone call between an executive of a client’s company and the governor of his state. I called the client and was told not to send it back by messenger; we arranged to meet and I personally returned it. Then he took me to lunch. In all the years I worked with that client the matter was never again discussed.
On public transportation: I once traveled by airplane to a client meeting to unveil a new program. When we were done with the presentation, our client said he was instructed by a top marketing executive not to let us leave until we were questioned by the exec. What had happened was that we were on the same airplane with the marketing exec and an advertising team that was presenting their plans for a new product rollout. The ad team was discussing their plans on the plane, just one row ahead of the marketing exec. We were told that three different agencies were presenting that afternoon and the exec didn’t know which team was from the ad agency. When it was our turn to be questioned, we were told what happened, received an apology for detaining us and were told the penalty for discussing client information in public was to lose the account, which the ad agency did.
Early in my PR career, I worked on local, statewide and national PR campaigns before joining Burson-Marsteller, where as a senior VP/senior counselor I restructured, managed and played key roles in some of the most significant national and international sports and non-sports programs and traveled the world with high-ranking foreign government officials as a media advisor. So protecting client information, even non-sensitive information, was always in my DNA.
My personal credo is that information not to be distributed to the media should never be discussed in public places and should only be distributed or discussed on a need-to-know basis. That’s a good rule to follow. But too often young PR practitioners are so proud of their contributions to client programs that I’ve heard them discussed while they were unwinding at the bar. They should be reminded of the World War 2 slogan, “loose lips sink ships.”
Arthur Solomon is a former journalist and was a SVP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller. He is a frequent contributor to PR publications, consults and serves on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at: [email protected]