This morning I got a rather frantic phone call from a publicist....


Seems her company sent out a press release to some bloggers and Steve Rubel picked up on it immediately.
"Can I run with this?" he emailed her. But she says she didn't respond for half an hour, and by then, he'd published a post about their upcoming $900 report on social media.
The release had no embargo, and the publicist complained that she'd since realized that it contained some incorrect information. People were already disparaging the numbers in the report in comments on Micropersuasion. She says she asked Rubel to take down the post, and he, of course, refused.
"What should we do?" she asked me. "Should we respond on his blog post and say that the material in the release was incorrect?" I said no, because Rubel did nothing wrong. Anyone who reads top blogs knows that we all like to jump on statistics about social media.
"If you want to say that you made a mistake, and explain it," I said, " that makes sense. But it would require a complicated explanation and it might just make you look like your report isn't going to be a credible source about social media. I'd leave it alone, unless you're prepared for a long discussion about whether Rubel is right or wrong." I think he's absolutely correct and am sure most bloggers will agree.
What would you have told her?
Life moves fast these days. Marketers who don't realize that will be run over by the ones who do. And yes, she did ask me not to blog this. C'mon. It's a fairly juicy little tidbit. :>)