Good client, bad client: Freelancewritingtips.com

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THERE's an excellent post here by The Wordsmith. That mysterious lady sure knows her stuff.

She has neatly summed up some of the best and worst aspects of dealing with commercial customers.

My "worst of" list would also include those PR clients, about whom you end up thinking: "What exactly could I have done to prevent this happening?" When something goes slightly awry.

Examples? Well there was the woman behind a new invention for the (let's say) catering industry, whose partner decided to tell the reporter from a trade magazine who got in touch: "This isn't her first good idea you know, she also came up with wings for sanitary towels but someone beat her to it, in taking them to market."

(For some reason I now have a mental image of a little pig doing a jig with a basket full of Always, what's that about?)

She was a little disappointed when said reporter then reported on this and in her words: "Made her a laughing stock at a sales meeting" the morning the paper came out.

Then there was another contact, this time from a (let's say) health and safety company who wanted to publicise some work they were doing with a home for vulnerable young people, and the morale this had helped build.

So what does he say when the local evening paper rings up? If you must know he decided to opine: "Half of them are sex offenders you know, they don't want it getting out but they really shouldn't be there."

Guess what, he was also a little disappointed when the paper splashed on this story and funnily enough the "plug" for his firm was missing.

You couldn't make it up.

Now call me naive but in the briefings we gave to these clients about what they might like to tell journalists, we didn't include anecdotes about sanitary towels and rapists. [Linda]