'Dear Intern' moments in Marketing and Communications
Marcomms professionals add their often painful spin on 'To err is human; to forgive, divine.'
What happens when a large company like HBO, which caters to tens of millions of subscribers, accidentally sends a test email to a section of these subscribers?
HBO subsequently apologized and explained that "...as the jokes pile in, it was the intern." Although the original post was from 2021, this #DearIntern thread recently inspired folks to share their mistakes as well on social media thanks to a TikTok reel.
In this post, you will read about:
Three common types of avoidable mistakes
Go beyond spellcheck to catch mistakes
Recovering quickly when someone points out mistakes
Three Common Types of Avoidable Mistakes
You've probably heard the phrase 'To err is human; to forgive, divine.'
It was written by the English poet Alexander Pope, in his poem An Essay on Criticism. This is an attitude that most professionals adopt with regard to these three common mistakes (Misspelling names, Sending to a wrong email list and Typos).
So long as these mistakes aren't occurring regularly, your audience's first instinct is probably to forgive. Especially since nobody can guarantee that they will not make such mistakes in the future!
Pro Tip: Check before and after sending communications or content. For social media content, establish a process where there's always someone else proofreading. Everyone understands mistakes do occur but it is far better to correct yourself than for someone to correct you.
Go beyond spellcheck to catch mistakes
The example below is probably the most painful where 'Alan' was misspelled as 'Ana*'. The problem is that most spellcheckers will not pick up these problems, so it is on you to manually proofread names.
In addition, for folks whose mother tongue is not Chinese but writing Chinese emails (such as myself), it is an excellent idea to spell recipient names in English and avoid typing Chinese names to minimize your error rate.
Pro Tip: Before you pass content to a proofreader, use spellcheck tools to make this process more efficient. For those who need extra assurance to catch spelling errors in English and Chinese, I recommend Language Tool which offers spellcheck in these languages as well as others.
Recovering quickly when someone points out mistakes
Unfortunately, rounds of proofreading and using a spellchecker don't mean that mistakes will not happen. Being overly defensive is often a poor strategy when someone points out these mistakes.
A better idea is to own and be open about these mistakes like what Dunkin Donuts did in their recent post about 'coke(cold) brew'. With such responses, you are likely to find that such accountability goes a long way to building trust.
If you are lucky, you may run into a nice client who politely pointed out an 'asses(assets)' typo to Katie Kregan below. Though she did not mention her response, she probably apologized and promised to deliver the materials promptly.
Pro Tip: If a mistake is made on social media, it is essential to use a social media monitoring tool such as Meltwater to find out the extent of the negative impact to scale your response accordingly.
As Melanie Courtright puts it: #dearintern You will make mistakes. Just be sure to Own them, Learn from them, and Move On from them. Like we all did.
JX Tan, Author of The Tao of Communications newsletter, former head of international communications and PR at BGI Genomics, and former head of content (APAC) at PR Newswire. Get in touch to discuss how to share your #dearintern moments. (LinkedIn)