By: Carolina Lafuente

So you’ve just wrapped up an event one of your clients was hosting, thanks to your social media coverage and the feature you got on yesterday’s 5 p.m. news, the turn-out was excellent. More people are now familiar with your client’s brand, they now have a larger following on social media and sales are estimated to go up.

But what if something went wrong and suddenly negative news comes out about your client’s company? Do you spin the story around? Is that really the right thing to do? Or do you own up to it and apologize?

Public relations specialists sometimes get a bad reputation of being dishonest based on stereotypes. Simply because some brands have had PR nightmares, doesn’t mean we are all made equally. Our jobs are to sell brand images; nowhere does it say this cannot be done by presenting factually based evidence about products. Yes, at times things go wrong. Thankfully there are guidelines to ethics of public relations, which can be found on Public Relations Society of America’s website.

According to the PRSA Code of Ethics, we must “Act promptly to correct erroneous communications for which the member is responsible and investigate the truthfulness and accuracy of information released on behalf of those represented.” In the simplest terms, we must remain transparent. Transparency allows customers to build a trust with brands, in turn creating a loyal customer base. We are in the communications field, let’s communicate effectively.