It's a spooky season, and nothing haunts a brand like a PR disaster. While everyone else is carving pumpkins, let’s carve out the biggest mistakes that turn campaigns into horror stories.

If you’ve ever been ghosted by a journalist, buried under bad headlines, or resurrecting your reputation from the dead, this one’s for you. Here are five PR nightmares every brand should avoid, and how to slay them before they crawl out of the grave.

1. The Ghosting Journalist

You crafted the perfect pitch, hit send, and waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. Ghosted.

Here’s the thing: journalists don’t ghost people, they ghost bad pitches.

Cut the fluff. Ditch the “Hope this finds you well” curse. Lead with a headline, not a greeting. Make it relevant, data-driven, and timely. And for the love of all things PR, personalize it like you mean it.

2. The Zombie Press Release

It’s long, it’s lifeless, and somehow it keeps coming back. You know the one, paragraphs of jargon no one reads, floating through inboxes like a corporate corpse.

Press releases aren’t your story; they’re your receipts.

Your real PR power comes from storytelling, human, emotional, relevant storytelling that makes people feel something. The release should support your story, not suffocate it.

3. The Crisis That Won’t Die

That one bad headline from years ago? Still haunting your Google results. Welcome to reputation purgatory.

You don’t bury it; you bury it with better stories. Overcommunicate. Get transparent. Flood the internet with credible content that reflects who you are now. The only thing scarier than bad press is silence.

4. The Haunted Brand Voice

If your brand sounds like every other company in your industry, congratulations, you’ve become invisible.

Ditch the corporate tone. Talk like a person. Use words your audience actually says. Great PR doesn’t sound perfect; it sounds personal.

Your brand should haunt people, in a good way. The kind of message that sticks in their head long after they scroll past.

5. The Social Media Possession

One wrong tweet, and suddenly you’re trending for all the wrong reasons.

Pause before panic-posting. Don’t delete, deflect, or gaslight. Own it, clarify it, fix it fast.

Audiences don’t expect perfection; they expect accountability. Handling a PR crisis with honesty builds more trust than pretending it didn’t happen.

Final Takeaway

PR nightmares don’t have to be fatal. Every disaster can become a redemption arc if you know how to pivot fast and own the narrative.

At Don’t Be a Little Pitch, we don’t run from bad press, we rewrite it. We turn skeletons in the closet into storylines that convert.

Because when it comes to reputation, it’s not about avoiding fear... it’s about mastering it.

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