I have literally hundreds of business cards in my desk that I’ve accumulated throughout the years from trade shows, new business meetings, etc.

They range from editors to CEOs and contain nearly every bit of contact information that you can imagine: address, phone, fax, e-mail. Nearly ever way to contact someone; some even include Skype info for editors.

While all that information is valuable to the recipient, for a CEO it can be detrimental. That’s why we recommend a CEO have a stash of business cards that don’t include their cell or direct phone numbers that they can give to the press. Whyzat?

A few years ago on a press tour, a VP walked into a meeting with an editor to talk about his company’s channel strategy. Unbeknownst to the VP, however, his CEO had met with the same editor a year earlier to discuss the same thing. The editor wanted to follow up on a statement the CEO had made previously, but the VP’s message had changed.

After the VP left, the editor called the CEO on his cell phone, which he had obtained previously from the CEO’s business card he had saved. The editor couldn’t reach the CEO and ran a less than positive story accusing the vendor of changing its channel strategy and concluding with the statement, “Calls to the CEO were not returned.”

Here’s the problem: The CEO was on a plane when the editor called and didn’t get the message until after the story was published. Should the editor have called the PR agency? Yes. But many situations like this can be circumvented by ensuring that you give the reporter your PR agency’s number, or at least an alternate card.

I don't know how many times our team has been asked by a reporter – off the cuff – “Can I get a headshot of the CEO/president of XXX company?" And, it seems like more often than not, there is always a mad-dash by everyone to find a camera to take a quick photo and send it off.

A lot of time can be saved by simply being proactive and getting headshots taken of key executives of the company. Because reporters are always on deadline, and the faster you can get information to them, the better chance you have of getting that information included in the article.

And that's using your head(shot)

Jeremy Kartchner
Senior Accounts Director