Public Relations is the art of using mass communication to change how people feel about politicians, celebrities, products, and especially entire corporations. One Spanish woman, Carla Forcada, felt she had the capacity to do this work quite well. The company where she applied to work, Impulsa Comunicación, had other thoughts on the matter. Ever mindful of the benefits of Public Relations, Forcada screen cap’d their message to her and aided them in making it reach further than they ever imagined:

 

The important part of the message (at least the part important for our purposes) reads:

Hola Carla

Gracias x tu CV … justo en estos momentos estamos en un proceso de selección pero buscamos un chico porque las cuentas en las que trabajará son Carglass y Coca-Cola… y créeme, necesitan un hombre para aguantar el ritmo, las visitas, saber de producción, etc.

Impulsa, for those not able to read Spanish, is saying Hi to Forcada, thanking her for the CV/resumé, and proceeding to let her know that they are already in the selection process, but won’t be considering her as a candidate because the big name clients like Carglass and Coca-Cola require a man – definitely not a woman, like Forcada – because their accounts require someone with the capacity to handle the pace of the work, manage clients during in-person meetings, and understand the ins & outs of running a business.

How quaint!

Well, the BBC reports that Forcada was eager to prove that she did know something about the public relations business, at least, and began a campaign of attaching her screenshot of Impulsa’s message to tweets that she sent to major corporations who use Impulsa and also generally attached them to the product-related twitter streams of those companies to make sure they got public exposure. And boy, howdy, did they ever!

Coca-Cola fired Impulsa and Carglass had to send out a public message condemning Impulsa and announcing publicly that they had already privately expressed their displeasure directly to the marketing consultants.

I’m not sure, being no expert in anything to do with public relations, but it certainly seems to me that she has demonstrated her talent for changing public perceptions of a corporate brand in ways that affect cash flow!

Alas, it may be too late for Impulsa to give Forcada a job. Their website was down entirely at last report, and the only public communication that they were able to make widely enough to attract the BBC’s notice was that they felt that their messaging to Forcada had been misunderstood.

Which, if you ask me, is just begging Carglass to fire them too, and anyone else that hasn’t dumped them already (assuming that they manage to stay in business at all). If your job is public relations but you can’t keep your own corporate brand out of the mud because your communications are just too darn easily misunderstood … perhaps you don’t have a demonstrated talent for the job?

Just asking questions here!