When it comes to news, timing really is everything.
UK fashion magazine InStyle suffered a bit of an embarassment recently when its March issue featured Heidi Klum on its cover in the same month that the supermodel made a big announcement.
Ms Klum was quoted on the cover talking openly about her love for husband Seal, but the pair publicly announced their split just as the magazine went on sale. Now that’s bad timing.
Image source: celebrity-gossip.net
I found out about Heidi and Seal’s break up via Twitter in the same way that I hear about most celebrity news – friends or magazine feeds tweet the news as it breaks and update their stories as more information is released.
Unfortunately, Twitter delivered the news to me the day before my InStyle subscription arrived, making the magazine seem instantly out of date and, therefore, unreliable.
Monthly magazines have a challenge, then, if they are to stay current in this world of instant news. Was it the responsibility of the InStyle editorial team to check that all was well with their cover star before they went to print, or was it the responsibility of Heidi’s publicist to warn the InStyle team about their client’s upcoming announcement?
I fear that once the magazine photo shoot and interview were done (and the money was paid, of course), Ms. Klum no longer felt that she had a responsibility to the magazine.
In an ideal world, good PR-journalist relationships would negate these situations, but will this embarassing incident cause a permanent rift between InStyle and Heidi Klum and could it result in other fashion magazines changing the way that they work with high profile stars?
Marketing and PR blog by Rebecca Hills 