As PR peeps, we work extremely hard to raise the profile of our clients in any way we can. But for some people, such as Olympic gold-winning cyclist Sir Chris Hoy, becoming centre of media attention seems to come entirely by accident.

The 35-year old Scot has just become one of the leading topics of conversation amongst footie fans on social networking site Twitter purely by virtue of having a name that is remarkably similar to FA match official Chris Foy.

Following several controversial refereeing decisions by Foy during Sunday’s Premiership clash between Stoke and Tottenham, the four-times Olympic champion inadvertently became the target of widespread verbal abuse from disgruntled Spurs fans on the social media platform.

The cyclist then tweeted about how he’d been getting amusing grief from Spurs fans and put the record straight by saying that he neither needed glasses nor led a double life as a football referee.

Although the story has tickled many practitioners in the public relations community, it does, however, carry a more serious PR message behind it.

And this is that mistaken identity is not always a laughing matter when it comes to PR.

We only have to look at TV programmes such as BBC’s consumer magazine Watchdog to realise that the poor reputation of one company can very often have a serious impact on others that trade under a similar name.

And that is why programme presenter Matt Allwright always takes the trouble to point out how each of his featured rogue traders is not to be confused with other companies of a similar name at the end of every case on the show.