Gawker
flackery
Posts Tagged “
Edelman
”
Timing Is Everything
No sooner did we post our handy numbered list of lying flacks yesterday than #7 on the list, former Time Warner flack Danielle Perissi, announced she was taking a job at #5 on the list, Edelman! This will really cut down on your calling-around time when you need to find out nothing at all. [Previously]
No sooner did we post our handy numbered list of lying flacks yesterday than #7 on the list, former Time Warner flack Danielle Perissi, announced she was taking a job at #5 on the list, Edelman! This will really cut down on your calling-around time when you need to find out nothing at all. [Previously]
flackery
public relations
The Wal-Mart PR Machine Plays Well With Others
Back in 2005, two activist groups—Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch—launched campaigns to kick Wal-Mart's ass in the media. Which they did quite successfully for a while. The soulless retailer spent untold millions on a huge, political-style PR campaign from our friends at Edelman to fight back against the criticisms of them for everything from poor health care to union busting. But the Times reports today that Edelman's Wal-Mart war room shut down months ago, and the torrent of news stories about the company's flaws has died down. Why? Because Wal-Mart has adopted a philosophy of working with critics, and made their enemies their friends. This is either evidence of progress, or cause for despair. Since the company is still a horrible union buster, we'll go with "despair." More »
controversy
Dove Denies New Yorker Hypocrisy Allegations
Beauty product purveyor Dove has finally responded to allegations, first reported in a New Yorker story, that the company retouched photos of the "Real" women in its "Campaign for Real Beauty" ads. Which would make them big hypocrites. But according to a statement from Dove this morning (via its PR agency, Edelman), the New Yorker was wrong. The company even got a quotable refutation from controversy-courting celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz! Their full denial is after the jump. More »
astroturf
Fake Bloggers, Go Directly To Jail!
Wow! As a nerd on the PR and marketing beat I find this to be absolutely astounding and heartening: the UK is about to make it a crime for companies to misrepresent themselves as consumers in their online marketing. That means, for example, that a company setting up a fake blog to hype its own products could be prosecuted, fined, and jailed. Free speech? Whatever. This is an awesome development. And bloggers can be locked up, too! More »
public relations
Fun: Have Dinner With Richard Edelman And Discuss Cancer
Richard Edelman, the touchy CEO of the massive Wal-Mart supporting PR firm Edelman, is going above and beyond for his client AdMeTech, a prostate cancer foundation. He's inviting a select group of "key opinion leaders"/ perfect strangers to his own apartment for dinner, where he will discuss his own experience with a false positive exam for prostate cancer. Sounds...interesting! (Note: we debated over whether it would be wrong to publish this until we discovered that Edelman already wrote all about his prostate exam on his blog). Points to him for taking up a good cause, but we...have some other thing to do that night. Not that we were invited in the first place. The full email enticing the opinion leaders to this "robust discussion" of prostates, after the jump. More »
public relations
Liberal Edelman Expands Warmonger Flack Team
Edelman, the massive Wal-Mart-touting PR firm with the blog-watching CEO, has hired Katie Levinson, who is fresh off her gig as the communications director for the wildly successful Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign. She's also worked in PR roles for the Republican National Committee, the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign, and the Bush White House [PRNewser]. Levinson will doubtless be a valuable addition to Edelman's stable of well-connected Republican operatives who have built careers serving the public through the promotion of neoconservatism. And CEO Richard Edelman (pictured) should be commended on his evenhandedness, since he's a committed Democrat! More »
public relations
The Secret To All Good PR: A Sandwich
So many PR tactics are shrouded in secrecy: off-the-record briefings, front groups, "file sharing." And lots of things that PR firms get paid a lot of money to do—devise corny slogans, make pretty marketing materials that get ignored, or think up new and creative ways to say "no comment"—are really big wastes of money. There is only one real live PR tactic that consistently works. It is maddeningly effective at getting reporters to like flacks, and by extension, their awful clients. Even the ones who know better! It preys on human instinct. It's called lunch. More »
rejoinder
Edelman Is A Soulless, Wal-Mart Shilling Firm That Shouldn't Lecture About Ethics
Richard— We appreciate your own personal commitment to talking about ethics in PR. I would even go so far as to say that you believe what you say, and say it in good faith, most of the time. But we're not gonna be taking down the post about your (alleged!) media training lying incident. And here's why: More »
public relations
Edelman CEO Responds To Gawker
From Richard Edelman, CEO of the massive PR agency Edelman, in response to yesterday's tip about Edelman encouraging lying to reporters during media training: "Your post on Edelman today about an unnamed ad and marketing person alleging that we instruct our clients to lie as part of our media training is completely false and needs to be taken down. you bet we take ethics seriously. We advise our clients to be transparent, to tell the truth always but especially in crisis. That is only way to be in business for 55 years as a reputable pr firm. So if you want to discuss then call me at [Redacted]. I hope to hear from you. I don't go for cheap shots from undisclosed sources."
public relations
