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Propaganda
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Propaganda
books
How Bottled Water Hypnotized Us All
Bottled water is a bit like smoking: deep down, we all knew there was something wrong with it from day one. Environmentalism has been a widespread subject in our public consciousness for more than 30 years now. Did anyone really believe that getting our water out of 16-ounce plastic bottles would be an efficient long-term solution for humanity? Despite that, the bottled water industry has done an admirable job using sly marketing magic to make us all feel like chemical-ridden cheapskates for drinking out of the tap. And a new book called Bottlemania breaks down the corporate spin techniques in a straightforward way that already has me drinking exclusively out of the toilet: More »
Public relations
The Case Against "Crazy Irena Briganti," From Those Who Know Her Best
"The Irena Briganti that I know is funny, hard-working and always willing to help out a colleague-no matter how busy she is," wrote Fox Television flack Erica Keane yesterday, in response to our "smear" of Briganti, Fox News boss Roger Ailes' PR attack-dog-in-chief. But Keane is in the minority in her assessment of Briganti's charm. Our post on her generated perhaps the biggest outpouring of responses we've had since Bloomberg staffers got the chance to vent about horrid boss Matthew Winkler. There was a wellspring of resentment against the Fox News flack just waiting to come out—and much of it came to us unsolicited. Everyone from journalists to Briganti's fellow News Corp. employees weighed in. "She-devil" is among the more middle-of-the-road descriptions. After the jump, all you'll need to know about Briganti's reputation—and her handful of obligatory defenders: More »
From the archives
Roger Ailes' History Of Media Manipulation
Fox bossman Roger Ailes is the best teacher any media attack flack could have. He's been screwing with the media for decades. Ailes is the man who perfected the art of hammering the media with charges of bias in order to deflect negative coverage from oneself. Kerwin Swint's new biography of him, Dark Genius, has plenty of examples from throughout his entire career. And you have to hand it to Ailes: his clients—all the way up to the President—got the best media haranguing tactics money can buy: More »
flackery
Madonna's Rep Added To Prestigious List Of Lying Flacks
All those rumors about Madonna and Guy Ritchie possibly getting a divorce? Not to worry: Madonna's flack, Liz Rosenberg, says publicly that "There are no divorce plans." But wait—is that the same Liz Rosenberg who assured everyone in 2006 that Madonna was not adopting a baby in Malawi? Yes it is! That would be a confirmed lie, meaning that Rosenberg gets added to our always-open list of lying flacks—we've handily numbered seven of them for you, after the jump: More »
spin
Play The Teen Sex Ad Blame Game!
The fantastically transgressive teen sex ad yesterday from middlebrow retailer JC Penney turned out not to be sanctioned by the company, predictably. That was just too much to hope for. But the fun part now is watching the fallout—after all, can you fucking imagine how pissed the JC Penney people are right now? They are very pissed. They company sent us a statement disavowing the ad last night, and now the ad agency has just sent its own statement explaining how it had, uh, nothing to do with this salacious underage sex production. Now we're just waiting for the third party—who is likely getting screamed at very loudly right now—to take responsibility. Official statements from the two main players after the jump, and our prediction for the next one to come: More »
Television
Incompetent US Propaganda Network Surprisingly Unpopular Among Arabs
Four years ago, the US government had a bright idea: "Let's launch a propaganda-spouting TV news network in the Arab world," the government said. "We'll spend $350 million on it, but we'll staff it with incompetent people, ensure the programming is dull and clumsy, and hopefully create a counterproductive and ill-conceived boondoggle that will go down in history as one of the stupidest 'hearts and minds' campaigns of the new century!" And that's exactly what they did. Except it didn't turn out quite that well. More »
Television
Tiger Woods Injured, World Stops Caring About Golf; Advertisers 'Screwed'
Tiger Woods has announced that he tore his ACL and will miss the rest of the golf season, so it's time to despair, toss your golf clubs in the water, and sell any investments you have in any company remotely connected with golf as fast as possible. TV networks that show golf tournaments and the companies that advertise on those broadcasts are doing exactly that right now, although with slow, undetectable movements, and with a broad smile on their face for the press. "Golf will be fine!" they'll say, with their stomachs sinking as they look at the numerical proof of the "Tiger Effect": More »
flackery
Mike Sitrick, Ninja Master Of The Dark Art Of Spin
A lawyer named Jeremy Pitcock got fired last year, and his firm put a fine point on his dismissal: they issued a press release attributing his firing to "extremely inappropriate personal conduct." That's, uh, not considered a good thing to have on your resume in the legal world. Turns out that the law firm crafted the release with the help of Sitrick & Co., the super high-powered PR firm run by shadowy, high-priced crisis guru Mike Sitrick. Now Pitcock is suing Sitrick and his old firm for $90 million, charging them with ruining his reputation over what he says was simply a misguided and consensual kiss after a drunken night at a bar. The bigger question is, doesn't Sitrick have more important things to do than get embroiled in a petty sexual harassment dismissal? Answer: not really! More »
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 »
mysteries
Incompetent Facebook Leaves Open Back Door To Stalker Feature
Aha—Facebook has issued a statement on the mysterious stalker feature that we spent all day covering: "Facebook tries to surface the people we think are most important to users to make it easier and faster for them to navigate the site and find what they are looking for...The search drop down is not a list of those that have searched for the user. It is also not a list of people whose profile the user has viewed the most or who have viewed the user's profile the most. To avoid any confusion, this will no longer appear." See, you were too stupid to handle it! But wait: as our commenters figured out in about one minute flat, typing a period (".") in the search box brings up the same five-person list. And are they really your "most important users?" Random. We urge continued experimentation.
flackery
Jim Strzalkowski Simply Must Tell You The Irrelevant News!!
What's the word on the street these days? "Word on the street is that Brian Anthony is also fighting hard to open for Madonna on her upcoming "Hard Candy" tour." This Brian Anthony, who is some type of music maker, did a mashup of his music with Madonna's and put it on his Myspace page. Now, "The 'Worked Up!' mash-up is being passed around the Madonna camp and the buzz is BIG on it." How can we be so sure? Because we got the information firsthand, in a hilariously inept press release from Jim Strzalkowski, fantabulous PR man—and fan—to the D-list stars! More »
blog wars
WSJ Does Good Imitation Of Portfolio Blogger
"Jack Flack" at Portfolio.com is one of a small handful of bloggers who writes things that are interesting and intelligent about corporate PR. One of his trademark constructions is "Parsing XYZ," where he takes some statement or speech or press release full of corporate doublespeak and decodes it. I identify him so closely with that stuff that I even gave him credit the last time I used the word "Parsing!" But not so for the Wall Street Journal, which ran a column last weekend with a premise virtually identical [see update also, below] to an earlier Jack Flack column: More »
spin
The Pentagon Has Ronn [sic] Torossian's Support
The New York Times' big front page investigative story on Sunday about the tight connections between ex-military "analysts" on news programs and the Pentagon's PR machine was a solid re-affirmation of most people's suspicions that they, along with much of the media at large, were all play-acting in the inevitable march to war. The piece was hugely comprehensive, but it did lack the input of one man: incompetent superflack Ronn [sic] Torossian, head of the press-friendly agency 5WPR! Luckily, Ronn has chimed in with his advice to all of you who may have been upset by the story of undercover warmongering propaganda: chill. It's all just PR 101. More »
what the hell happened
A Brief History of the Longest Primaries Ever
So! Tonight! Pennsylvania's Primary! The current CW sez Clinton will win—her internal numbers have her 11 points ahead, public polling has a slightly narrower margin. But she needs a HUGE win to, uh, overtake Obama in the popular vote. The delegate thing? Well, that's a much harder gap to close. Hey, remember how Hil was inevitable? Anyone? It was less than a year ago that she was the unstoppable presumptive nominee. What happened? We went back in time, with our magic Googling time machine, to dissect 18 months of campaign spin, media narratives, and pundit bullshit to figure out how Senator Hillary Clinton went from our next President to this increasingly desperate-looking figure. More »
nightlife
PR Magic Turns Stabbing Into Cute Foible Of The Rich
Former nightlife big shot and current honest blogger Steve Lewis reminisces today about his experiences with the clubland PR business. He starts out by saying, "When I used to hire PR it was for damage control." Not for strategic brand building outreach? Such a forthright man! Then he tells a story about a long-ago high profile stabbing incident that made its way onto Page Six; it sums up everything you need to know about spin, gossip, and the dangers of imaginary caviar forks: More »
public relations
PR Experts To Spitzer: Uh, You're Toast
When the Spitzer sex scandal broke yesterday, we got in touch with a couple of real live crisis PR professionals to find out what sorts of devious spin moves they would use to help rescue the Governor's career and his reputation from dishonor. If Eliot came to them, cash in hand, asking for public salvation, how would they do it? Their answer: what are we, magicians? More »
the death of print
