Top 5 turkeys in PR for 2011

You may think the Pilgrims and Indians invented Thanksgiving, but you’d be wrong. I’m here to tell you that it was the NCAA and NFL. I don’t know about you, but I am like a kid in a candy store at this time of year. Starting Thursday, for the next four days, I will become sloth-like on a number of comfy couches in an effort to partake in as many college and pro football games, and college basketball games, as possible while stuffing my face with all sorts of food and washing it down with a few adult beverages. Can. Not. Wait.

But pre-tryptophan, I’m hoping to get one more blog post in. And because college basketball season is just starting, the preseason All-America teams are top of mind. Which got me thinking, who would make the First Team All-Turkey for the PR industry in 2011?

First Team All-Turkey

• Burson-Marsteller. A unanimous selection without a doubt. When TechCrunch decides to give its story about your scandal the vanity url “swallowing puke,” that’s saying something. As PR Pros, we fight the spin doctors stereotype every day. There are a lot of folks working hard to legitimize our industry. Burson and Facebook did their best to set us back by 100 years.
• Penn St. I actually think that in a horribly tragic situation, Penn St. did some things well. For example, they made the right decision to fire Paterno even though it was unpopular within the school community and they acted swiftly. But they made a lot of wrong decisions too. How Mike McQueary is still coaching there, I don’t know. And apparently, Penn St. was deleting negative Facebook comments when the Sanduksy story broke, which tells me they weren’t prepared for a crisis. But bigger picture, the university lost perspective and put college football and a coaching legend above everything else that should have been more important. And they will be paying for that perception-wise for a long, long time.
• Kenneth Cole. If anyone ever asks you what spamming a hashtag means and what it can do to your brand, sit them down and tell them the story of the fashion emperor who put his clothes in front of common sense and lost his mind. As you probably recall, KC thought it would be a good idea to jump into the conversation on Twitter about the political uprisings in #Cairo and use the captive audience to promote his new spring collection. Note to self: Add Twitter to that executive media training.
•  Arthur Brisbane. Remember this quote from the New York Times journalist: “Times readers deserve to be assured that journalists don’t get too cozy with the P.R. professionals who strive to influence coverage. A virtual army of publicists, media specialists and others stands ready every day to infiltrate the news with stories that help their employers.” Oh, Arthur. You were trying to take your colleague David Pogue to task for ethical violations. Who knows, maybe you and David had a fight at recess. But what’s really funny is that your quote and column above came in the shadow of the Rupert Murdoch News Corp hacking scandal. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?
• The Economist. The Economist published this story in December 2010, but I’m still so outraged by it that I’m putting them on the 2011 first team. I still wonder if The Economist got Dick Clark, or someone his age, to write this piece (No offense, Dick. I loved the Pyramid). Because that would be the only explanation for posting such a prehistoric, off-base view of the PR industry. Little PR would like to sit at the big kids table, but they really should just go back to their corner and keep peddling press releases. There was no spin worse in 2011, or even 2010 I’d venture to guess, than this out-of-touch post. A publication like The Economist that supposedly a pillar of journalism and ethical reporting should still be ashamed.

Honorable mention:

• Netflix — Epecially the apology; my wife taught me to never say, “I’m sorry, but…”
• Ragu — How bad was their mistake?
• Kim Kardashian — Yikes!
• MommyNetworks.org — Would you ever pitch a bunch of bloggers, albeit with a “pray and spray” pitch, on behalf of a client you weren’t even working for? Samantha Snyder did.
• Etsy — Remember this company’s philosophy? If you let users sell hate cards and delete Facebook comments against them, the buyers will come.

So who did I forget? Anyone you would add? What turkeys did we forget to “cook.”

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