Hell hath no fury like a PR firm scorned
Posted on December 6, 2007 by Martin Zagorsek
In the era of digital marketing, PR is arguably even more important than it was offline - not only is every traditional media publication online, the mob of blogs and user comments quickly multiply the impact of any newsworthy story. But what’s changed very little is the way mainstream PR gets done - clients hire PR firms, who write press releases, which they pitch to reporters, etc.
Yesterday, Hill & Knowlton, one of the more blue-chip PR firms in the country, issued a press release of their own claiming that “60 percent of consumers polled agreed that the government should regulate the sale of games deemed mature or violent.”
Now this is odd.. PR firms usually write press releases for clients, rather than releasing their own. Hill & Knowlton doesn’t even have any clients in the games industry. But the plot quickly thickened - a rebuttal by the ESA, the industry trade association, revealed that Hill & Knowlton had commissioned the research on spec in the hopes of winning the ESA as a client. When the ESA turned them down, Hill & Knowlton released the study results (spun in a way that made the ESA look bad, natch), apparently out of pure spite.
Sounds pretty offline so far, no? But thanks to the magic of blogs, RSS feeds, comments and forums, even old-school battles between regulators and industry groups (check out the 400+ comments!) are now playing out online, and this one involves public figures as big as Hillary Clinton. Whenever the stakes get high enough, you can be sure that offline dirty tricks will soon be just as commonplace in the online world.
Sphere: Related Content» Filed Under Uncategorized
Comments
Leave a Reply
Subscribe via FeedBurner
