11 Jan PR is like…bad breath??
Occasionally you will all have the opportunity to ruminate on the old maxim that “any press is good press.” This week I had the audacity to vex our local gossip columnist. You can read the lovely article here if you like. Basically, I didn’t give this woman what she wanted. In fact, I couldn’t. Now there are really two sides to this story. The first one is the obvious lesson that you will always have small town journalists who have the “big fish in the little pond” power complex. Personally no one has ever come at me with quite this amount of vitriol before, but she is known for taking out her own personal unhappiness (or temper tantrums) very publicly so it was bound to happen at some point.
On the other side, though, I am lucky to have a very savvy friend who advised me that bad PR is like bad breath…it’s better than no breath at all. The client, perhaps in part due to my pissing off this woman, ended up getting quite a bit of press in the process. And we got several calls about his new book. So did I fall on the sword for him? I don’t know. Did I test the tiny scribe’s ire on purpose in order to get her attention? The answer to that one will go with me to my grave. In the meantime I need to go answer the phone. It’s been ringing off the hook since the article ran!