Lamest duck

It was an intense high chatter PR week that began with Osama bin Looney lobbing verbal and visual bombs from a cave in Pakistan, and ending with George Bush, the Great Bumbler, desperately seeking understanding and legitimacy in a world disinclined to bestow either. Bush’s spin of “building on success” comes three years after “Mission Accomplished.” What does it mean? He intends to pull back a fraction of the 30,000 more troops that he recently sent in to finish the job that he says was already completed. Stripped bare of Rove, standing alone even among Republicans, Bush is looking and sounding more and more like Alfred E. Neumann: “What me worry?” There are lame duck Presidents and then there are lamer ducks and then there is the lamest. Where does Bush’s legacy lie?

Jaffe gags on juice

Speaking of lame spin, Joe Jaffe took a much deserved thumping on Strumpette last week – Joe Jaffe’s Fall From Grace - for transparent, grandiose, comical obfuscations that strike a stake deeper into the writhing sub life form formerly called social media. Jaffe and gang at crayon launched a much ballyhooed stinko “social media” program for Coke called Virtual Thirst, described by Jaffe like this:

“Virtual Thirst is about interpreting anything along the continuum of ‘the metaphorical quenching of thirst’ to expressing the essence of the Coke brand and what it means to you.”

Since nobody could figure out what that meant it seems that few people entered the contest and the campaign did not generate enthusiasm among the virtual/video head cases that should be obsessively swigging Coke as they are glued to their computers and flying avatars around Second Life.

Jaffe and the crayon crew rode the social media boom for six months of its total life span. Then they reportedly lost clients and trimmed staff. As Rumsfeld used to say: “stuff happens.” But they lost credibility with Jaffe’s psychedelic rationalizations and tripped out avataristic delusions that would be rejected in any PR 101 class. You notice that whenever the word of mouth/ social media gang can’t justify a campaign with a result they call it an exercise in “branding”? Is that how MWW will spin its blogola program for Nikon? You have to wonder how valuable an endorsement a Jaffe blog post is to Nikon and MWW. Priceless or useless?

Richard lasts

I am going to commit blasphemy here on Strumpette and offer congratulations to Richard Edelman. This month marks the three year anniversary of his blog, 6 A.M.. Richard takes his lumps here and elsewhere but he blogs consistently and thoughtfully on a professional level. Yes, many posts start with a drink or lunch he is having with an important journalist or “thought leader” and end with mention of an Edelman client or research paper but what is a CEO to do? Look around to his peers at the other top PR firms and you see stale or abandoned blogs, cursory self-serving posts, a real fear of committing thoughts to scrutiny and posterity. Lately, Richard writes a lot less about the “revolution” in media and PR and a lot more about the traditions of the business and his family. His audience is more internal (employees, clients) than external (the PR business and the public) and he knows it. He jumped out into “new media” early, established the lead, and he still holds it. Others are either playing catch-up or have given up altogether.

Mark Rose is editor of PRBlogNews - a web publication focusing on public relations practices in the digital age.