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Thingish Things

Snake Oil PR (Update from Author)

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Jul• 17•12

Fascinating read in the New York Post today about a PR executive gone bad, gone tell-all author. 

The tactics this guy used to gain publicity for his projects would get him instantly fired from any PR firm in which I have ever worked.  I refuse to believe that this is becoming the norm in the communications industry, where your word and credibility are everything. Fast moving sharks like this often spring onto the scene in politics and corporate PR — you can smell them — but they never last.  They get cuter and cuter with their tricks until they are outed, which never takes long.

Fact checking, no doubt, has gone the way of the typewriter in many circles, but human nature remains. Burn a reporter in this business and you’re done with him or her.  Lie and you’re history with all of them. 

In that spirit, I can assure readers of these pages that my opinions here are 100% accurate. 

UPDATE: The book’s author, Ryan Holiday, is certainly on the ball. He posted these comments within moments of this item being posted. Perhaps he is right.  Perhaps shady PR practices are generational. I can only hope not. 

From Mr. Holiday: 

“That’s fundamentally just not the case–particularly online. Not when the economics are such that bloggers face no consequences for burning their readers. It’s a system where everyone is lining their own pockets. Bloggers are in the same racket as publicists and marketers: getting and monetizing attention. That’s what I decided to expose in this book. I’m not bragging, I’m pulling back the curtain.”

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6 Comments

  1. Ryan Holiday says:

    That’s fundamentally just not the case–particularly online. Not when the economics are such that bloggers face no consequences for burning their readers.

    It’s a system where everyone is lining their own pockets. Bloggers are in the same racket as publicists and marketers: getting and monetizing attention. That’s what I decided to expose in this book. I’m not bragging, I’m pulling back the curtain.

  2. Thanks, Ryan. I did an update for you. Best of luck with the book. And nice ink today.

  3. Ryan Holiday says:

    You got it.

    I think you’ll see this book positioned in the media where I am the bad guy, but that’s not the place I was coming from when I wrote it–it’s contrary to it actually.

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