The Choice of PR Firms for the MIA, Genius or Insanity?
Cohn & Wolfe turned up last week as the Marble Institutes new Public Relations firm. Didn’t give it much thought till Christina did some digging around.
Cohn & Wolfe are a crisis management firm, who you call when not only the house is on fire, but your entire neighbor hood. They must be good at it, taking millions of dollars in fees from big tobacco companies like Phillip Morris.
Cohn & Wolfe got caught a few years ago conducting a viral marketing campaign, one that offended this guy and others. It seems they used a fictional marketing identity to comment on an intensely personal blog site, with a link to their marketing spiel. Cohn & Wolfe issued an apology that wasn’t an apology, leading one to wonder what their corporate culture will allow.
Still, the most interesting thing is the choice of such an expensive PR firm and one with severely stained hands from dealing with the tobacco industry. Still it makes some sense logically, both the tobacco industry and the stone industry were harming consumers with their product in the same way, lung cancer. It follows that Cohn & Wolfe will understand the science behind the issues. After all, cigarette smoke has a very high radioactive content.
Still, the MIA’s choice of PR firms shows the reality of what they face. They need a firm with experience in the potential cancer risks of a product, and one that doesn’t mind getting down in the dirt to defend a known health risk product. Still, it will be interesting if the media holds this against the MIA.
Upon learning that Cohn & Wolfe was such a large firm, one wonders why the massive mistakes were made late last week and continued into this week. An inept intern at Cohn & Wolfe running the MIA effort? An out of control client? How is it possible that they would make claims of EPA support, only to have to retract days later? How is it possible that they would hand over to their opposition their entire strategy, including form letters, instructions to their members, and talking points?
So I am left wondering if the MIA’s choice of PR firms is going to help them or harm them. Regardless, the choice of firms has make it easy to dismiss their rebuttals.
Barry Scott indeed….. I think we will be seeing a lot of Barry Scotts on the inter net.
One Response to 'The Choice of PR Firms for the MIA, Genius or Insanity?'
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on August 3rd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I received a wonderful email from a firm that works in Crisis Managment on this subject. It seems that accepting a certain type of customer can reflect poorly on the firm, as well as providing a statement on the client’s mindset as well.
Glad to see that I wasn’t the only one that thought this combonation of client/PR firm was a poor choice for both. Still given a choice, a clueless enemy is a good thing.