Why Big PR can be dangerous to your business health

Gene Weingarten from the Washington Post writes an article based on a PR pitch the Post received from the flak from the US National Funeral Directors Association. The pitch was trying to get interest in doing a story about how the funeral industry would respond in the case of a catyclismic terror attack or a pandemic.

Here's an excerpt from Weingarten's phone call back to the funeral industry flak:

"Me: I am in receipt of a pitch you sent to a reporter at The Washington Post on behalf of a client. I am summarizing here, but basically you begin by noting that The Post has recently been covering the controversy over the sale of port management contracts to an Arab Muslim country. Then, employing a non sequitur of breathtaking proportions, or possibly one of the most tasteless transitions in the history of written communication, you say that, in a related development, you represent the National Funeral Directors Association.

Heather: This is making me nervous, as a PR professional.

Me: So, I kept reading. And, basically -- correct me if I am wrong here -- in an effort to garner good publicity for your clients, you are proposing a positive story on how funeral directors will be helping us bury our dead in the event of a terrorist holocaust that will annihilate thousands of people.

Heather: Well, you are incorrect. That is not in context.

Me: Okay, here's the context: 'To follow-up on the articles being written in the Post about Bush's port deals, John Fitch, VP of Advocacy for the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA), can discuss how America is planning to handle the potential mass fatalities from a terrorism standpoint -- and perhaps more importantly to you, how small business owners (funeral directors) will play an important role. Most funeral homes are owned by the same family for an average of four generations.'

Heather: Well, yes. The roles they will play in mass fatalities."

Complete lunacy.

This is exactly the kind of stuff that happens because the client has a bad idea and the PR agency doesn't have the brains or guts to tell them it is bad. And these things make it into the open because many agencies are more interested in billing time on a project - no matter what it is - than they are in giving sound advice.

During my agency time, I ran across my share of these kinds of nuclear ideas. Should the idea be put into motion, it is sure to leave everyone involved radioactive for some time to come. But hey, the agency makes their numbers.

UPDATE: Apparently Small PR can be bad for your business health too. I was following up on this story and apparently the PR newbie responsible for this pitch works for a small PR agency in Maryland. By bad. But I still stand by my opinion that large PR firms are often on the dispensing end of bad ideas and have lived through plenty of them. I guess the lesson here is bad judgement has no bounds.