40% of all amateur PRs catch fire.
Tesla's PR flack needs to demonstrate professionalism rather than come across as a shouty amateur. Despite the lady's self-proclaimed brilliance, she seems about as recommendable to a corporate client as more Indians were to Custer.
There are two things even the most junior PR learns to appreciate when dealing with media:
1. If a publication doesn't carry advertising from you, then you need it more than it needs you.
2. As (1)
The flack in this case is in the business of trying to get as much in the way of beneficial free column inches as possible because advertising's expensive and an ad merely raises awareness, it doesn't actually sell anything. (Anything else a flack says about her / his work is bullshit: 'reputation management' etc et al. )
Patently nervous about the ability of Tesla's corporate PR to handle, well, anything awkward at all, this flack's tactic is to (a) insult media's intelligence by refusing to advise of anything even slightly discomforting (including product recalls) and then (b) bitch-slap a particular Organ of Illumination for having the nerve to play out at Tesla's expense.
Combine the two together, and you have a classic illustration of how Public Relations in the wrong hands really can lose friends and antagonise people.
Anyway. Carry on regardless, El Reg. Mouthy PRs are not what the profession needs, and especially PRs who imagine they have some kind of power to wield when as any fule knoweth, media only trembles when the Ad Manager announces the loss of a megabucks advertiser because of those daft twats in Editorial.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
