Self-Promotion
Now here’s a new one: a self-proclaimed “well-known” New York PR executive issued a press release yesterday with the sole purpose of drawing attention to himself and his business. Glomming on to AOL’s recent advertising deal with Google and the “icky” new ads suddenly popping on AOL’s site, Jeff Barge took it upon himself to issue “a warning” to the company.
Now, it’s one thing to blog to raise one’s profile, but something different to spring for a paid wire distribution, albeit via the lower cost PR Web. Adjacent to the release, the link to Mr. Barge’s web site strangely goes to a Las Vegas TV news site. In fact, a Google search for his company’s site produces little. One for Barge surfaces some curious results including this one:
Tue, 28 Jan 2003 08:07:25 GMT
“The New York Post stopped an article by Manhattan-based PR Jeff Barge in which Barge accused his industry of being in the “deception business”. The Post says they dropped the story because it was too “self-promotional”. Thanks to Deborah Branscum for the link.”
Apparently Mr. Barge has made a practice of putting out self-aggrandizing news releases with his personal prognostications on the issues of the day. His preferred modus operandi: inexpensive surveys pegged to the holidays, celebrities, or recent news events.
While one must give credit to Mr. Barge for his ability to exploit the news, there’s something very cheesy, or rather swarmy, about this tactic. Take heart, Mr. Blackwell.
January 19th, 2006 at 12:57 am
Ouch-y! Peter, if I ever ask you what you thought of my “Top 10 Spins of 2005″ list or my upcoming Presidents Day list of the “Top 10 Moments of Public Honesty” — DON’T tell me. I don’t wanna know
January 19th, 2006 at 2:37 am
I guess I may have been a little harsh. After all, PR folks frequently leverage existing calendar dates or news events for their clients’ benefit, e.g., gift items for Valentine’s or Mother’s Day or a consumer survey of top gizmos for the holiday shopping season.
In this case, I found it deceptively curious that Mr. Barge’s newsmaking ploys don’t accrue or even relate to the practice of PR (as do yours) even though they clearly are devised to draw attention to himself and his business. Maybe he subscribes to the adage of “just spell my name correctly.”
January 19th, 2006 at 3:06 am
Or maybe the guy just has an opinion and — unlike so many people working in public relations — isn’t afraid to speak up for fear of offending someone.
One thing that’s funny about this is how, in your own author’s profile on your blog, you describe yourself as a “respected PR professional” — which is by definition a value judgment, and is clearly intended to praise yourself — while mocking this guy for merely describing himself as “well-known,” which is a pretty neutral term and not necessarily one of praise.
Like you did, I Googled him and actually find him described in a number of newspapers as “a well-known New York publicist,” so it appears there must be some factual basis to this claim. If you Googled him as you say, you saw these same quotes, right?
Your link, by the way, that you say is provided by Deborah Branscum — is this the Deb Branscum who is a former writer for Fortune, which is owned by Time Warner, which is the company being criticized here by this guy in his press release? Full disclosure, now! No wonder no one trusts PR people — they conceal and mislead…!
Gotta love ‘em!
January 19th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
As I stated in my follow-up comment, I chose to write about this practitioner not so much to question his credentials, but rather to share his unorthodox methods for promoting hmself. In fact, I found his observations about AOL’s new class of advertisers to be somewhat astute, but again, not necessarily news release worthy.
One last thing: You state that PR people “conceal and mislead.” May I ask why you have posted on this blog anonymously or rather under the name of a veritable “well-known” media titan?
January 19th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
Jeff Barge went to Yale Law School, that’s pretty much all I know about him.
January 19th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
You are right, it doesn’t seem as if putting out a press release like this could help his career in any way, especially not if his clients are large corporations. Maybe he did it as some kind of public service project?
January 19th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Peter, haven’t you done PR projects for Time Warner in the past?
January 19th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Paul,
No. But I am friendly with a number of TW’s communications execs across its various business units.
Zand,
Thanks for the reassurance that my take on this tact merited a small posting here. I was beginning to think that I misfired after seeing the snarky comment from the pseudonymous Barry Diller.
January 19th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
Actually, it comes across as if you are making fun of him because he works with small clients who have limited budgets, while you yourself have always worked at large well-staffed PR firms on behalf of large corporations.
So basically it comes across as if you are making fun of him because you feel you are more important than he is.
January 19th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
I stand by the item’s premise that it’s unusual to issue a news release over a paid wire service when the release has nothing to do with servicing a client or positioning a PR competency in which the issuer may specialize. With that said, the tone of the posting could have been softer.
January 20th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
I found your very interesting blog through the link from Bulldog Reporter, and thought that this was an interesting article.
But after reading it, I felt as if you were saying that it is your belief that it is inappropriate for an individual to express an opinion, and, by implication, that the only people who should be allowed to express opinions are corporations or individuals who are affiliated with powerful corporations.
Certainly this is an opinion that I have found to be popular in many corporate boardrooms nowadays. But you must admit, it sounds very “1984!”
Or are you saying that if an individual is not affiliated with a major corporation or other source of power, he or she should be ridiculed for attempting to effectively offer an opinion as an individual? That in doing so, they are being “uppity?”
I don’t come from a PR background myself, I work at a major non-profit, so I don’t know what the current thinking is on this in the PR profession. But let’s say that an individual such as Mr. Barge has an opinion to express such as the one in his press release about AOL and its “predatory” view of its subscribers — what do you think would be the most effective way for him to get his message across to the public, given the state of the media and the PR industry today?
January 20th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Thank you, JD, for your thoughtful comments. (Geesh, all these anonymous postings and not a one from Mr. Barge himself. How curious.)
Here’s my take: there are countless ways nowadays to have one’s opinion enter the public domain. In fact, with blogs covering every subject imaginable — including the implications of an AOL/Google alliance — anyone’s voice can register more readily (and more virally) than ever before.
When I saw the release from Mr. Barge, I immediately thought of how organizations and individuals have resorted to paid advertisements (advertorials) to ensure that their points-of-view are heard and their causes advanced.
This however was not the case here. Mr. Barge’s paid release(s) did not appear to support a cause, a client, nor a competency in which his PR practice might excel. It was gratuitously self-promotional, and therefore, in my opinion, worth writing about.
Are there worse aberrations in our profession? Sure. Scroll through this blog and you may find a few.
January 20th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
Wow! After revisiting this, I feel bad for YOU now, Peter. I mean, you ARE entitled to your opinion. I totally agree with you that although Jeff B. has every right to use the tactics he chooses, he comes off to me as a little cheesy and old-fashioned in his approach. Of course, I’m sure that are plenty of people who think I come off as a jackass in MY approach. To each their own, right?
January 21st, 2006 at 12:20 am
Thanks, Scott. I wish some of my other postings elicted the same number of responses as this one. I was especially surprised that the PR-bashing item, “The Falsies,” produced no commentary whatsoever.
I was also surprised that Mr. Barge did not personally weigh in. I would have liked to hear his rationale for issuing these releases and what benefit he has derived from doing so these last few years.
Of course, there were several (hyper-critical) anonymous and pseudonymous postings. For all I know, he was one of them.
January 21st, 2006 at 3:08 am
Actually, Peter, it was not the New York Post that killed Mr. Barge’s column, it was the New York Times. This was reported in Howard Kurtz’s media column in the Washington Post, which can be Googled.
January 21st, 2006 at 1:37 pm
How right you are. Thanks, Pamela.
http://www.stanford.edu/class/comm217/archives/000093.html
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:25 pm
The Washington Post story was interesting, and then as I remember there was a story on The New York Post’s Page Six that further clarified the issue. It was much discussed at the time.
The Post story, as I recall, said that the reason the New York Times killed Mr. Barge’s column was that it exposed a practice among PR firms of making up quotes for their clients, which Mr. Barge said made him uncomfortable.
I am sure you heard the rest of this story at the time, Peter, being the president of the Publicity Club and being so well-connected and etc., but it turns out that the fiancee of NYT editor Howell Raines was actually the PR person for the president of Poland, and she had been making up quotes for the president of Poland as part of her job, and the New York Times had been printing them as if they were genuine.
This was several year ago, as I say. The conclusion the Post drew was that the borderline PR practices that Mr. Barge was describing in his column were PR practices that the New York Times was at that identical time participating in, with the assistance of the fiancee of their own executive editor, and so they killed his column because it was embarrassing to them since it described exactly what they themselves were doing.
I hope I am remembering this correctly, I would hate to be inaccurate about this.
January 23rd, 2006 at 9:02 pm
I recall that Mr. Raines had a girlfriend in this noble profession, but was now aware, or can’t recall, that a piece was killed because of an apparent conflict of interest.
BTW, I don’t have an issue with PR pros creating quotes, so long as the person being quoted agrees with the sentiment and has signed off on what he or she “has said.”