Like almost everyone who reads him, I usually admire Doc Searles for clarity of thinking and communications. I must admit that in his painful coverage of Ketchum Communications and the dreadful Armstrong Williams Scandal, I've lost track of what his central point is, or for that matter, whose on what side of which in this bevy of "yes, but..." pontifications.
I was an executive at Ketchum PR, San Francisco for a brief, unfortunate period back in 1995. I call it that because I was in charge of technology, and this company's IT supplied me with a DEC Rainbow terminal with a Mac emulation keyboard, for my desktop computer. Yes, 1995. I reported to a guy whose claim to fame was launching the Acura Legend. He, in turn, reported to a former food magazine editor, who then reported to someone in New York who thought the solution to HP's unhappiness with the agency was to buy the decision-maker tickets to a PGA tournament. When I met the chairman, he told me that he wasn't sure that the PC was here to stay.
I didn't belong there and everyone kind of realized it pretty quickly. I've always been a start-up jockey and this place considered Dell to be a start up... in 1995. I had to pay for my own modem, because they didn't see a need for their head of worldwide technology to have one. It's debatable who was happier when I decided to leave.
This is entire digression is in the form of disclosure that I don't really like them and that my personal experience inside of that organization is a nadir in my professional life. I do have point to make Ketchum's role in the scandal.
As much as I disliked working there, I found them neither lacking nor bountiful in ethics.When I was there, there was a huge debate on whether to go for a tobacco account, and that same chairman decided we wouldn't take clients whose products resulted in customer deaths. Ketchum also decided not to bid on a huge Catholic Church account to build opposition to legal abortion. Ketchum is a huge business with ethical people salted with smarmis. It's just about the same as most companies I've seen close up. Most companies are assemblies of people with mixed ethics. It's why I question a company that claims that it will never do evil.
There is someone who i will not name who spent a goodly portion of his day sending me email of an insulting nature because PR people, in his opinion, are all dirt who besmirch the good name of marketing. I would be only slightly more offended, if I were still a PR person.
In my years in the business there was only one consistent lie and it wasn't from the PR people. It was from the clients who told us the check was in the mail.
Regarding the Ketchum/Hamilton blogging rattatat tat that is going on, it seems to me that my friend, the Doc, another former PR guy, is among the many who are missing key points as it tries to differentiate blogging PR people and non-blogging PR people, bad government from good. Evil press commentators from the sainted ones, and so on.
Blogging has nothing to do with it. And Ketchum is a very big organization with lots of people who simply drip with integrity and lots of companies who wish their PR to build awareness and understanding of who they really are. But some people lie. And some press is lazy, and some "news commentators" can be bought, and some government communications officers are devious...
Stop me when I tell you something you don't know.
Here's my point: Take any company in any industry and you will have people with diverse ethics. Get a bunch of those with low ethics and a mutual goal and a sense that a buck can be made, you will undoubtedly end up with a scandal.
Armstrong Williams will end up writing a book and be paid well on the speaker circuit.
The current administration will continue to find new ways to foist deceptions on the public.
Ketchum is going to lose business for a long time and will suffer the most for having tainted its image.
Perhaps this is as it should be. Perhaps not.
Comments