How many PR consultants does it take to change a… Oops! Right joke, wrong profession

AIG PR firms now up to four… and AIG CEO on Today Show just does “ok.”

Sometimes it’s really hard to keep reading the depressing headlines in this lurching economy. Oh, I don’t mean the those headlines declaring the unemployment rate has hit a twenty-five year low…or that the U.S. is now facing a trillion dollar plus deficit…or you’re your neighbor may lose his job and his home…and even Bernie Madhoff may have to give up his penthouse (God forbid.) No, I’m talking about the sad state of the public relations profession that in spite of itself, can’t seem to get it’s act together and get some good press. (Or as we prefer to call it…Ink.)

AIG, the insurance giant with the largest hand out (literally and figuratively) has decided that it simply must have additional help in spinning it’s story to an even greater number of audiences, and of course, in so doing, spend even more of our tax dollars. AIG’s actions remind me of the old adage about the lone man in a lifeboat that assumed the more people he added, the better it would float. See “AIG's dizzying PR binge ”

And what’s even more depressing is that with all these supposed heavy hitters with the astronomical hourly fees in the AIG line up, one good media trainer can’t be found to provide some sage advice and counsel to their client’s CEO before making an appearance on the Today Show? I know that Tom Cruse might disagree, but Matt Lauer isn’t exactly Mike Wallace. Some where, some how, buried within Kekst & Co., Hill and Knowlton, or Burson-Marsteller is a media specialist at a zillion dollars an hour to rehearse CEO Liddy to ward off those tricky Lauer zingers. AIG CEO draws mixed review on Today. Of course, an even more important question might be, why the Today Show?

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My preference would have been to have Liddy’s butt grilled by Congress as to why AIG is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on PR firms’ hourly fees to make excuses rather than humbly and diligently fix the problem.

As a point of full disclosure and a nod to the late Senator Bensten, I know Kekst & Co and Burson-Marsteller, I’ve worked with and for both, and they’re friends of mine…or at least the founders. Both however, along with Hill and Knowlton, the other PR counsels of record, and an enormous internal PR group, should not be above the criticism from the rest of us in the PR profession any more than AIG should be exempt from the wrath of Congress or the tax payers for wasting extremely valuable dollars to benefit the elite few over the many. Yes, AIG, could use and needs professional PR assistance…obviously. But exactly how many very expensive “suits” does it take to give a few solid pieces of common sense advice, to write a non-nonsense annual report, to tell this client to be humble, work hard, react truthfully and openly when asked, but keep a low profile and until you’ve earned back the public’s trust?

The answer evidently is the same number as it takes some to change a light bulb...

Feeding the beast with our tax dollars…

A story broke in the PR trades this week that much criticized insurance giant, AIG, had decided that public relations was a better way to spend it’s money considering its current position of being between a rock and a hard place...

NEW YORK: Embattled insurance company, American International Group (AIG), has retained Burson-Marsteller for PR services. In doing so, it suspended corporate advertising and other paid outreach efforts to offset the cost, PRWeek has learned. Earlier this month, Bloomberg quoted an e-mail between AIG spokesman Nicholas Ashooh and George Sard, CEO of Sard Verbinnen, discussing the possibility of placing ads to explain why AIG was planning a company conference at a California Ritz-Carlton resort.

The New York Post estimated the amount to be paid to Burson-Marsteller at between $100,000 and $200,000 per month. Those are our tax dollars, friend. But blessed be the wise, the company was doing so because it was feeling under a little pressure because of the recent criticisms…

“To spend the taxpayer's money on an expensive ad campaign to apologize for how you used taxpayer money leaves you open to further attacks,” Bloomberg quoted from Sard's e-mail. In September, the Federal Reserve loaned AIG $85 billion; the company received an additional $37.8 billion earlier this month. Some members of Congress had criticized an AIG event that took place after the company received government help. Most recently, AIG was criticized for steep executive payouts , but the company announced on October 22 that the payouts, which included $19 million to its former chief executive Martin Sullivan, were suspended. And last week, AIG agreed to suspend all junkets and perks not justified by legitimate business needs.

An associate of mine here at INK inc. determined that this new PR “defensive” works out to approximately $10,000 per work day…$1,250 per hour. Nice work if you can get it. Even by any of the giant monolithic PR firms’ compensation standards, that’s a healthy hourly fee. Having worked for several of these large firms during my 37-year career, including the recipient of this particular largeness, one can assume that chances are high that the majority of the fee will go against the writing and disseminating of self-serving press releases as a “response to the high volume of requests for information from the media, etc.” Not exactly what I would call a great trade-off for the millions in advertising dollars they were spending on the same message. A press release has little more credibility than an expensive wordy ad unless the news media buys into it. And the likelihood of responsible journalists, who also happen to be taxpayers, doing that is zero to none.

Hey AIG, I have a wild and perhaps even blasphemous suggestion coming from a life-long PR professional… and it won’t cost you a dime. Just cool it for a while, and get back to work for your millions of customers first and your shareholders second. Show some common sense, restraint…and honesty in your dealings with the American public and the news media…not more wasteful spending of our tax dollars on PR consultants.