Monday, December 23, 2013

PR for Justine Sacco?

Justine Sacco, a big time PR executive, has gotten fired over some insensitive tweets she made, the most recent one about a trip to Africa including an AIDS joke with racial overtones. (I’ll let you look it up on your own.)

Well, she is a PR person, so she ought to know just how badly she needs a PR person right now. And since she is a PR person, her PR person should tell her to say the following:

“Lots of people say things that get them in trouble on social media, and I was just giving examples of this kind of thing so everyone would recognize how much they need a PR company if they accidentally say stuff like I did on social media! Please just think of my comments as a guerilla marketing campaign for my PR company. It was all just intended as an advert.”

With a PR campaign like that, maybe she’d only have to apologize about everyone misunderstanding her quotes, so long as everyone bought the explanation. But my guess is she’ll use the more realistic PR approach for celebrities: going to rehab.