Have you joined my incredibly non-annoying, once-in-a-while email newsletter?
To be completely open about this post, I do, as you know, have a prior relationship with Steve Rubel. We worked together for a brief time at Schwartz PR, back in the day, and we met when we were both teenagers, having been fortunate to have had the same amazing life saving doctor when we both had similar brain tumors.
Our relationship faded about seven years ago when I was told in no uncertain terms by him that I “had a different approach to PR,” one that Steve was “not comfortable with.” We’ve been cordial since then, but the friendship was gone. No worries, though, as that’s what makes horse racing, as my mom would say. Just felt that should be out there before I posted this.
Now then… I say this with the utmost concern: Steve: Do you think perhaps it’s time to schedule another visit to the doctor, perhaps to see if something new is growing on your common sense gland?
What the hell is wrong with you?
I found this out through Strumpette this morning: Talking about PC Magazine, Steve posted on Twitter, (on which he has an impressive friend list,) that his subscription goes right into the trash.
Now, PC Magazine is questioning whether it even WANTS a relationship with Edelman anymore.
And you know what? They damn well should. This from PC Magazine’s EIC:
I did a quick search through my recent email, and found that over the past few weeks Edelman staff pitched me about news and new products from Palm, MarkMonitor, Mozilla/Firefox, Microsoft (hardware and Xbox), Eyespot.com, Vulcan Flipstart and Dash Navigation. Heck, they even pitched me yesterday on the release of Adobe’s new Creative Suite 3, which has to be relevant to at least some of the 11 million folks we reach across our magazine, web and video properties each month. And then I realized that this was probably just the callous act of a rogue Edelman exec, and it didn’t necessarily reflect the views of the rest of the company. Still, it made me wonder. And in the future, if I’m on the fence, I’ll probably be somewhat less inclined to take a meeting with one of Edelman’s clients.
Steve, that is so unbelievably stupid, I’m beyond words. What could possibly make you do that? Was your account hacked? Were you high? Drunk? Trying to impress a girl? “Hey, baby, watch me light this cigar with my copy of PC Magazine.”
Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Kids, do NOT try this at home.
The media is our lifeblood. You don’t piss off your lifeblood. I don’t care what you’re trying to prove, or however misguided you might be, or, worse, however much you start believing your own self-created hype.
I’ve said countless times before: My job is not to make my clients happy. My job is to make a reporter happy. If I do that, the client is almost always happy by default.
Hey Edelman Clients, like Adobe, Eyespot, Vulcan, Dash, Microsoft, Palm, and others: Geek Factory is available. Unfortunately, MarkMonitor, we already represent OpSec Security, so that’s a conflict of interest. But the rest? Give me a call.
And hey, Edelman? Perhaps it could be time to reel in some of that big-ass leash you’ve given Steve? It’s one thing when he looks like an idiot himself. It’s something entirely different when he has the potential to burn down his Master’s house.
Protect your house, Edelman. In one less-than-160-character note, you’ve let one employee weaken the core structure. Not good. What happens when new potential clients see that PC Magazine hates you? Think that’s gonna go over that well?
Steve, you’re a great pontificator on your blog. But that interpersonal stuff could probably use a little work. And to Jim Louderback, EIC at Ziff-Davis consumer tech, I invite you to recommend me when asked about good publicists, and I’ll gladly take a comp sub. At least on my Twitter list, I tend to rant about things like the traffic and that the Coasties are kicking my ass in swimming.
Screen cap is here in case the twitter post gets deleted.
Update: Looks like Rubel got his ass handed to him and was forced to apologize.
