Publicists are not the only ones using the media to get the word out about their brands. Government does it too. When the White House “leaks” information to the press, it’s probably less a “leak” than a deliberate PR move. It’s like sex tapes. I mean, do we really think those are accidents? Even citizens know how to use the media these days. Look at the “Balloon Boy” dad in Colorado! Every PR company in the country should have had its tail between its legs after that incident, because we’re paid millions of dollars to get our clients on-air for fifteen minutes, and this country bumpkin from Colorado who wanted his own reality TV show managed to command the attention of news crews on both coasts for forty-eight hours! It’s really kind of easy. There are many ways to use and manipulate the news media to your or your brand’s advantage, whether your brand is Gucci or the Obama administration.*
Unlike many of my competitors, I refuse to be a normal publicist. By that I mean I don’t represent anyone or anything I don’t believe in and genuinely enjoy being a mouthpiece for. At least, not anymore. When I first started People’s Revolution, I had a business partner, and we never agreed on anything. I’d say Kartell; she’d say IKEA. She’d say the Grateful Dead; I’d say the Dead Kennedys. My partner screened clients by one criterion: If you have money, we’ll take it. She felt that we weren’t curators in a museum (I happened to disagree). My side of the room eventually came to include clients like the haute fashion designers Paco Rabanne and Vivienne Westwood, while she repped Hot Topic and a pornography company called the Adult Entertainment Network, a competitor to the infamous Vivid.
Back then, I was in the process of becoming bicoastal, as I represented an increasing number of New York–based fashion designers. I’d taken a small four-hundred-square-foot apartment on 47th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues, which is basically Times Square West. Every night, I’d hear pimps screaming at hookers outside my window. “What’s my fucking name, bitch!” they’d yell. I’d hear lots of sobs as girls were physically and verbally abused. I started calling the police department to complain of the prostitution problem on my block, to no avail.
One day, my business partner asked me to cover a news interview for her. It was a media announcement being made by the head of the Adult Entertainment Network, an earnings report or an announcement on its growth. The interview was to take place in Times Square. So there I was, a few blocks from my house, with a very successful pornographer, facilitating his interview with a TV camera crew. Out of the corner of my eye I saw four police officers milling about the island in the middle of Times Square. I decided on the spot to reach out to them about the nagging prostitution problem on my block.
“Ma’am, are you some kind of wacko?” the officer asked, when I explained the problem. “You’re standing in Times Square promoting pornography, and you’re going to complain to me about the hookers on your block?”
He had a point. It was totally insane that I would simultaneously promote a porn network and complain about prostitution. Ultimately, I told my partner that it was the most humiliating professional experience I’d ever had and that I not only wanted nothing to do with the Adult Entertainment Network; I wanted it banished from our agency. (Of course, she told me to go fuck myself, and our partnership didn’t last.)
Ever since then, I’ve taken on clients whose work I genuinely believe in, even if I wouldn’t necessarily wear it myself. But unfortunately there are still plenty of very smart publicists and lobbyists out there whose entire job is to make you want shit that sucks or that’s going to end up hurting or bankrupting you. Take candles (yes, even candles!). Most candles are made of paraffin, which releases carcinogens when it burns, meaning it has been linked to cancer by certain studies. Most candles also release more lead into the air than is safe, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It’s hard to believe, but it turns out that if you really want to kill your boyfriend, you should just cook him a really nice romantic dinner and light a bunch of candles! The most amazing part is that scientists have known about this since the 1970s. It’s now forty years later! But candle companies don’t want you to know about the research that exists out there on their products; nor do they want reporters to write about it, despite the fact that safer beeswax alternatives now exist. Instead, they want to seduce you with candlelight and beautiful smells. That’s why they employ armies of publicists—to help spin the information you’re getting.
Despite the fact that real information is more readily available than ever, we’re receiving less and less of it, and we’re able to actually understand even less than that.
I’m Fur-ious, and I’m Not Fucking Around
Several years ago, I would’ve told you that you were out of your mind if you’d said I’d soon be working through the most significant recession my industry had ever seen, second only to the Great Depression. Left and right, magazines went out of business, boutique PR firms closed shop, and people went freelance or changed careers. But as the old media washed away, new ones rose in their stead. Hello, Facebook. Hello, Twitter. Both of these brands have become great assets for the public relations industry and for many people who want to find out what’s really going on in the world. Prior to Facebook and Twitter, we had to pay $1000 to a service called PR Newswire to
