The first rule of public relations


If I had to make a guess at the one, cardinal, sacrosanct, unbreakable rule of public relations it would probably be: never take credit.

Does everyone obey this rule? Well, take a look at PR man Leo Hoffman, of this outfit, taking credit.

[W]hen we supported the announcement of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk a few years ago, we zeroed in on The Economist to tell the in-depth story. It didn’t hurt that our homework revealed that Economist technology editor Tom Standage had penned a book that also took liberties with the same topic, “The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine.”

But more than serendipity, our continued success with The Economist comes down to building the right content…

I guess Leo means this piece [subscription]. But he doesn’t link to it.

Incidentally, the article ended:

Although it sounds impressive, it may be that like its 18th-century namesake, there is less to the modern-day Mechanical Turk than meets the eye.

What of the “continued success”? You do still really, really want to appear in The Economist?

Go on, give Leo a call!