Many Times PR Pros Have To "Run It By Our Legal Department"

When really it should be the other way around.

What happened? Well, in a nutshell, Best Buy's lawyers sent a blogger a cease and desist order for reporting on someone else's parody.

It really is that simple. And Best Buy came out looking foolish. When the blogger, a technology blogger in San Francisco, posted their joke of a cease and desist order, it got picked up by Wired Magazine, Boing Boing, and Glen Reynolds, who hosts Instapundit, with a readership numbering in in the hundreds of thousands.

That's hundreds of thousands of tech-savvy, affluent electronic geeks.

Best Buy even got slapped around by the New York Times.

This was a very expensive mistake on the part of Best Buy's lawyers, coming precisely during the peak holiday shopping season.

"I hope that those responsible have been sacked," says Reynolds, "and replaced by Llamas."

This is where a solid relationship with your PR ace would have paid off. Prior to signing off on the cease and desist letter, management -- that's management, not the legal department who should be working for management and not confusing itself with management - should have brought its PR professionals into the conversation.

The PR pro, if he was any good, would have warned management not to try to intimidate the blogger, any more than they would try to intimidate a news reporter. Management would have been advised that the likely result would have been mass ridicule in the blogosphere, with spillover into tech news media outlets like Wired, and a stinging black eye for the Best Buy brand - among the very people Best Buy wishes to reach.

The spin at Wired: "Best Buy Tries, Fails to Silence Blogger."

Ouch.

The PR pro, if he was any good, would have been familiar with a number of similar cautionary tales, because of the time spent monitoring blogs, the blog subculture, and the behavior of new media. This advice alone would have been worth many thousands of dollars in consulting fees.

Best Buy should take it out of their legal budget.

As it happened, Best Buy's legal department was forced to retract their cease and desist letter and apologize.

Management should not be slaves to their legal staffs. A law degree is no substitute for good judgement and common sense. Remember, lawyers are the same people who use the term "federalism" to describe anti-federalism, and who found a way to find OJ Simpson not guilty of murdering Nicole.

Lawyers study law. PR relations professionals study the media, and the good ones understand blogging and emerging media, and how they affect public opinion.

Managers, on the other hand, are paid to weigh the concerns of the two disciplines against one another and soberly assess the best course of action for the company as a whole.

This Best Buy did not do until it was too late. And their management, through blindly following the advice of their lawyers dealt a severe blow to the image of the brand, during the holiday shopping season.

--Jason Van Steenwyk