All I had to do was calmly state that this dress code applies only to people travelling on free or discounted employee passes because they ostensibly represent the airline, and the public anger would have been reduced to a dull roar. "Before you can say 'regrettable situation,' I'm up and feeding this negative story about my brand like it's my own beloved child, I'm knitting that story little bad-publicity baby-booties! It's a disaster of my own making. Next thing you know, I'm on Twitter vehemently championing this action and policy, while implying that everyone flying on my airline should hide their legs, lest they arouse the wrath of my despotic, limb-hating (why do you think we provide less and less legroom?) employees. "Well, let's say that someone live-tweets one of my check-in agents demanding that some young girls change out of, or wear dresses over, their leggings, or they won't be allowed to board their flight. I don't understand them and I try to resist them, but whenever I do something boneheaded, I'm compelled to spend at least a day or so defending my actions in the most self-destructive way possible." "Well, Dawn, I just get these urges sometimes. Is this something you want to talk about?" ![]() ![]() "Okay, United, we seem to have touched on something," Karen says, "and that's what we aim to do here at Press Release Us. He moves to high-five United, who bursts into tears. "It turns out that if everyone is staring in shock and horror at a video of an elderly gentleman being dragged down the centre aisle of a plane he paid to be on, they just don't have the time to be upset about cola advertising." "Fun air-travel fact: Ability to express gratitude for the very existence of United is just one of many factors we take into account when deciding who gets to be the lucky winner of our Not Getting Violently Thrown Off An Airplane prize." "Well, mostly I'm grateful for these two guys," says Pepsi, gesturing to his fellow members of the group. "Everyone's looking a little down, so why don't we take a moment to talk about some of the things in our lives we're grateful for right now. If homeopathy worked – and the goal was to make everyone hate you!" I diluted that powerful Ieshia Evans image so much, I gave it extreme potency. The subtext is she scores a threesome with Riot Cop Ken and Cello Guy. "People got so mad! The actual Ieshia was arrested, whereas our heroine hands a can of pop to a hot cop and the crowd goes wild. Although they can't be that common, because one of them is carrying a cello. But instead of a black woman who was a nurse and mother, I used a white reality-TV star! The girl in our spot is so intrigued by all the attractive people engaged in an act of mass non-confrontational moseying outside her fashion shoot that she takes off her blond wig, thrusts it into the hands of another woman – and we told casting, 'Can you get us a young Butterfly McQueen type?' – and deigns to walk with the cute commoners. "I restaged the iconic photograph of Ieshia Evans, who, last summer, stood still, strong, calm and beautiful before the police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, during an anti-police-brutality protest. That's 'America' as in 'American cheese,' Stephanie. I'm going to go down in public-relations history as the brand who found America's blandness tipping-point. "Look, I made non-controversial controversial. ![]() "Do you think we should have gone with 'Words, They Are A Thing'? I liked that one." "In retrospect, do you really think it was a good idea to try to tap into public feelings of anger and resistance with an ad featuring a lot of pretty extras from Happy Casting, holding signs that say 'Join the conversation'?" Did we not go far enough? I knew we should have gone with Mumford and Sons!" "I don't know! We had a whole team of uninspired engineers working in beige corduroy lab coats (we started with grey, but there was concern that would be too edgy), in a controlled, message-free environment, for months. Have you tried to identify where, exactly, the delivery of your un-message went wrong?" Karen asks, gently. "We worked hard to ensure the ad was devoid of anything that might be mistaken for meaning of any kind! It's not easy to construct something as recognizable as protest without suggesting that any of the sign-holding people presented in that tableau might be feeling remotely oppositional about anything – except maybe thirst!" "Look, I just wanted to harness the power of protest to sell a soft drink," sighs a dishevelled-looking man slumped in a stackable chair. Although, for the record, my name's Karen." "So, is there anything you want to talk about this week, Pepsi?" asks the woman on the tape who, when I contacted her, said, "We have a policy of confidentiality.
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