The salient paragraph: ““Every industry has an ambulance chaser segment, and in crisis situations, this is the group that smells blood and goes in for the kill. I was addressing my comments to those people, who probably don’t even read PRWeek, because they are only interested in the next big company to list on their website.” I wonder if any of those who contacted JetBlue had genuinely good advice and didn’t fit into this category.
I’ve been mostly complimentary about here and Seth Godin to BusinessWeek to PRWeek, anybody who contacted the airline with suggestions is now persona non grata
Jenny Dervin, director of communications at JetBlue, is quoted tossing off this gem: JetBlue corporate communications does not have a PR AOR, nor do we ever intend on getting one. Those agencies that felt the need to contact our CEO and the corporate communications department directly, telling us exactly what we were doing wrong, were not helpful, and they are all going to go on a special list that I’m going to share with my colleagues in the PR industry, encouraging them never to do business with those companies. Let me get this straight. A communications professional watching the crisis effort unfold sees a gaping hole in the plan (e.g., the CEO’s pseudo blog has not been updated since February 1 and allows no comments) and has the nerve, the temerity, the balls to pick up the phone and offer up a suggestion. For his trouble, he gets put on Jenny Dervin’s blacklist. It must be that Jenny and her team of seven full-time communicators have all the answers and don’t need any advice from anybody else. That must be why… It must be nice to know everything so you don’t have to welcome any recommendations from well-meaning professionals who may actually know what they’re talking about. Or maybe there’s some other channel Ms. Dervin would prefer people take. Carrier pigeon, perhaps? In any case, my esteem for JetBlue has plummeted after reading Ms. Dervin’s arrogant tirade. If there’s anybody I wouldn’t want to work with, it’s someone who thinks she has nothing to learn. That puts her at the top of my new list.
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