Occupy Wall Street Gets Much-Needed Help from PR Firm

GAWKER 
Adrian Chen
10/03/11 01:39PM 
Filed to: OCCUPY WALL STREET
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The Occupy Wall Street protesters got an unsolicited boost from the luxury Manhattan PR firm Workhouse Publicity this weekend. Good, because trying to figure out what's going on down there has been an enormous pain in the ass.

The Chelsea-based PR firm—whose clients include Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week and Saks Fifth Avenue—sent out an unsolicited email blast titled "Occupy Wall Street: News from the Front" to media outlets and celebrities last Wednesday, according to the Daily News. The email included a Facebook gallery with pictures of the protest.

This is now being seized on by people trying to argue that it's hypocritical of protesters to allow a fancy PR firm to send out an email supporting them—jumping on the same dumb meme pushed by conservative bloggers that, because they use Apple stuff, protesters can't be anti-corporate. (If they were really against corporations, see, they'd use signal fires to communicate or something?)
Whatever: It's good that the loosely-organized protesters are getting more savvy in their media outreach, whether it's through a PR firm or not. Protesters have complained of a "media blackout" (not a complaint these days, of course), but surely the lack of attention had something to do with the fact that, for reporters, pinning down what's going on with Occupy Wall Street can be a Kafkaesque nightmare—a sea of rumors and misinformation and cryptic, one-sentence "press releases" and weird stuff about zombies.

Hey Occupy Wall Street: Dressing up Like Zombies Is DumbUsually we associate zombies with lame suburban pub crawls, but not today! Today is Zombie Flesh…

And, yes, I am still a little bitter about the time an Occupy Wall Street spokesman repeatedly told everyone Radiohead was going to be playing a show for protesters and it was all a sham! (For the record, I've heard that the guy has been "fired" as a spokesman and Occupy Wall Street's PR committee is being streamlined.)