Consumer PR: Dont take it too seriously

A piece in yesterday's Sun made me laugh: "The Sum of All Fears" highlighted an equation that a 'boffin' had discovered to identify the scariest films of all time. ES+U+CS+T squared +S + (TL + F)/2 + (A+DR+FS)/n + sinx-1 = ultimate scary movie. As if! However, this did remind me of the profound words of consumer PR 'boffin' Mark Cooper, who taught me of a valuable lesson the other day when I was proclaiming the difficuties of genuine news placement. "Don't think of consumer PR as news. Consumer PR is entertainment. We are colluding with the tabloids to make people laugh. Values like truth, decency and credibility don't matter. What's good PR is what gets in the papers." To illustrate his point, an equation for the 'perfect summer' was published the following day after 'research' by one of Mark's clients... Emotionally, I find this state of affairs appalling. Mentally, it's a very helpful perspective on a cynical world. Let them eat fake.