Today in CEOs Behaving Badly: We understand why AOL chief Tim Armstrong was a little upset at the unfortunate struggles of Patch, his well-meaning $300 million experiment in hyper-local news content. He promised AOL that the venture would turn a profit by year’s end, and in order to bring this about he seemingly had no choice but to fire hundreds of the writers, editors, and managers at more than 400 individual Patch sites around the country.

But this hardly excuses the commission of a cardinal PR sin: letting his temper get away with him during a 1,000-strong conference call and firing an employee for taking a photo during his speech. It was mild as outbursts go, but it was recorded for the ages and distributed to every media outlet around.

This wasn’t just any employee, by the way; it was Patch’s creative director Abel Lenz. The fact that such a Trump-worthy incident was terrible PR should be obvious to all, but we’ll go into a bit more detail:

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The latest chapter in Discovery Channel‘s scaly salt-water empire Shark Week, breaking ratings records with a mixture of legitimate science and horror since 1987, raised some eyebrows back on land.

Seems that the “documentary” Megaladon: The Monster Shark That Lives played fast and loose with the facts while producers hoped no one would notice.

In case you were never a 12-year-old boy, the megaladon was a prehistoric creature with teeth the size of a human hand which, as you may surmise from the special’s title, may still be alive and terrorizing the world’s oceans today.

Fans of accuracy in media will be disappointed to know that this is not even remotely true. The big deal, really, is Discovery’s failure to include a “none of this is real, BTW” disclaimer beyond a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it notice aired during the last minutes of the show calling it a “film” based on “legend.” Quite a few people fell for this nonsense, too: if you believe the channel’s super official megaladon poll, only 21% of viewers think the shark is definitely extinct. (We wonder how they feel about Bat Boy.)

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Last week our sister site AllTwitter reported on a story that serves as a great example of a well-meaning social media marketing campaign that got a little too aggressive. Harping on the fact that it supposedly uses only “antibiotic-free” meat in its food, the Panera Bread chain’s team created a campaign pushing the message that only lazy farmers use antibiotics on their animals. This included a micro-site, a Facebook tab, and the satirical @EZChicken Twitter feed (which was more than a little over the top despite some pretty cool art direction).

We get where they were going with this project and the tagline “The Road to Delicious Is Antibiotic-Free”, but it’s hard not to conclude that any farmers who use antibiotics in any circumstance are not very good at their jobs—and that implication extends to nearly every farmer in this country. Now who supplies Panera with the meat for its sandwiches?

The response from the animal husbandry community wasn’t so positive:

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Because nothing about Anthony Weiner’s campaign for mayor is sane, of course his communications director went on a profanity-laced tirade with a Talking Points Memo reporter about a former intern.

ICYMI, here’s a link to that story, in which the comms director Barbara Morgan completely loses it over a New York Daily News tell-all cover story written by a college student and former intern for the campaign, Olivia Nuzzi. According to the Nuzzi, a number of people joined Weiner’s campaign to get closer to his wife Huma Abedin and, by extension, Hillary Rodham Clinton. And she goes on to say that Weiner had trouble getting high-level people to work on his campaign. She dismisses comms director Morgan’s prior experience, saying she “last worked as the press secretary for the New Jersey state education commissioner.”

She adds, “There were a lot of short résumés around the office.”

On the NSFWCORP blog, Nuzzi also says that Weiner’s campaign manager Jeremy Kedem resigned because Weiner wasn’t honest about the “timing” of his sexting scandal.

“It’s all bullshit,” Morgan tells TPM. “I mean, it’s such bullsh*t. She could f**king — f**king tw*t.” Oh.

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Who knows, maybe this is exactly what Fox News wanted all along. The brand is seemingly incapable of internalizing bad PR the way giraffes don’t feel any need to apologize for the economy in Greece. It just doesn’t register.

How else could you explain Fox News willfully arranging an interview between author, historian, academic, religious scholar and expert on Christianity Reza Aslan—who is also a practicing Muslim—and the network’s feckless “Spirited Debate” correspondent Lauren Green. It was a mismatch. Not like a plaid shirt and striped pants, but like Paula Deen and southern history.

Watch the video above. It’s self-explanatory. And it’s sad. Saying a Muslim could never be qualified to write about Christianity is like saying a Mexican chef couldn’t possibly cook Italian food. Perhaps Ms. Green should go out to dinner more and visit the kitchen. She and Paula Deen could go together; they’d probably love each other’s company.

Once again, the public voted its sentiment with its money. So it’s no surprise, at Fox News’ chagrin of course, that the very book the network tried to demonize is riding a wave of public support and enjoying rising sales. But that doesn’t mean the confrontation surrounding Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth is over. Its value is being debated in that most academic of theological platforms: the Amazon comment section.

Sigh.

Rather than lying low and waiting for the storm to pass as companies profiled in unflattering documentary exposés often do, SeaWorld, advised by the communications firm 42West, has taken the opposite approach.

Before last week’s New York and Los Angeles release of the Magnolia Pictures documentary “Blackfish,” which makes the case that orca whales in captivity suffer physical and mental distress, SeaWorld Entertainment took preemptive action in an attempt to prevent potential damage to its reputation.

About a week before the film’s release, the company sent a detailed critique of the movie to about 50 critics who were presumably about to review it. Among other things, SeaWorld claims that “Blackfish” exceeded the bounds of fair use by using training film and other video shot by the company. SeaWorld also says that filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite deliberately positioned some scenes to create what SeaWorld executives claim is a false implication of wrongdoing. Additionally, by midweek last week the company was providing top executives and animal caretakers for interviews about the movie. Read more

Let’s begin by saying, yes, this story is disconcerting on every level. It makes us lose faith in brands, public relations, the law, celebrities, marketing experts and regular human beings in general. No one looks good in this PR and legal debacle—well, scam. But let’s dig a little deeper.

Skechers is in trouble with the law and the public because it pursued an aggressive campaign—leveraging shiny celebrities and bogus claims—promising that the brand’s Shape-Up line of shoes helped people lose weight and trim their figures (especially their bottoms). People bought into the hype; so much so, in fact, that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is issuing 509,175 refund checks to customers who purchased the shoes. Skechers paid a $40 million settlement.

The public loves its free-market economy and capitalism. But people feel Skechers has crossed a line in this instance. We know buying a pair of shoes endorsed by LeBron James does not make anyone play basketball at his level. But kids can dream and the marketing message is largely aspirational. LeBron James is a supremely talented, rich and famous basketball phenom—and a marketing juggernaut.

Kim Kardashian, on the other hand, has no discernible talent other than being Kim Kardashian—which, let’s admit, she’s very good at: The celebrity-obsessed public paid for her sham wedding (to a basketball star!), after all. But reality TV stars often aren’t even good at reality. So for the public to believe in the shell game of reality TV stars endorsing anything other than themselves is just disappointing for the professionals who make a living at selling quality products. Read more

There is simply no other place to begin this post except in outer space, but the truth is Paula Deen’s decisions wouldn’t make any sense in any galaxy anywhere. This is interstellar bat crap crazy.

The meteoric (yes, we’re running with the space metaphor) decline of Paula Deen’s empire after the eponymous Queen of Butter admitted to using racial slurs was stunning itself; however, the all-consuming PR black hole that developed afterwards was as equally shocking and sad. Ms. Deen’s maudlin and muddled series of dubious apologies and explanations pushed the public beyond feelings of anger, sorrow and disappointment. The public became cynical. Yes, the public took to social media and penned some of the funniest and most creative tweets, posts and memes in a while.

Social media is the house of horrors for celebrities experiencing a PR crisis. So it is absolutely unfathomable that Paula Deen (who just fired her legal team), or someone in her camp, would send out of the following tweet:

My favorite potluck dish is ______ RT me your answer!

— Paula Deen (@Paula_Deen) July 11, 2013

That massive exploding sound you hear is the collective force of everyone in the public’s mind being blown. The tweets below are just a taste of what is to come over the next few days. Kaboom.  Read more

Slate writer David Plotz is calling a recent email he received the “most offensive marketing pitch of all time.” After reading it ourselves, we’d be hard pressed to disagree.

On Tuesday morning, Plotz received an email from someone at Rightster, a London-based video distribution company, proposing that the recent beheading of a Brazilian soccer referee could prove to be a “great AD REVENUE generating opportunity.”

The email read as follows (bold/caps were in original email):

Disgusted, Plotz attempted to contact the person responsible for the email, but instead received a response from a Rightster spokesperson, saying: “We regret deeply and are very sorry for the email and the offense it has caused. The individual involved will be disciplined and we will review our policies and procedures to ensure this does not happen again.” Read more

The Big Catch

On this day when the rest of us are preparing for some time off, the PR team at Long John Silver’s must be hard at work.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has declared the fast food chain’s Big Catch “the worst meal in America.” The Big Catch is a battered and fried piece of haddock fish and two side dishes. The side dish choices are green beans, hush puppies, onion rings, coleslaw, French fries, rice or corn.

Lab tests on the meal with the onion rings and hush puppies show that it has 33 grams of trans fat (more than two weeks worth), 19 grams of saturated fat, 3,700 milligrams of sodium, and 1,320 calories. My stomach hurts just typing that.

The CSPI says the restaurant isn’t completely honest about the nutritional facts of this meal; their claims that there’s seven to eight ounces of fish in the Big Catch are wrong. Rather it’s “60% haddock, 40% butter and grease.” Now I’m gagging.

In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, the restaurant said, “Long John Silver’s offers a variety of meal choices including baked fish and shrimp that can satisfy almost every diner’s dietary choices. We stand behind our published food data and will review any requests from CSPI that raise questions about our data.”

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