In case you missed it, those dumb “Bing challenge” ads aren’t the only front in Microsoft‘s ongoing war with Google. Over the holiday season the company started the “Scroogled” campaign taking its big competitor to task for…we don’t know, failing to protect customers’ privacy or offer “unbiased search results.”

We thought Microsoft had put the series to bed earlier, but they brought it back to life this week with a couple of spots attacking the Android phone for providing Google with an unfair advantage and, again, collecting users’ private information without their knowledge or consent. It’s all a bit more complicated than that, but the message is clear: Google is evil, because Microsoft would never in a million years use customer data in underhanded ways.

This is more about branding and reputation management than technology or the business practices of tech companies. The campaign is obviously working in some way or the company wouldn’t keep pumping out these ads. But Microsoft casting itself as David to Google’s Goliath? We don’t see that message as a long-term winner. It all makes the runner-up look more than a little desperate.

Full disclosure: we recently Googled a friend from long ago to see what he/she had been up to in recent years and found ourselves confronted by an entire images page filled with mugshots. Is there a point to this sad story? There is! Yesterday our sister site Social Times (follow them on Twitter!) posted an interview on a topic that should be of interest to anyone in PR: the art of online reputation management. The primary lesson stressed by Mike Zammuto, president of rep management firm Reputation Changer, is “fight negative content with more (positive) content.”

What does that mean?

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We in PR know that bad publicity almost never doubles as good publicity, but exceptions do stand out. Accused/acquitted/accused again murderer Amanda Knox, for example, got $4 million to write a book despite the fact that — according to The Daily Beast, at least — she has “already lost” in the court of public opinion and can never again “control how she is seen.” (And yes, her family did hire a PR firm to manage her image.)

Today brings news that Italy’s top court has ordered a retrial for Knox, who was acquitted and freed after serving nearly four years in prison for the murder of her roommate in Italy (but you already knew that). Our point? This new twist is just icing on the cake for a story that will continue attract millions of eyes around the world.

We’re not too familiar with the details of this case, but we know that Knox is media gold: last month Diane Sawyer scored her first official promo interview and even that announcement was big news. It’s set to air on April 30, the same day the memoir hits shelves — and everyone will be covering it, because the public loves both train wrecks and apology tours (unless they involve Lance Armstrong).

The question: if you have a client like Knox, how do you play off her notoriety while insisting that she was innocent all along?

Just kidding; we would never condescend to you like that. But quite a few brands would and do–and it seems to work on some level. Here, for example, is an update posted on the Papa John’s timeline yesterday:

Everyone agrees that charity is a good thing and that no child in a developed nation like the United States should face the prospect of going to bed hungry. Also: We understand that this post fits within the “social media best practices” guidelines by featuring a positive message, an aggressive call to action and an emotionally manipulative stock photograph. But it won’t win Papa John’s any “responsible citizen” awards.

And as you can see from the thousands of comments on the post, many users see it as an act of shameless self-promotion. Quite a bit of the thread consists of bickering over the health care controversy sparked by CEO John Schnatter‘s earlier comments.

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Earlier this week we posted on the importance of CEOs going social.

It’s true that the modern CEO loses out by not actively serving as the human face of his or her company, but some of execs’ concerns about bad publicity are completely understandable. Neil Warren Clark, founder of the world’s most influential dating site eHarmony, proved that point this month when he sat down for an interview with Yahoo Finance and made some very strange comments.

First, in talking about how much he loves his wife, he said that he needs “a robot who can come in and talk with me” when she isn’t feeling chatty first thing in the morning. Then he began discussing his company’s biggest PR/business challenge to date: the lawsuit inspired by its refusal to allow gay customers to use its service. While we agree with his assertion that same-sex marriage will soon cease to be “an issue” and that businesses and politicians have “made too much of it”, the next quote is very telling. After eHarmony created options for gay customers at the insistence of the attorney general of New Jersey, the company:

“…literally had to hire guards to protect our lives because the people were so hurt and angry with us, were Christian people, who feel that it’s a violation to scripture.”

So the people most upset about that PR disaster were Clark’s own evangelical fans. He follows with the strangest quote of the interview:

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A few weeks ago we gave you a list of the 10 brands Americans hate most and tried to figure out why. Today we’re taking the opposite approach with the help of Harris Interactive‘s latest public opinion poll gauging the most (and least) trusted brands in the country.

Here are the brands held in highest esteem by the 19,000 random people who participated in the poll (along with our attempts to figure out how they got there):

1. Amazon: It could be the fact that Amazon remains the first and biggest online retailer with a reputation for security and an endless inventory. It could be the brand’s truly innovative recommendation system. Or it could be Amazon’s plan to create its own “virtual” currency–because no dishonest individual would ever make his own money, right?

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We don’t care what anyone says–for charities, all publicity is definitely not good publicity.

We have no idea why a Canadian cancer charity organization called the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation decided to hire former actress/semi-nude model/Jim Carrey flame Jenny McCarthy as a featured speaker at a breast cancer fundraising event scheduled for March 2. McCarthy is currently best known for speaking out against childhood vaccines, claiming that they gave her son autism and that they contain potentially lethal toxins (while proudly speaking about her own experiences with Botox). We would get into the science behind this insanity, but the point is: Jenny McCarthy is a controversial figure.

Our feelings regarding the anti-vaccine crowd are similar to our feelings about those opposed to circumcision: we understand where they’re coming from, but we don’t quite get it. Everyone’s entitled to his or her own opinion, of course, but these positions seem less than rational.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Foundation received a lot of backlash when the news of McCarthy’s appearance went public, but the group’s president says that she “didn’t expect” such a response and was surprised to find that the buzz surrounding the event was “about anything but cancer.”

We wonder why…

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Today NBC News reports that leaders within the Boy Scouts of America are “close to ending” the organization’s longtime ban on openly gay members and leaders. Individuals close to the group acknowledge that they are “actively considering an end” to the formal ban and moving to allow local troops to decide on their own whether they want to admit gay and lesbian scouts and scoutmasters.

This would be a major change for an organization that built its reputation on traditionalism. And it would certainly prove controversial within the larger scouting community, which was rocked by the BSA’s poor response to its own child abuse scandal in 2012.

It would also go against recent developments. The BSA re-affirmed the ban last July, and just this weekend a local Cub Scouts pack revised gay-friendly language on its website under pressure from the larger organization.

The theory for this new approach holds that certain local factions would be free to continue banning gay members, thereby giving families the power to choose the groups that best represent their belief sets. While many continue to protest the BSA’s exclusion of openly gay individuals, we have no doubt that some longtime supporters would not be happy to see the ban end (which explains leaders’ clear desire for a “flexible” solution).

Public opinion has shifted decisively in favor of gay marriage, and our country now has more openly gay people in positions of power than ever before. The Boy Scouts will have to change at some point unless the group wants its membership to decline dramatically. But how can the organization most effectively adjust to this societal shift?

We’ve all heard that there is no longer a stigma associated with online dating. Technology is increasingly bringing the human race together while also pulling us further apart, which means that each of us is closer than ever to people we’re never going to talk to–let alone date.

Still, the possibilities of online dating are almost limitless. We love that idea–and it draws thousands of paying customers to sites like Match.com. Unfortunately, as we all know, the Internet is not reality. In fact, at its worst, the Internet involves the most despicable parts of reality masquerading as rainbows and unicorns.

So when a woman recently brought a lawsuit against Match.com for connecting her with a man who ended up stabbing her 10 times, we immediately saw that this story, in addition to being a tragedy, also illustrates a future PR conundrum: to what degree are dating sites responsible for the behavior of their clients?

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Yesterday’s Q&A concerned Teneshia Jackson-Warner‘s vision of a PR/marketing industry focused on “serving” rather than “selling”–or providing work that truly improves both the lives of a given brand’s customers and the communities in which they live.

It’s a tall order. Firms adopting Jackson-Warner’s model would move beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects that are–let’s be honest–almost always designed to improve public perceptions of a brand rather than the lives of people touched by that brand.

These considerations leave us very interested in the most recent study conducted by the Reputation Institute, which asks whether CSR efforts are worth the time and money required. The study’s conclusion: In most cases, they’re probably not. As the Institute’s recent Forbes guest post puts it, CSR isn’t necessarily dead–it’s just “mismanaged.”

Interesting. How so?

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