Michael Jackson’s PR HIStory; It Don’t Matter if You’re Flack or…

The majority of you were correct in answering 7 or more in our poll this morning as the number of Michael Jackson’s publicists mentioned in the ongoing news cycle.

Despite her very current relationship with the King of Pop, publicist-turned-manager Raymone Bain was outpaced by 90s publicist Michael Levine by about 4 to one in mentions.

It could be Bain is being careful due to her monster lawsuit against Jackson, or because Levine, as we figured out, spammed countless journalists with an I-knew-this-was-coming statement a little over an hour after TMZ broke the story of his death.

In fairness to Levine, I did nearly do a legit interview with him. After a number of voicemails back and forth of the course of the day, I finally got him on the horn only to be denied an interview because I was using a cell phone. He also declined to answer questions over email. By then the opportunity had passed.

The other five former publicists include:

Stuart Backerman, publicist from 2002 to 2004

Max Clifford, UK PR legend helped launch the Jackson 5 in ’67-’68 when working in the press office at EMI

Kevin McLin, Chairman of the Mass Comm Department at Dillard U., publicist from 1996 – 2005. Or is it spelled McLyn? Local Louisiana media has both.

Jonathan Morrish, while at CBS in the 70s, now Director of music licensing company PPL (op-ed in The Independent)

Arthur Phoenix, publicist to the family and advisor to Tito in fact said on 6/10 Jackson would not be able to handle the 50 show marathon planned for this summer

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.