Jaffe Juice

Church and State are no more. Editorial and Sales are truly one and the same, are they not? Television calls it product placement or branded entertainment and the Print version is a Willy Wonka children's panacea where only nice things are said to nice people; a place filled with warm and fuzzies, love and kisses, candy lollipops and butterflies.

Segue to BP's announcement (hot on the heels of Morgan Stanley) of a "zero tolerance policy towards negative editorial coverage" to quote a memo which was sent around by BP's media agency, Mindshare. By my count, this is the third company to do something along these lines..the first being GM and their little spat with the LA Times.

According to the article in Ad Age, a source indicates that magazines are not in a financial position to buck this demand from advertisers and therefore, this trend will continue.

This is downright shameful. It's disgraceful. Mindshare should be embarrassed that they are playing the role of client lackey (the memo to print pubs was on a Mindshare letterhead) and forgive me if I shoot the messenger, but bang bang bang.

Some believe that "no news is good news", whilst others content that "it's better to be talked about than not at all" - whichever position you hold, it's irrelevant. Integrity of editorial product is paramount and the protection of content is sacrosant.

Ultimately, this will accelerate the downward spiral of the print business and it bodes pretty well for the blogging community, don't it? (for all those drilling the bursting of the blog bubble and other stupid alliterative words beginning with "b")

BP/MS/GM - you guys have to grow up, I'm afraid. You gotta roll with the punches and take the good with the bad. If you don't, you may be looking at a rather anemic looking media landscape.

Note to jaffe Juice readers: Upon reading this rant, I was informed by Mindshare on behalf of their client, BP, that BP would no longer be advertising on the blog.

I'm weeping.