The Art of Exploiting a Tragedy

Forgive me for bringing up the TV show Mad Men again but — well, I do love it. I blogged recently about a book of Frank O’Hara‘s poetry that appeared on the show and then had an Amazon sales spike.

In this week’s episode, there’s a terrible crash of an American Airlines plane and one of the ad agency’s top guys wants to go after the American account since he knows they’ll be looking to make a fresh start. As it turns out, one of the people who died on the plane was the father of one of the younger execs at the agency. So the top guy gets the younger guy to go with him to pitch American, using the father’s death as a selling point to persuade American that this is indeed the agency for them, since they have such a deep, personal, tragic connection to the crash.

I was reminded of this scene, just a bit, when I received the following mass e-mail:

From: loisw@hwhpr.com Subject: Jill Brooke, Editor of First Wives World, is available to comment on Morgan Freeman Date: August 6, 2008 12:52:57 PM EDT Rumors, rumors, rumors are flying around about Demaris Meyer, the mystery woman who was caught in the car accident with the actor. He calls Meyer a good friend, others think the story goes deeper. Jill gives you a reality check on the 24 year old marriage of Myrna Colley-Lee and the legendary, talented, respected, and admired actor. Visit www.firstwivesworld.com. Thank you Lois Whitman President/Owner HWH PR/New Media 1414 Avenue of the Americas NYC 10019 loisw@hwhpr.com www.hwhpr.com

I am probably doing two things here of questionable value: 1) Giving voice to people who desperately want to be heard for reasons that most of us might consider unsavory; and 2) Giving out the address of the agency (but at least I withheld the phone number).

There are a lot of adjectives that come to mind when I read this e-mail, and a lot of nouns too, but I’m not going to say any of them here. You can, though.