29th Jul 2004
Funniest PR in the Biz
I should be posting this to my ExecutiveSummary.com blog, as it’s the kind of business insider stuff that I like to post there, but that site is presently under reconstruction.
Anyway, I was on a conference call the other day with a bunch of people, and we were temporarily interrupted by mooing. One of the women apologized that she was walking around her farm in Texas. (It was a wacky call altogether, trust me.) Anyway, Greg Jarboe, a PR consultant on the call, quipped, “Jill, this just goes to show you’re outstanding in your field.” (I am not sure her name was really Jill; there were lots of folks on the call I didn’t know.)
At the time no one laughed, as I recall. Later, buddy Kevin Lee and I mused on the comment for about 15 minutes, figuring it was too quick for the rest of the participants (in case you’re slow, yes, she’s a smart, accomplished lady so she’s outstanding in her field, but at the same time, she was, at that moment, literally out standing in her field!). We wondered if he’d been sitting on that pun for years waiting for the perfect moment to unleash it (doubtful; it’s really a once-in-a-lifetime quip), but Kevin is pretty sure he’s just that smart.
So, if you want certainly the wittiest PR in the biz, and, in all probability, very smart PR, give Greg a call.
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It must be because you are so much younger than I that you never heard that quip before. But’s it’s also ture that an occasion to use it doesn’t come up very often. At least not in a city like New York.
Greg later fessed up that’s an old Midwestern joke. Just shows what a city slicker I am.