Why We Should Celebrate Putin’s PR Nightmare

Public relations has always been the wild, uncontrollable step-sibling in brand management. The larger ad agencies usually have a PR department so they can offer one-stop shopping for clients, but the smaller ones eschew it; compared to running a normal ad campaign, with its focus-grouped creative and increasingly precise media-buying strategies, managing public opinion and the press is like herding cats in the most unruly anarchic badlands, and the Internet has only made those badlands even badder.

Take for instance the dissemination this week of a photograph of two female Russian athletes kissing on the medal stand. Never mind that the athletes themselves insist it wasn’t a protest of their country’s abhorrent LGBT-suppression laws;