OK, OK, I know I said I’d leave Lizzie Grubman alone. But where there’s good content, slow Summer news flow and a post to be filled, well sometimes you have to relent.
Now clearly Lizzie Grubman is good at what she does, otherwise she wouldn’t have a successful thriving bi-coastal PR agency. That’s a fact gentle reader. I don’t know anything about society or fashion PR, so I can’t critique her work. But she knows her stuff.
I posted previously how Lizzie was booked to give a three hour talk on PR. For $49 that had to be a gimme for anyone in NYC.
However while she may be a successful PR, it seems she missed the point about what attendees paying good money for a session on “an expert in-depth look at what is takes to launch and maintain a sucessful PR career” would be looking for. Seminars usually involve skills and knowledge transfer. You pay money to hear an expert and learn. Errrr, not in a seminar with Lizzie apparently. You don’t even get her side of the SUV incident, don’t mind tips on launching a new restaurant. Her response to any specific PR questions was: “I’m not giving away my secrets unless you hire me.”
Salon’s Lynn Harris has a very entertaining review of Lizzie’s seminar.
Meanwhile, Sheryl McCarthy, writing for Newsday, bemoans the amount of press inches (and pixels) Lizzie is getting. Not only is she still successfully running her PR firm, but she’s now landed a radio job at WNEW-FM.
Sheryl finishes with this:
“Let’s all remember the Lizzie Grubman story every time we’re tempted to lecture some young minority kids about accepting affirmative action – because they will feel so much better about themselves if they achieve success based on their own hard work and merit. It seems one can either do it the hard way, or if one is fortunate enough to be born rich – and not have to work too hard – one can do it the Lizzie Grubman way.”
Murphy's Law 