No one likes to be called at home at night about a work-related issue. But if your job reasonably includes that sort of thing from time to time, and it involves dealing with the media… then it's best to be as nice as possible when the call comes in or this could happen to you.

In an effort to get some information the other night about the big BlackBerry blackout in North America that began around 8pm, CNBC finally reached someone from the public relations agency representing Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry. A less than warm reception to the intrusive call on the part of the PR rep got the agency's name and its agent's behavior some air time in this column called TechCheck by Jim Goldman:

Research in Motion did release a statement this morning to NBC News, saying "A service interruption occurred Tuesday night that affected BlackBerry in North America… That's a far cry from the reception CNBC got when we finally connected with a rep from the company's public relations firm Brodeur Partners last night as the outage drama was unfolding. She was annoyed that we had reached her at home, clearly not appreciating the magnitude of the meltdown.

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This weekend's Microsoft, DoubleClick and Google news got me to thinking what would result if you took all of Microsoft's personality traits and character issues and created a thirty- or forty-something year old man or woman with these qualities. I came up with a loud, wealthy, badly dressed, overweight, law suit happy, egocentric individual with glaring double standards always complaining about people picking on him or her in between making disparaging remarks about anyone new in town.

Microsoft, a veteran defendant of epic antitrust battles in the United States and Europe, is urging antitrust officials to consider scuttling Google’s plan to buy DoubleClick, an online advertising company.

That's from this New York Times piece by Steve Lohr from yesterday.

It seems to me Microsoft has a DoubleClick double standard. After all, you remember these cases, right?

United States v. Microsoft 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C. 2000) was a court case filed against Microsoft Corporation on May 18, 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and twenty U.S. states. Joel I. Klein was the lead prosecutor. The plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power in its handling of operating system sales and web browser sales. You can revisit that ordeal here.

The European Union Microsoft antitrust case is a case brought by the European Union (EU) against Microsoft for alleged antitrust abuse. It started as a complaint from Novell over Microsoft's licensing practices in 1993, and eventually resulting in the EU ordering Microsoft to divulge certain information about its server products and a separate version of Microsoft Windows without Windows Media Player. More on that here if you're interested.

If you get a better or different image in your mind, feel free to share it.

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Let's say you're in PR and your client makes a complete hee-haw out of himself or herself on the radio… what do you do? Let's add for sake of argument that 99.99% of the world thinks you're client said something asinine.

Here's a link below to some really, really good advice for anyone famous — even if you're only "corporate famous" — who does something really stupid and revealing in public, knows they did, and wants it all to go away quick and with the least amount of personal impact.

And never mind if you think the suggested approach is honorable, manly, womanly or whatever. The question is, what works? How do you minimize the story, curtail the damage, and get back on track? Set aside for the moment whether or not you think the client deserves a break. How do you accomplish the impossible whether you want to or not?

In this post at Enterprise Web 2.0 they say apologize in writing, say you're going to rehab yourself, shut-up, go away and stay dark for a while, call your friends and tell them to grant no interviews, and call your enemies and threaten them with wicked pay-back someday if they say anything bad. Is that manipulative, insincere, cowardly… maybe, but it takes all the oxygen out of the air for the mainstream media. With no air, no story on fire can sustain itself.

People get confused about this because in slightly different circumstances, it's important to talk non-stop and be available 24×7. You do that when bad things are happening that are not your fault. Some bizarro taints your drug… get out there and stay out there giving everyone everything you got as soon as you have it. Alternatively, you have a tainted mouth, shut it. Some consumer at your restaurant finds a finger in their chili, go on air and stay there… unless it's your finger.

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