Publicity Firm Shames Client for Failure to Pay a Bill

The old maxim about media moguls warns against picking fights with people who buy their ink by the barrel, but last week a marketing firm showed that it was not to be trifled with after it distributed a news release trying to shame a client that owed it money.

In a statement sent to about 100 newspapers, Publicity Guaranteed, a marketing firm in Fairfax, Va., said it was owed $43,000 by AbsolutePoker.com, an Internet gambling site based in Costa Rica.

Nat Kurok, senior vice president of Publicity Guaranteed, said he initially had reservations about working with a client both in such an industry and incorporated offshore.

But there was an angle he found irresistible: the site offered college tuition in online poker tournaments.

Publicity Guaranteed has a novel approach where it charges only for each article it successfully pitches; in 2005 and 2006, articles about the tuition contest appeared in more than 40 newspapers, including USA Today and The New York Times. According to court documents in a suit that Publicity Guaranteed won last year in Arlington County Circuit Court in Virginia, Absolute Poker paid $37,000 for the first wave of publicity, and then did not pay publicists for the rest.

Reached Friday by telephone in Costa Rica, an Absolute Poker executive, Paul Leggett, said he would call back with a comment but did not.

Recently, the poker site has had plenty of publicity, but not the helpful kind. After accusations of cheating by players, the company issued a statement admitting “a security breach” that was “horrendous and inexcusable.”

Dozens of Web sites covered the matter; the news release from Publicity Guaranteed linked to 37 of them.

“We’re just saying we’re someone else that got shortchanged by Absolute Poker, and this should be public knowledge,” Mr. Kurok said, adding that other clients who miss payments need not worry about his firm growing another head.

“There are some clients that have trouble with cash flow and we’re flexible,” he said.
NY Times

News Added: 29 October, 2007

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