They may have highlighted it and caused millions more people to actively seek it out to see it than would have had his campaign simply shrugged it off.
Teaser:
It was a huge PR mistake by a campaign that doesn't make many. The denunciations by both presidential campaigns accomplished one thing: They pushed a simple cartoon to the top of most-searched terms online and the top of the news lists of countless online sites, commentators, cable news shows, commentators and network TV newscasts for more than two days. No doubt it also helped the bottom line, boosting New Yorker single-copy sales this week.
Worse, the coverage of the strong reactions understandably made many curious to see what the fuss was about.
But think a minute. If the cover is so tasteless and offensive, why purposely call it to the attention of millions of Americans with a strong denunciation on an otherwise slow news Sunday afternoon? It turned a mere magazine cover that the Obama campaign would rather no one see into a must-see for millions. Say, the magazine prints a million copies. A million covers. But there are nearly 305 million Americans.
Read the whole analysis at Top of The Ticket.
Andrew Malcolm is right, this was a major PR gaffe on the part of the Obama campaign.
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