Last week, Jim Babb, manager of media relations, corporate communications for Circuit City, responded to the mistaken removal of
MAD Magazines from its sales floors, with a serious
apology that also showed how the electronic retailer shared a “rich sense of humor and irony” with the publication, particularly with the tongue-in-cheek reference to forming an interdepartmental humor task force. Apparently, some sad PR professional, who referred to herself as a “humor expert” from a respected New York agency, didn’t get the joke, and asked if she could provide support for the project, Babb told PRWeek.
Adding a layer of interest to Circuit City’s brief PR snafu, Babb told PRWeek, that the e-mail - ordering the removal of the magazine, which surfaced on
Consumerist.com, may have been sent by a member of the corporate communications team, but was ordered by an unnamed employee in another corporate department “who had a brief episode of humor impairment,” not the PR team. Also, while Elizabeth Barron’s name appears on the e-mail, she was neither a spokesperson nor an innovator of the
MAD Magazine removal. This mistaken assumption has been appeared across the
blogosphere.