The purging of Mao from the Minneapolis library campaign--at least for the moment--is the big news of the day. But what about the role of Andrews/Birt Advertising, the ad-and-PR outfit that created it? Here's an email dialog I've had with CEO Bill Andrews. Bill's side: It's a pro bono campaign with the best of intentions to use buzz to get results for the library. Follow the dialog link for Bill's full replies. It's not as if Mao was the only star in the campaign. Among the others? Batgirl, the librarian turned crime fighter. What's more, Bill assures me that...

The good folks at the Friends of the Minneapolis Library have dropped a Mao poster from a fund-raising campaign, at least for now. So says Dawn Flinsch, campaign coordinator, who tells me Mao is "on hold" out of sensitivity to citizens' concerns. J. Edgar Hoover will remain, I'd rather he not, but I don't consider him in the same class as Mao. So what if Mao was a librarian? He killed millions. A big picture of Mao with a little explanatory caption just won't do the trick. Meanwhile you can read what the Friends was thinking when it went along with...

Images of J. Edgar Hoover and Mao Tse-tung show up in a library campaign in Minneapolis--reportedly with a misleading implication that Hoover was a librarian. So that's supposed to make us civilians love the profession? Edgy PR campaigns can be fun, but this just plays into the hands of government-haters. Is a thuggish Mao or Hoover approach meant when people say librarians should rule the Net? Definitely not. In any event, the campaign is more nutty than edgy and not exactly an image-enhancer. Not everyone has the requisite sense of humor. Alas, I couldn't immediately find a link to the source...