The Best Job in Marketing?

Alice Cuneo, writing for AdAge.com, reveals for her readers the winner of “the best job in marketing.” What would you guess?

— The Academy Awards and all those now-taxable goody bags filled with sponsored bling.

— The Masters, the venerable golf tournament that happens to be held at a restricted country club. No problem. Just drop the TV advertisers and rake in the revenue from corporate hospitality.

— The MTV Video Music Awards where the profanity finally succumbed to the 30-second delay. Now how do you bleep the pervasive wardrobe malfunctions?

— The Olympic Games for which the price of a top tier sponsorship represents most companies’ annual profits (if not revenue), and bears little relationship to company’s financial straits, or does it.

While all of the above marketing bonanzas merit your consideration, Alice looked lower on the marketing totem pole to her choice for the best job. She named the Apple PR person as most deserved of the title:

“It’s a cushy job because as a public relations person at Apple, you don’t have to deal with the media at all. While it’s no scientific measure, if you Google ‘Apple did not return calls,’ you’ll come up with 2.35 million hits.”

Now for the rest of us PR types who struggle to commandeer the limited bandwidth of journalists whom we’ve determined are prime for pitching, the Apple PR person has a different sensibility, according to Alice:

“…you’re not expected to answer the phone. No risk of carpal tunnel, either, because answering e-mail is optional too! Those few times you do have to involve yourself with a reporter? Well it’s time for mental fun and games. Figure out ways how to how to chew up their time without really being helpful. Things you can ask and/or demand: What is your story about? Can you write out all the questions you might possibly want to ask? Give us all of your information. Yes. All of it. And, by the way, we may or may not respond to let you know we don’t have a comment.”

Ahhh, if only all our clients had an iPhone or a record number of iTunes downloads in their DNA! We too could tell the media to piss off. Alice, have you considered changing your last name to Arrington?