Somewhere in the offices of Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. in St. Louis, Mo., there’s an electronic file with my name on it. And some check marks for bad, bad behavior on my part.
Or so I’m told.
Last week, I posed a simple question to the brewer of Budweiser. Milwaukee-based Miller Brewing Co. had issued a NASCAR challenge to its rival days before. At stake would be the naming rights of the two companies’ Major League Baseball parks for one weekend in 2008.
In the challenge, if Bud driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished ahead of Miller driver Kurt Busch in the point standings for the 2007 NASCAR Nextel Cup, then Miller would agree to change the name of Miller Park in Milwaukee to Busch Stadium for a weekend series between the Milwaukee Brewers and the St. Louis Cardinals. And if the Miller driver finished ahead the Bud driver, then Anheuser-Busch would have to agree to change the name of Busch Stadium in St. Louis to Miller Park for a weekend series.
Days went by, and Anheuser-Busch did not respond to Miller’s challenge.
So, I called an Anheuser-Busch spokeswoman and posed a simple question: “Does your company have a response to Miller’s NASCAR challenge?”
About an hour later, I received an e-mail from an Anheuser-Busch spokesman, who stated, "When it comes to these types of things, we like to let our driver do the talking." The spokesman attached the following statement, which he attributed to Earnhardt: "Racing is my job, not a bet. My only priority is to build on last season's success and win the Nextel Cup."
Fine. I thought that was the end of that. But I was wrong. A short time after posting the story in the BizTimes Daily bulletin, I received a frantic voice mail, followed quickly by an urgent e-mail from the Anheuser-Busch spokesman.
He chastised me for including his quote about the challenge in the bulletin. He said his quote was off the record.
I pointed out to him that as a public relations professional, he surely should know that nothing said to a journalist is “off the record” unless both the source and the journalist agree to such terms before the information is relayed. I told him, “I asked a simple question, and you gave me a simple answer, and I relayed it to our readers. Besides, it’s not like I quoted you saying anything scandalous. I mean, what’s the problem here?”
His response to my rebuttal? “That’s not acceptable. Just so you know, we’re making note of all this, and it’s going in your file. I wouldn’t expect any cooperation from Anheuser-Busch for any stories you do in the future.”
The company has a “file” for me? Who knew? Beautiful. I’m banned in Bud land. Another public relations professional I know who previously worked for Anheuser-Busch confirmed that that’s the way the company works. He said the company’s PR staff is forbidden from returning calls to another publication that had written something unfavorable about the Bud years ago.
For the record, some of my best friends are in public relations. And I’ll say a little prayer for them here. I hope they never end up working for such a paranoid company.
But wait, the story gets funnier. My original story got picked up on a Web site devoted to Dale Earnhardt dalejrpitstop.com, which then referred more than 1,100 readers back to the story at our Web site.
Thank you, Bud.
Steve Jagler is executive editor of BizTimes in Milwaukee and is past president of the Milwaukee Press Club. BizTimes provides news and operational insight for the owners and managers of privately held companies throughout southeastern Wisconsin.
Steve has won several journalism awards as a reporter, a columnist and an editor. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
When he is not pursuing the news, Steve enjoys spending time with his wife, Kristi, and their two sons, Justin and James. Steve can be reached at steve.jagler@biztimes.com.
