Popular culture depicts publicists as soulless spin doctors who will sell their mother if it means landing a feature in The Wall Street Journal. While it’s true that any serious PR pro is ambitious about earning coverage for clients, the idea that we are unshackled by ethics and objectivity is nonsense. PR is about connections, and integrity means lasting relationships with journalists.
That’s why the astronomical success of memecoins — most recently, Pepecoin — is so fascinating. Absent an actual product, structured business model and even sometimes public team, memecoins offer a rare opportunity to test the powers of unshackled PR and marketing. With memecoins, the messaging is 99% of the product. That doesn’t mean PR folks can leave their ethics at the door when promoting a memecoin, but it does mean they have much more liberty than usual in their campaigns.