Warren Kremer Paino Advertising continues to just not get it. They still have their suit against Lance Dutson out there, and the negative PR just keeps piling up. Last week, a Google search for their agency turned up mostly b2b references; now, it shows an awful lot of negative stories. Interestingly enough, they do seem to understand that they look bad - last night, Scott Johnson's post ranked first - this morning, three older stories have popped right to the top. So they do understand that they have created negative PR, but thus far, at least, it looks like they think they can game their way out of it.

Meanwhile, mainstream press is starting to notice the story - PBS, The Wall Street Journal, and the Boston Globe (that's an older story). All of this looks like it's getting somewhere - Lance Dutson reports that the end client - the State of Maine tourism folks - have noticed the negative PR:

I received a call Friday from an assistant to Jack Cashman, he is the head of Maine’s Department of Economic and Community Development, and a member of the Governor’s cabinet. His department oversees the Office of Tourism, this is Dann Lewis’s boss.

Cashman wants to set up a meeting between me and Warren Kremer Paino, to mediate this. The meeting is tentatively set up for this Thursday.

Sounds to me like the client is pushing back on the agency some - at least they realize that negative PR events are not what they are paying for.

Now, recall what I said about this last week - the facts of this matter are nearly irrelevant at this point. What's happened is that a large corporate entity has decided to shut down a gadfly by pulling out a bomb. A decade ago, this would probably have worked. Outside of Maine, no one would have noticed, and the gadfly in question would have backed off (and likely been ruined by the suit). Now, the broadcast power that Glenn Reynolds wrote of in "An Army of Davids" makes it much, much harder for companies to do that. Instead, they have to actually do the hard work of making an honest response to criticism. Which is better for all of us.

Update: After writing this, I notice that Glenn Reynolds has posted an article on the more general topic - why trying to silence bloggers doesn't work - up on TCS Daily.