Timothy Leary and JD Power & Associates?

UPDATE: Don't miss the email response from the PR firm's president!

J.D. Power & Associates and uSamp.com quoted Timothy Leary in a "pitch letter" preceding a press release. I don't even really understand their use of Tim's famous quip in this context. Are they implying he was prescient but also totally wrong? Or...? Fortunately, they didn't include that classic photo above in the press release. Over at Gizmodo, Joel mocked that up to illustrate his blog post about it. And no, this is not the same thing as Tim voluntarily doing a Gap ad when he was still alive. "No, J.D. Power & Associates, Timothy Leary Wasn't Talking About Social Media"

UPDATE: I just received the following email:

David,

Greetings. I’m writing in response to today’s post, which concerns our client, uSamp (http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/13/timothy-lear-and-jd.html). Several points require clarification:

• The document referenced by Gizmodo was a pitch letter, not a news release. As you’re probably well aware, pitch letters are typically sent as background for journalists and aren’t intended for publication. In this instance, the pitch letter prefaced a news release from J.D. Power and Associates; the release detailed a collaboration between J.D. Power and Associates and uSamp. For clarity, the email included a line just above it (in blue) that read: “Note: Please see press release pasted below note...”

•The Gizmodo quote incorrectly attributed the pitch letter’s inclusion of Timothy Leary to J.D. Power and Associates. The pitch letter was in fact from my agency, Edge Communications, Inc., on behalf of our client, uSamp.

• The citation of the popular Leary quote was verbal device, a metaphor – nothing more, nothing less. Since the ‘60s, the Leary quote has been used on thousands of occasions in reference to all manner of activity and behavior – and in this case, to show evolutionary change over time.

Given that the pitch letter was aimed at providing background on our client uSamp to an audience who may be unfamiliar with the company’s recent success – and was not intended for publication per recognized journalistic procedures – my hope is that you’ll consider modifying or withdrawing the post. At minimum, we respectfully request that you remove the erroneous attribution to J.D. Power and Associates.

Thanks so much for your consideration.

Ken Greenberg President, Edge Communications, Inc.

• [teapot]

  BAHAHAHA!

  Greenberg’s stupid response is the best!

  “It doesn’t matter if this piece of writing is hopeless and meaningless we wrote it not them!!!!!!!!!!”

  Dude… did you really think it was a good idea to write into BB defending something that was being (fairly) ridiculed?

  No one has heard of usamp, but we will now certainly associate its name with this monumental joke and affront to the memory and message of Dr. Leary.

• [mdh]

  This is a lot like what Beck tried on MLK Jr a few weeks back.

• [VoiceUXGuy]

  Check your headline

• [seyo]

  “Are they implying he was prescient but also totally wrong?”

  Yes. This is technocratic libertarian snark.

• [Teller]

  The copywriter spun in his Aeron chair after coming up with that one.

• [mellowknees]

  I hope that someday Zombie Timothy Leary eats the brain of the person who came up with this.

• [Tdawwg]

  Pomo’s a mofo: one’s cherished textual touchstone becomes another’s canting corporatist press release.

  “Find the others” would be a great Facebook ad . . . if they needed advertisement.

  • [David Pescovitz]

    Ha! That quote means a lot to me. I refer to it frequently when talking “meta” about BB…

    From an interview with me at Technoccult from a few months ago:

    “A journalist once asked Timothy Leary what people should do after they “turn on.” Tim said, “Find the others.” Every day, I feel incredibly fortunate that Boing Boing helps me do that”

    • [Tdawwg]

      I’m happy to say that your usage was the first time I saw it, David, and it’s come to mean a lot to me (even though I just saw it when you first quoted it a few weeks ago), even more than your former Burroughs line, “Destroy all rational thought.”

      Finding the others, whoever we construe them to be, is SO what we’re all doing here, so thanks for helping us to do that!

      • [Ugly Canuck]

        Are you sure it isn’t “Exterminate all rational thought”?

        Like it says here, for the webcollage screensaver:

        http://www.jwz.org/webcollage/

        OTOH, maybe I’m simply thinking too much.

        • [David Pescovitz]

          “Exterminate all rational thought” was the tagline (and a quote) from Cronenberg’s film adaptation of Naked Lunch. I don’t recall if it’s in the original novel or not. “Destroy all rational thought” was, among other things, the name of a DVD documenting a Burroughs/Gysin-themed art show (“The Here To Go Show”) that took place in 1992. I always thought the phrase came from Burroughs but I could be mistaken.

• [David Pescovitz]

  Based on the letter from the PR guy, I clarified in the post that they used the Leary quote in the “pitch letter” that preceded the press release.

• [Thorzdad]

  Marketing gibberish. It’s pretty rare the marketing droids ever actually think about whatever cultural touchpoint they are appropriating actually meant.

• [mellowknees]

  Is it just me, or does it seem like whether or not something is intended to be “published”, it pays to behave as though it is? In this day and age, where a lot of things that people do not intend to become public do exactly that, I feel that it’s probably a good idea to only put things in writing that you feel good about ANYONE seeing.

  Also, I still don’t think Timothy Leary would be thrilled about this use of his words.

  • [Tynam]

    mellowknees: I’m not sure that’s desirable. I understand what you’re saying; but that’s certainly not the way I want my writing to work; it would prevent me from saying almost all of the best bits.

• [Anonymous]

  Same thing that happened to the Hippie movement is happening to the e-frontier.
  something extraordinary happened and a few witnessed the actual event then came
  starbucks, and the GAP

• [raygull]

  So according to the PR guy, the duty of the press is to regurgitate his intended talking points, “per recognized journalistic procedures.”

  That’s rich.

• [kenahoo]

  I’m apparently in the minority, but I thought that was a pretty keen twist of the quotation. To me it was a good observation that things that formerly seemed hugely important and were going to define life as we know it in the future, haven’t even retained their catchphrases over time. Things can change a lot, and fast, and in ways unpredicted.