One of the plusses about working in public relations is that our job is predicated on the notion of building relationships with audiences. Some advertisers, it seems, are bent on doing as much damage as possible to those relationships, if they existed in the first place. The latest bonehead move from the advertising world (not surprisingly, a political ad) is a pop-up video that appears in the America Online instant messaging (AIM) application. The Washington Post reports that an anti-Kerry ad appeared in the AOL app over a period of several days. The video image of Kerry appeared above the buddy list while an audio track proclaimed, “Personal injury lawyers like John Edwards get rich, but you pay the price.”

Since campaign laws make it hard to get such ads on TV, the Net is a natural replacement. But such intrusive ads could actually have unintended consequences. The Post article quotes one AIM user: “The video short was politically polarized at worst and annoying at best.” And he wasn’t happy that it started to play every time he launched AIM.