The American Banker on last week named J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon as it’s “banker of the year.” While I don’t know if JPM threatened to pull advertising from AB (for that matter, I don’t even know if or how much advertising JPM does in the AB), I’ve been told that Dimon did everything he could to decline the award including trying to refuse it refusing to do an interview. AB said it was moving ahead no matter what.
Dimon’s reasoning was that he wanted to stay as far below the radar screen as possible at this point. That may seem silly for the CEO of one of the most important financial institutions in the U.S. and one who has been hailed by some as a savior, but it makes a great deal of sense from a public relations standpoint. Get too far out there and you’ll end up in a sketch on Saturday Night Live.
I imagine Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke is thinking that Dimon had it right and that being named Time’s Man of the Year might not have been the best thing, or at least might not have been the best thing right now.
In fact, it probably could not have come at a worse time. Just as the impact of his Senate confirmation hearing was dying down and the conversation was changing to something else, the man of the year award re-ignited the discussion about whether Bernanke should be reconfirmed and made it even bigger than it was before. Even some CNBC’s commentators, which said some very nice things about Bernanke last week as others in Washington were piling on, put smirks on their faces and talked about the award with a “What in the world was Time thinking” tone.
The Time cover now virtually guarantees that Bernanke will be a topic of conversation around far more holiday dinner tables and parties than would have ever been the case otherwise.
In case you’re wondering, unlike Dimon and the AB, Bernanke really didn’t have much of an option when it came to cooperating with Time. Given the timing of the issue, even the possibility that he would be selected meant that he had to participate (“shape” in PR parlance) in the story. Refusing to sit for the interview would have made him appear to be aloof and that would have reversed the communications strategy he seems to have been following for much of this year. It also would have forced Time to do a story in which others would have been interviewed about Bernanke. It was far better for him to talk for himself and to control the message.
Still, all things considered, my guess is that Bernanke would have vastly preferred that his picture not be on newsstands as people were doing their holiday shopping and before the Senate decides whether he’ll serve a second term.
