Me and Amanda Chapel

Yesterday I wrote in my blog about the blog Strumpette.

As you may remember this blog is written, supposedly, by Amanda Chapel.

She writes in her bio, "I have 15 plus years experience in marketing communications. I am a former vice president in the Consumer Marketing Group at Weber Shandwick, one of the world’s largest PR firms. Prior to Shandwick, I spent about 10 years bouncing around various top agencies . . . Truth is, I have a killer portfolio. I’ve been involved in award winning campaigns in key consumer sectors: food and beverage, health and beauty, retail and fashion . . . I am 5’ 4” tall, athletic, Pantene shoulder-length black hair, perfect perky boobs. I present well and am most accomodating. I’ve slept with clients. I sleep with my boss. I am the consummate PR strumpette."

So anyway, after I wrote my post one of my readers apparently visisted Amanda's blog and posted some of my comments.

Only they ended up in the wrong place, so Amanda wrote to me thanking for the mention and wondered if I was the one who'd made the comments and if I wanted to re-post. I had to disappoint her, since I had made no comments on her blog, but I was pleasantly surprised that she wrote.

In fact, it's not everyday someone like Amanda writes to me.

After all, here we have a girl who is quite dashing, and doesn't mind showing off, so much that her pictures in my post yesterday were not appreciated by a couple of my readers.

(For them, to tidy them over the episode with Amanda's buffed posterior, I have included an appropriate male rear end image, left, to ensure that I'm objective and without bias as I cover male and female gluteus maximus muscles in a similar fashion.)

But back to Amanda.

We ended up having quite a conversation over e-mail. She's a bright lady. Finally, late at night, she invited me over to her place, I mean her blog.

And of course, I accepted. Quite an honor. I'd love to write something on her blog.

I promised a visit in a month or so, when I hope to have more to write about public relations.

And I can assure you that this has nothing to do with her pictures. I just love her intellect. After all, I have to love a fellow rebel blogger, even though she posts nice images on her blog.

What's so wonderful about her is that here we have someone working on a high level in the PR business, hiding behind a pseudonym, which makes her very hard to find . . . and to fire.

And of course the PR industry just hates that. Just like any other industry, they want to be able to indiscriminately fire anyone who dares to speak up. But they can't fire Amanda because they can't find her. I just love that part of the story.

Here' s what theBivingsreport writes about Amanda: "A strange persona entered and shook up the PR world (at least the part that is online and blogging) rather recently. Strumpette, a blog written by one Amanda Chapel, has inspired a great deal of vitriol from online PR folks such as Steve Rubel, fellow Edel-ite Phil Gomes, the young and ambitious Flackette and even Shel Holtz. A strange site to see, as most PR bloggers are rarely critical of the industry and are genuinely giddy about the power of blogging. But when faced with Strumpette in March, they quickly switched into an attack mode."

"Strumpette is frequently critical of the public relations industry. Posts typically point to the problems the industry regularly faces, such as overbilling and controversial clientele or programs. Chapel is also a bit snarky and irreverent (in the classic blogger way), and also creates some mischief that, while mean-spirited, is nothing new in the practice of blogging."

"Amanda is a character, an anonymous one, who has fun with her readers at the expense of the public relations industry. It just seemed that most PR bloggers could not handle the occassional slam that most white collar professions (including banking, law and medicine) receive."

"Strumpette’s readers are a mixed bag. She tends to make some of them laugh and others, those who are incredibly angry, can’t seem to stop themselves from reading her blog or commenting."

Sounds like she has the same readers I used to have the Huffington Post . . .