The AMA recently tried to capitalize on the ebola scare by issuing a news release, backed by comments AMA President Rob Dingman made on camera at the AIMExpo, saying that the Centers for Disease Control might be doing a better job containing the deadly virus if the agency weren’t wasting time and money worrying about whether motorcyclists were wearing helmets.
So how is this tactic working, in the AMA’s feud with the CDC over helmet laws? Well, considering that two of the most opinionated and widely read columnists in the online motorcycle media have panned the effort, perhaps it’s less than a smashing success.
Over at Motorcycle.com, John Burns, in his Whatever! column, took exception to Dingman suggesting the CDC was trying to stop people from riding motorcycles, when what the agency really was trying to do is make motorcyclists wear helmets. Burns wrote: “Just think, with any leadership at all, we’d be lane-splitting through all 50 states, parking on the sidewalks like we used to do in San Francisco in the good old days, having the entire U.S. Congress trembling in fear before us … For now, though, we motorcyclists will have to be happy with a nice banquet every year.”
At Motorcycle-USA.com, Mark Gardiner, in his Backmarker column, called it “politicking at its sleaziest” and suggested the AMA, a supposedly politically neutral non-profit entity, picked up the idea from right-wing think tank talking points.
So who’s in charge of the public relations message over at the AMA these days? Who vetted this flop?
Well, one of the first things Dingman did when he took over the AMA was to hire former Honda executive Pete terHorst as a consultant to mastermind public relations. Prior to that, the AMA did not have a full-time, outside public relations consultant. But Dingman decided the AMA needed a real pro to manage PR, and since then, the AMA has paid well over $1 million to terHorst’s firm, Sympoint Communications, in the same time that the association has lost millions of dollars and 28 percent of its membership. The AMA’s annual public tax report for the year ending Sept. 30, 2012 (the most recent available to me) showed payments of $205,018 to Sympoint for the year.
They say you get what you pay for. But apparently there’s no guarantee you always get your money’s worth.
smells like desperation