{"id":277449,"date":"2021-06-17T22:42:33","date_gmt":"2021-06-17T19:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/helicopter-startup-blade-had-phony-spokesman-for-years-ceo-admits\/"},"modified":"2021-06-17T22:42:33","modified_gmt":"2021-06-17T19:42:33","slug":"helicopter-startup-blade-had-phony-spokesman-for-years-ceo-admits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/helicopter-startup-blade-had-phony-spokesman-for-years-ceo-admits\/","title":{"rendered":"#Helicopter startup Blade had phony spokesman for years, CEO admits"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Helicopter startup Blade had phony spokesman for years, CEO admits<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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A tony private aviation charter company took the media<\/a> for a ride \u2014 when they made up a phony spokesman and issued press announcements under his name, an executive admitted in a new interview. <\/p>\n

Blade, which provides chartered jets and choppers to the wealthy, created the fictional PR man Simon McLaren, who gave comments to outlets including the New York Times and Washington Post, CEO Rob Wiesenthal told Insider<\/a> in an article published Thursday. <\/p>\n

Wiesenthal insisted that the information issued under the McLaren character\u2019s name was always accurate \u2014 and claimed that a lot of growing companies use the tactic because they just don\u2019t have the staff to have a full-time PR rep.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a small company, everyone has to wear many hats. When it was app<\/a>ropriate for a spokesman to respond to a press inquiry, rather than the CEO, given that we did not have a spokesman, we used the pseudonym,\u201d Wiesenthal told Insider.<\/p>\n

The company even made a Twitter account for McLaren, which described him as a \u201cJaded New Yorker, raconteur, college dropout writer, student of highly driven narcissists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no intention of being duplicitous,\u201d Wiesenthal told Insider. \u201cA lot of people wanted a name for a spokesman, and it was just not appropriate for a CEO to speak. And a lot of people didn\u2019t have training on how to speak with the press. There are a lot of small companies that have done this and continue to do this, but at a certain point you outgrow it, and we outgrew it.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLaren appears to have made his debut as a spokesman for Blade in a 2018 Vanity Fair piece. <\/p>\n

Since then, the fake identity has been quoted on topics ranging from Blade\u2019s compliance with federal regulations to negotiations with the town of East Hampton, Insider reported. McLaren has even been quoted in the New York Post.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Wiesenthal confirmed to The Post that the company used the name Simon McLaren as an alias \u2014 but claimed they stopped using the \u201cpseudonym\u201d in the summer of 2020. <\/p>\n

However, the name is listed as a contact as late as a November press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Blade appears to have stopped using the McLaren alias ahead of the company\u2019s debut on the public markets through a SPAC merger. <\/p>\n

The company continued for a few months to use the McLaren name on a series<\/a> of weekly blog posts called \u201cSimon McLaren\u2019s Curious Content,\u201d\u00a0which Blade began sending to its email list in October.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring lockdown, since very few people were flying, the company had a content news<\/a>letter with weekly stories unrelated to our business to provide much needed levity to our fliers, and to keep our content and marketing team engaged,\u201d Wiesenthal told The Post. \u201cWe used the pen name Simon as a byline.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wiesenthal added that the newsletter<\/a> continues to be published <\/a>without a byline and \u201ccontinues to provide lighthearted and cheeky content not associated with the company, its operations or our industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CEO
Blade CEO Rob Wiesenthal said the information the company gave under McLaren\u2019s name was truthful.<\/figcaption>
Annie Wermiel<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The company, according to Insider, sent out a letter to subscribers in January announcing that McLaren would be leaving the company and taking the newsletter with him. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are living in a uniquely polarizing time,\u201d the letter said, according to Insider. \u201cAs such, despite how much we enjoy Simon McLaren\u2019s Curious Content and his unique perspective on what it\u2019s like to be a diehard New Yorker in this day and age, both Simon and the Company have decided that it\u2019s best that we part ways and transition his weekly newsletter from Blade to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter reportedly quoted the phony McLaren, saying that he was no longer an appropriate spokesman because his musings were too controversial.<\/p>\n

Wiesenthal told Insider that the drama around McLaren\u2019s departure started as an \u201cinside joke\u201d among the company\u2019s creative team.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Helicopter startup Blade had phony spokesman for years, CEO admits” A tony private aviation charter company took the media for a ride \u2014 when they made up a phony spokesman and issued press announcements under his name, an executive admitted in a new interview. Blade, which provides chartered jets and choppers to the wealthy, created…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":277450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/06\/DSC02832-Edit1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[109650,25848,99546,70917,73295],"class_list":["post-277449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-6-17-21","tag-blade","tag-helicopters","tag-startups","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}