Goldman Sachs is an organisation that has always fascinated me – partly because a friend worked there for a while – but mostly because no-one really knew anything about it. It was mostly rumour and speculation, about the codes of silence, the 24-hours days, the cult(-ish) behaviours and, obviously, the massive hessian bags of money that lined every corridor in their office buildings. (OK, I made the last bit up.) And there was the mythical partner status, conferred upon only the most deserving and diligent of employees in a special ceremony that culminated in the bestowing of a personal licence to print money.

Be that as it may. What piqued my interest further was its communications operation. I met one of the team not so long ago and she was everything I would have expected, in that she would tell me that she’d done some ridiculous number of interviews (18 I think) to get the job and she most definitely wouldn’t tell me anything else about it.

The Goldman Sachs comms team works at not getting coverage – and does it very well indeed. It is, of course, run by the highest paid man in corporate communications – one Lucas van Praag (my apologies to him if I’ve spelt it wrong) ex-Brunswick and a partner at the firm. Now, I know nothing about this, but I feel fairly confident in saying that his yearly package runs into millions. Possibly, in a good year, tens of millions.

So imagine my delight when there, in the Sunday Times, but yesterday, was an interview with Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs and the head of the London concern (5,500 employees and counting), one Michael Sherwood. Have a read here.

It throws up loads of questions – not about the business of GS – but more about their comms strategy and whether, for an institution that (according to itself) never fails, it hasn’t, in some manner, dropped a bollock with this one. I’m presuming that this is a one-off – we’re not going to see a new, friendly Goldman Sachs popping up everywhere – and I guess you have to admire Mr Van Praag for getting the people to do it – accustomed, as they must be, to keeping their heads down and avoiding ostentation and example.

But I cannot help but thinking they’d have been better off drawing the blinds and turning down the music, and waiting until the mob goes away. Yes, I’ll buy what the article proposes – GS is being tarred with the same brush as the banks that really f***ed up over the credit crunch, and that’s damaging to it and, potentially, to the way it operates. One potential solution? Make it less mystical – open the doors, show people there’s nothing to be afraid of, explain that the money is reward for doing the job – the job that keeps the rest of the world turning.

Only the article didn’t. Unfortunately, Mr Blankfein didn’t come across as a very nice man – or one that in any way understands the feelings of the general population (irrespective of whether or not GS is responsible for what’s happened and those feelings). His explanation was not very convincing. Mr Sherwood talked too much about multi-million pound yachts which, apparently, he likes. Too many staffers were quoted, and in their quotations, there were the echoes of the slightly weird, slightly freakish, slightly ghoulish nature of the business. It scared me, let me tell you.

No, on balance, I think this was a piece of coverage too far. I think it would have been a piece of coverage too far even if the good times were rolling. But they’re not, and as news of a cold winter and an austere New Year gather momentum, this just seems a little undiplomatic and slightly unnecessary. Of course, it might be that GS is sticking a big middle finger up at the world and is saying, through the media, we’re bright, we work hard, we get paid a sh*tload and – oh yes – f*ck you. I hope not, but………….

(Incidentally – a small non-sequitur. Mr Sherwood of Goldman Sachs talks about buying multi-million pound yachts. Which he likes, apparently. On the other hand, his remuneration is placed at the 6 million unit-of-some-currency-or-other mark. Dollars or pounds. Not lire, obviously. Anyway – is it just me, but if you only earned 6m a year, you wouldn’t be able to afford £32m yachts, would you? No. Suffice it say, he earns a sh*tload more than the paper went away believing.)

Another hapless ‘PR person’ achieves the dubious distinction of a mocking mention in the Evening Standard’s City Diary section. (Sadly, I can’t link to it, so you’ll simply have to accept my word on this one.)

The gist of the article was that said hapless ‘PR person’ put a call into the City desk, requesting that, when writing about Boots (the company, not the footwear), journalists should refer to the company as Alliance Boots – not just in the first para, but throughout the story. Suffice it to say – as I presume the request was couched in less-than-requestful terms – the story’s pay-off was simply “no – get a job”.

Now. We’ve all been there. Client fiercely protective of company, its reputation and its brand equity, and also – in cases where two entities have come together and combined their names – very mindful of the politics that go with it. Unfortunately, many clients also believe (and it’s not necessarily a bad thing – how else could they deal with the long hours and the sheer tedium of much of what they do?) that the company they steer, and they themselves (by default) are the most important things in the entire universe.

This, inevitably, leads them to believe that the outside world will dance to their tune and that they simply have to snap their fingers and their bidding will be done. In this case, the fingers they’re snapping take the form of a pin-stripe-suited associate at Finglebum Snide Travesti Partners, financial PR advisors of this parish. Who, mindful of their obscene retainer, pick up the ‘phone and make arses of themselves and the profession as a whole.

Journalists often have a good whinge around how the PR profession doesn’t understand their needs and their constraints. In fairness, PR people often have a whinge around how they’re treated by the media – and both parties have a point.

In this case, however, Finglebum Snide Travesti Partners let the side down. They are financial PR advisors. So advise. Tell the client that their company is getting decent coverage, and that the coverage is having the desired effect – communicating corporate messages to the required audience. Remind the client that their company is a strong one, and that the shareholders are unlikely to even notice that a journalist has not used the company’s full (proper) name. Advise the client that making an issue out of this may, actually, have an adverse effect.

Like clearly demonstrating to stakeholders that the company is run by anal-retentives, who quite clearly have too much time on their hands and therefore are not involved anywhere near enough in the frying-of-bigger-fish department.

(NB For the purpose of this post, I have made all sorts of assumptions. In the interests of providing balance, I accept that the fingers that were snapped may equally have taken the form of an in-house communications advisor. I am prepared to concede that Finglebum Snide Travesti Partners does not exist, although it probably should. I will go as far as to propose that no fingers may have been snapped at all and the ‘phone call made to the Standard’s City desk may have been an off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment decision by an inexperienced junior. All this being said, my point still stands.)