5 PR lessons from Romney’s brutal July

The Obama campaign is pounding away at Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital and his failure to release more income tax returns. As Romney launches a counterattack this week, we explore the lessons for communications professionals.

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This time around the Obama camp is in the weeds, focusing its messages on a specific point in rival Mitt Romney’s career—his tenure as president of venture capital fund Bain Capital.

And thus far it’s working, thanks in large part to the Romney campaign’s failure to handle the onslaught.

In May, the Obama campaign launched attack ads insisting that as president of Bain, Romney outsourced American jobs abroad. People questioned the Obama camp’s strategy, suggesting the topic wouldn’t resonate with most voters. But the Romney campaign has bumbled its way through the attacks, turning a “two-day mini-story into a major three-week distraction,” according to Huffington Post Editorial Director Howard Fineman.

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