Blade CEO Admits Creating Fake Spokesperson: Insider

(Bloomberg) -- Aviation transportation start-up Blade Air Mobility Inc. had a fake spokesperson for three years, the company’s CEO Rob Wiesenthal told Insider in an interview.

Wiesenthal told the publication that Blade’s director of communications Simon McLaren did not exist but was a made-up persona invented by him and his colleagues, adding that he had masqueraded as McLaren in telephone conversations with news outlets.

”When we were a small company, everyone had to wear many hats. When it was appropriate for a spokesperson to respond to a press inquiry rather than the CEO, given that we did not have a spokesperson, we used the pseudonym typically in email communications,” Wiesenthal said in a statement to Bloomberg.

“Whether using the pseudonym or not, every question answered or comment made to the press was factual,” he added.

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