Toronto’s Mayor, David Miller – currently languishing in lame duck status after declaring he won’t run for re-election this fall — had the newsrooms buzzing recently when his office issued a cryptic media advisory calling a news conference for the next morning to announce a significant announcement.

“Live trucks should arrive well in advance to run cables” the advisory warned. Clearly this was big stuff. Was he throwing his hat back in the ring? Speculation ran wild.

The next day, the media showed up in droves and packed the room. Many broadcast outlets promoted that they’d cut to live coverage, and did – not wanting to miss a word of the big announcement.

And so it began.

If you read a transcript, you can imagine the excitement in the room as the Mayor solemnly kicked things off:

“Thank you very much for attending today for this announcement. I will be announcing today important plans for 2010 and 2011.”

This was it! Time for a comeback! He’s sick and tired of taking crap from the critics. No more Mr. Nice Guy. He’s coming back to kick some arse!

“Building a great City takes commitment, partnership and sacrifice – from all of us.”

Commitment? Tick. Sacrifice? Tick. Stump speech alert!

“When I introduced the City budget in February, I said that you can’t have a great city for free…”

Wait a second. Did he just say “budget”? As in, that thing I hate covering that no one cares about?

Yep. This was it. A budget announcement. The big news from the Mayor? “More accurate accounting, only available now,” had unearthed an extra $100 mil. You can watch the presser here.

So, was this a good strategy? Some might have thought so. Lord knows getting media to come to press conferences is brutal, and he sure got everyone out. And he got to deliver a few key messages while the cameras rolled live and unfiltered.

But then the free ride ground to a halt as fast a TTC train in rush hour.

First came the tweets from producers back at home base and journos attending the presser. Then the blogs. Then hotline radio piled on, one booking a fierce critic on as a guest while another rushed out a parody video. It wasn’t hard to predict what the dailies would run the next day, and they didn’t disappoint either.

The lesson?

For those of us in PR, this is a good reminder of the risks of bait & switch media relations. “Once bitten, twice shy,” goes the old saying.

Or maybe not.

One former city hall reporter-now-blogger documents a number of previous occasions when the Mayor’s office has pulled this stunt before. So maybe the better quote is “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Whether or not you can trick the media into attending a lame announcement once, twice or even on a regular basis probably depends on who you are. Having a pool of journos assigned to follow your every move certainly makes it easier. But after that, it’s out of your hands, and the joke may be on you.

Which reminds me of another famous quote, this one by Mark Twain. Something about picking fights with people who buy ink by the barrel.