Razorfish, the Internet consulting company, isn't releasing its fourth-quarter earnings until after the close of market Thursday, but in an internal memo sent to employees on Monday amidst large-scale layoffs, executives said the company took in $51 million in revenue.

In the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Standard, CEO Jeff Dachis and Chief Strategic Officer Craig Kanarick attempt to explain why some employees got the impression late last year that layoffs weren't imminent.

The memo was also "obtained" by everyone from fuckedcompany.com to the various chat rooms and message boards that follow Razorfish. In fact, a professional might presume that "distributed" might be the better verb to use here.

The company's fourth-quarter figure is slightly more than the $50 million that the company projected in mid-December when it said it would miss earnings expectations. The revenue figure is approximately $25 million less than the $71 million it took in for the third quarter. The New York-based firm also said it would take $8 million in write-downs for the quarter. It didn't give the employees any profit numbers. It said its cash reserves had dwindled to slightly more than $40 million from $75 million at the beginning of the quarter. It also revealed that several company executives have offered to take "significant" salary cuts.

If we didn't know any better, one might presume this was the transcript of an analyst conference call. And extra whipped cream for the nice touch about the senior brass "offering" to refund some of their no-doubt extravagant paychecks.

The memo was distributed the same day that the company laid off 400 employees, or 21 percent of its staff of 1,900, as part of a cost-cutting program designed to save the company $70 million in 2001.

Consequently, the (pretty decent, all things considered) financial information disclosed in the memo became the headline instead of the layoffs. Granted, they didn't dodge all the bullets, but it would have been much worse without the memo leak.

"Your faith and strength in Razorfish and its continued success will be tested in the coming months," the founders wrote. "We are confident that we have an amazing future."

Try writing that in a quarterly-earnings press release. In fact, here's the quote from the "real" Razorfish announcement about its numbers:

"We have continued to build and align our business to face the challenges of a year filled with rapid change. While we reflect on our first unprofitable quarter, we continue to execute our strategy to develop and deliver digital solutions. We are confident our strong brand and service offering is designed to bring high returns on investment for our clients."

All together now…zzzzz. But this last paragraph from The Standard says it all:

Although some companies might be leery of releasing financial information to employees because of newly strengthened securities laws governing disclosure, securities experts say the internal memo doesn't run afoul of the regulations.

In other words, Reg FD. But by the time the official announcement came on Friday, February 9, the market had been completely conditioned to hear the bad news, and the stock reacted accordingly, sliding down a few cents rather than the kamikaze flight plan most public companies have been flying this past year.

Bottom line: tactics like this are going to be standard business practices within weeks. The "real" announcement is all but meaningless except to those doddering fools who still think "news" comes on big pieces of paper every morning.

Also, it's worth noting that none of the above interactivities involved dealing with the Razorfish web site beyond posting the mop-up news release after all the excitement was over and the story had run in about 10,000 media sources.

Are your clients ready to run a drill like this?

Your agency?

You?