We've been wondering whether Citigroup's (C) attempts to get CEO Vikram Pandit some good press is a good idea. The small-town earned media was generally a solid win. And his New York Times interview was hardly a disaster.

But one quote has led to a spate of critical punditry: "Our distinctiveness is we connect the world better than anyone else...We have a great capability of building a business around that. And we are in the process of building a culture around that."

One pundit, who once worked at McKinsey no less, wrote: "What does it mean? Your guess is as good as mine." The banks has indeed had the hardest time convincing people that it has a winning strategy for getting off TARP and getting back to the top of the food chain. No one is sure what the strategy is, and the perception of no strategy is worse than the perception of even a bad strategy.

The critic continued: "Think Lou Gerstner in the 1990s focusing IBM on services, or Larry Ellison deciding he would just buy all of his competitors and be done with it. If you're making money, people will overlook the fact that your company doesn't make any sense; if you're struggling, like Citi is, they won't." On the upside, this is a dream challenge for a PR executive.  

For more:
- here's the criticism

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