| Chapter 8 |

LIFE HAPPENS: MANAGE CRISES IMMEDIATELY

Problems Ain’t Going Away on Their Own,and You Can’t Outwork Them

“There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.” —Henry Kissinger

Working in PR is often like working the ER night shift on a 100-degree summer weekend. You never know what’s going to happen next. Product recall. Sexual harassment. Not wanting to rat to the police. Involvement in a shooting. Bankruptcy. Corporate merger. Affair with a secretary. Fraud. Government investigation. Protests at corporate headquarters. We have worked through all of these situations and more with our clients. I’ve helped major corporations, small businesses, and celebrities get through a fair number of troubling times, from financial scandals at a Fortune 100 company, to countless indictments and accusations, to arrests at New Jersey construction companies, to trials and legal proceedings for celebrities like Lil’ Kim, as well as average Joes.

One key lesson learned from these experiences is that even though there are times when you can get away with burying your head in the sand, a crisis that brings media attention isn’t one of them. Drop what you’re doing and address crisis situations as they happen; it’s impossible to sit behind a computer and “outwork” catastrophes. Your entire business, or your whole life, can be changed by one article or one rumor, true or untrue. And that can leave a permanent negative hit to your company’s reputation. The old scandal may appear at the top of your Google search results for a very long time; even if you use a great search engine optimization campaign, bad news can be found, and will forever live online. Worried? You should be.

ACT FAST—THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION DOESN’T WAIT

There are often two courts involved when it comes to crisis PR: the court of law and the court of public opinion (think Casey Anthony, who may have been found “not guilty” in a court of law but is certainly guilty in the court of public opinion). Both courts matter immensely. While PR has to follow a lawyer’s lead, lawyers who understand how the press works are a necessity for any crisis that attracts media attention. Anyone involved in a crisis must, like it or not, understand the need to respond quickly to the media. If not, the story and any allegations will appear alongside that all-too-familiar line, “Mr. XYZ wasn’t immediately available for comment.” Someone else will frame your campaign and the issues, and they’ll do it with or without you.

The legal system is often at odds with the media system; lawyers tell you to be patient, and court proceedings are, by design, long, complicated, and tedious. Jury pools and judges can be biased, and even if you win in court, customers, employees, and others are following the media and forming opinions. Meanwhile, the media demands immediacy. Good lawyers who understand not just the law but also the media know that they must deal with it—and do.

A bad lawyer reminds me of the cop drama shows where a kid goes missing and a frantic parent calls the police, and the cops say, “Ma’am, call us when your kid is missing for two days.” By that time, the trail’s often cold. Lawyers may need to see real and calculable damage before they can intervene, but that makes for bad PR and can, in fact, exacerbate some existing crisis and perhaps even create an unrelated crisis. Even the whiff of bad news or some sort of investigation can prompt employees to resign en masse, vendors to demand quicker payment terms, and competitors to scream from the rooftops: “The end is near.”

Many lawyers don’t get paid to settle fights because they make more money if there is a fight. That’s “billable hours” in plain English. PR people, on the other hand, get fired if we allow a crisis to drag on in the media.

While the legal system isn’t built for short-term results, the court of public opinion is now immediate and viral. Brands are being hurt because bloggers, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, 24/7 cable news, search engine results, etc., don’t wait for lawyers or anyone else to make a decision. These days, negative stories, truth or lie told ’round the world and believed by millions, are crises. When a crisis comes, it’s often the case that if you tell your story quickly, and in the right way, you can often shorten its life cycle.

Don’t Mortgage Your Future by Waiting Too Long to Get Help

At the height of the mortgage crisis, I got a call to meet with Michael Ashley of Lend America, whose infomercials I had seen on television. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) was investigating the company in what Ashley maintained was a government witch hunt. He claimed that he and Lend America were convenient targets for the government because of his 1996 conviction for mail fraud, in which he was given probation and forked over $30,000 to Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. authorized by Congress to provide a secondary market for residential mortgages. Ashley said paying the fine was easier and cheaper than fighting the government. In the 13 years since, he steered clear of trouble and became über-successful.

Ashley’s swagger, good looks, and cocky manner didn’t always do him favors. His high-profile secondary career as a professional race car driver added to his persona, which probably didn’t enhance his role as the widely recognized originator of FHA-backed mortgages. He maintained at the time (and I continue to believe him) that he was an easier target than Chase, Washington Mutual, or other big banks that had done much worse than his company had. His company processed hundreds of thousands of mortgages during the height of the mortgage boom in the United States. It was accused of submitting 50 false mortgage submissions—50 out of thousands of properly executed mortgages. No one believed he personally had any knowledge of the falsifications, or even that he personally had done anything wrong. Given the volume of mortgages the company handled, it was certainly plausible that a handful of loans could have been written incorrectly. Yet with all the news about fraud at much larger companies, an uninformed public could be swayed to believe that Ashley and his company were complicit in mortgage fraud.

Using TV infomercials to reach troubled borrowers, Ashley helped build Lend America into one of the most prolific producers of loans backed by the FHA. The company’s growth blossomed when the financial crisis froze most forms of credit for those troubled borrowers. The FHA was their last hope to refinance costly loans. Moreover, Lend America was one of the few approved government lenders. The company’s infomercials were bold and memorable: “As a result of President BARACK OBAMA’s 75 BILLION Mortgage Relief Plan, interest rates are at their lowest—and still lowering. Go Obama, Go!!! The news media has been broadcasting that the U.S. Government Bail-Out Plan provides the biggest, most significant boost to help homeowners since the Great Depression of our country.”

By the time Ashley called me, Lend America was a few weeks away from being shut down. Every one of its 600 employees would be out of work, all because of 50 or so questionable loans. Despite having hundreds of employees, Ashley only had a part-time PR person, who arranged one major story—a Forbes magazine piece that Ashley was convinced put him on the government’s radar screen. Had the story—“To the Rescue: Lend America aims to make money on a government program that helps underwater borrowers and banks shed bad mortgages”—not run, perhaps he wouldn’t have been in this situation. This line from the story in particular might have perked up government watchdogs: “TV viewers may trust Ashley—but not too long ago the government did not. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced in 1996 after the feds targeted Liberty Mortgage Banking, run by his dad . . . Ancient history, Ashley says.”

Over the course of a few weeks, the charming and charismatic Ashley and I and our teams strategized for hours, planted media information, and hired Giuliani Partners, led by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, to put systems in place that would show the government Lend America’s intense desire to combat fraud and ensure sound internal processes. With Giuliani Partners involved in auditing, the company would be seen as one that wouldn’t put up with any funny business. Giuliani Partners was hired to review any inaccuracies, and offered to the government to act as an independent auditor to monitor the company going forward.

Rudolph Giuliani and some of his advisors attended talks between Lend America officials and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late. I genuinely believe had we been hired earlier, Lend America and many of its 600 jobs would still be around. Was Lend America perfect? No. However, it is now clear that the mortgage world was full of dreadful errors and mishandlings, not to mention actual fraud at large and “respected” companies. But as Ashley said, Lend America was an easier target than the bigger lenders. Targeting him may have resulted in some good headlines for the government to show it was doing something to fight fraud.

Lend America laid off its 600 workers a day after federal officials revoked its license to make loans insured by the FHA. Michael Ashley was also permanently banned from doing business in the industry. I really regret not being able to help him more. Had there been more time I believe pressure could have been applied and we would have had more of a fighting chance. Timing counts.

The Sporting Life

Let’s look at the oft-discussed Tiger Woods crisis at face value. He cheated on his wife (unethical but not terribly unusual, some statistics say 50 percent of married people cheat on their spouses), and was caught in a dramatic scene in late November 2009. He smashed his car on his own property and was treated and released from a local central Florida hospital for minor injuries. There’s no video of the car crash, no film of him with any other women, and no felony committed. Big story? Yes, certainly . . . a three- or four-day story, but not likely to become the biggest scandal of the last 10 years or so. The main reason the story lasted so long in the press? I think the story had legs because Woods waited too long to address the questions and the controversy. (And the mystery continued unanswered.) Even his badly delivered apology wouldn’t have backfired as badly had he done it right away. The story just kept building and simmering. Athlete, scandal, and sex add up to a great story.

Woods made a royal mistake the morning after when the police knocked on his door and his wife told them he was sleeping. State troopers showed up the following day, and again he wouldn’t talk to them. This wasn’t rapper 50 Cent who couldn’t be seen cooperating with the police for fear of damaging his image. This was Mr. All-American Golf Pro. Couldn’t a lawyer or assistant have answered the door and spoken to the cops privately, or reached out to them after they left? What was to gain by not cooperating? Perhaps his lawyers told him he didn’t have to talk and they were technically right—he certainly didn’t.

Woods probably could have been issued a desk appearance ticket; there was no alcohol testing done at the scene, and no damage done to anyone’s property but his own, so what’s the big deal? For one thing, the media was watching. They may have known about Woods’ reputation as a playboy and kept quiet about it, but this they could not ignore. Once the news trucks showed up and reporters started filing on-scene stories, the cops had to address it. That’s how media pressure works. Woods allowed a major media gaffe to explode into a story. Why he was evading the police is most certainly a juicy story. It led to days and days of media speculation . . . and days and days of Woods’ silence. Did he think the media was going away?

Or consider the case of now-retired NFL superstar Brett Favre. Favre may have evaded the media because he may have been worried about a sexual harassment case stemming from conduct toward at least two women who worked for the New York Jets in 2008, when Favre played for the team. Two former massage therapists for the team sued both Favre and the Jets, alleging that Favre propositioned them. He also allegedly sent a vulgar picture of himself to a Jets cheerleader’s cell phone. One would assume that, as a married man, he might also be worried about his wife’s feelings and well-being. Assuming his wife and family have been spoken to (and they better have been because the scandal was coming out in the media, like it or not), wasn’t Favre better off immediately speaking out on this matter or having someone discussing it on his behalf? The concept of this being “a private matter” clearly wasn’t an option, since lawsuits are public matters. To compound it, the public had already decided he harasses women. His wife found out and so would his kids. Why not at least respond when your opponents are talking?

Wrangler dumped him from an endorsement deal soon after the suits came to light. Any hopes of future endorsements are slim, yet he still hasn’t addressed these matters in any substantive way. As his PR representative, I would have demanded he speak, because the big picture of the Favre legacy is at stake and has now been redefined. When he is inducted into the Hall of Fame, you will see a picture of the cheerleader in much of the media coverage. Why? Because it’s a scandal, and she’s attractive. It’s good entertainment for the media, and we all want to see her picture, so the media gives us what we want to see. He should have addressed it ASAP and minimized the damage.

Don’t Toy Around—Hit Back

Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the biggest gift-buying period for consumer companies, “safety reports” on toys are issued. Sometimes it’s blogs or consumer newsletters that list 20 (or sometimes even 50 or 100) companies that allegedly have safety complaints filed against them or are producing dangerous toys. And, of course, the media jumps on these issues because they are looking for “toy stories” at this time of year. It’s well-done and smart PR.

But slow down—things aren’t always as they seem. Not every “safety report” is indeed an honest broker. One day in the first week of December, I got a call from a producer at one of the major national morning shows who wanted us to comment on one of these so-called safety reports. A newsletter had said our client, a family-owned toy company, had produced a toy considered to be a choking hazard. We didn’t know anything about the report until the producer called and alerted us to it.

We called our client, who was also in the dark. We quickly discovered that, not so coincidently, this newsletter had issued its “safety alert report” just one week after our client declined to place a full-page ad in a sister publication, as it had for the past few years. Amazingly brazen and nothing short of extortion. Pure bounty hunting: if you don’t pay me a fee, you will be deemed a safety hazard. The client was calling literally every 15 minutes: “What do we do, Ronn? What do we do? This could destroy business during our most important selling season. Retailers will pull my products off shelves and I have millions of dollars of product in the warehouse.” We called the television producer who said, “No problem—issue a statement and we’ll air it in response to the claims.” In those circumstances, who really cares about the company’s denial? If anything airs, it’s a horrible loss.

We used our relationships at the network to move up the food chain, sharing documentation, facts, and details about our client’s toys and what we viewed as the watch list’s extortion campaign, along with the original statement we’d produced one minute before the producer’s supposed deadline (but 12 hours before the story aired). The statement read in part: “As you are aware, all of our products meet strict U.S. government requirements. We have consistently and always adhered to strict testing of all of our products and never once had any product recalls. Your story is a witch hunt conducted in coordination with an organization that operates under false pretenses of giving ‘awards.”

In a situation like this, if the story ran with our client involved, even with their statement included, it would be a loss. Our client was being hijacked. In this situation, we were lucky to deal with a major national news outlet that has excellent fact checkers and producers. The story did run, and of the companies mentioned on the phony list, six were cited in the story and our client wasn’t one of them. Victory. Apparently we had shared enough details about how the product was made; the care; the lack of complaints; the repeated solicitations from this newsletter for client money; and when combined with the fact that the producers trusted and knew us, they concluded it would be best not to mention our client. And while the newsletter itself wasn’t invalidated and may still be running the same scam, that wasn’t our fight—our fight was making sure our client wasn’t included in the on-air story, and it wasn’t. So for us, it was a major victory.

  The bigger or more endemic the problem, the more necessary it is for the boss to be directly involved.

THE MESSAGE IS THE MEDIUM

It’s not always the case, but if you are the boss you often have to be the face of the crisis and the source of the apology. The bigger or more endemic the problem, the more necessary it is for the boss to be directly involved. Getting someone else to do your work in those situations doesn’t stop the media from asking questions, nor does it keep customers from leaving, or prevent employees from walking out on you. Letting the media provide updates without your comment can make matters worse because it gives reporters the opportunity to define the issues as they see them and create others without your help.

If it’s a big enough occurrence, holding a press conference is a good way to broadcast a concise and consistent message. Gathering the media together, presenting the same message to everyone, and answering a few questions are preferable to doing a series of one-on-ones with reporters. After the third interview you’ll feel fatigued (or nervous or annoyed), and that’s when I’ve seen well-prepared people screw up and go off message. When you do give a press conference or an interview concerning bad news, practice your tone and delivery (even 10 minutes of practice is better than none, if that’s all the time you have in a time-critical situation).

How you say things is as important as what you actually say. A study entitled “Surgeons’ tone of voice: A clue to malpractice history” in Surgery magazine revealed just how important delivery is in a crisis. The study’s authors found that doctors who spent more time in a room with patients talking to them in a kind manner faced significantly fewer malpractice lawsuits than doctors who spent less time in a room with patients and talked to them brusquely or insincerely. That’s regardless of whether the news was good or bad. Never underestimate the power of equanimity: the study further found that if patients liked the doctor they were less prone to sue even if that doctor actually made a “sue-able” mistake that adversely affected the patient’s health. It is both the time spent and the bedside manner of the speaker that counts. People who liked their doctors actually refused to sue them, even when malpractice occurred. This is a transferable lesson for crisis communication: if the people you’re addressing like you, your problems will be less severe in the long run.

Be prepared for scrutiny because discomfort always shows. Speak passionately and honestly, and don’t pretend to be on a higher level than your audience. “Equalizing” yourself—putting yourself in the shoes of those watching as much as you can—is one of the best ways to put people at ease. Have a glass of water by your side so you can take a sip when you need a few seconds to form your answer.

The Captain of the Ship Goes Down with the Crew

The November 2010 crisis of Carnival’s Splendor cruise ship is a great example of out-in-front crisis communication. A technical malfunction on board the cruise ship resulted in stranding 3,300 passengers on board for 72 hours with no electricity or working plumbing and limited food and water. Even though the error was no one person’s or the company’s “fault,” it definitely constituted a public relations crisis for Carnival Cruise Lines. It doesn’t matter if it’s no one’s fault—3,300 people were stranded without working bathrooms, air-conditioning, or much food. Needless to say, people were pissed.

Realize that in a situation like this, there is no amount of publicity or spin that can make things even remotely positive. The goal for Carnival, as with many crisis PR situations, was simply to minimize the negative and do what it could to make it up to its customer base—and future customers. Carnival handled the issue by immediately offering full refunds for the trip, along with a 25 percent discount on a future cruise. A lighthearted but compassionate blog post from the senior cruise director spoke of the ship not as smelling of roses, but smelling “like Paris on a hot summer’s day . . . that’s Paris the city, not Paris the . . . person.” He also kept making continuous announcements to keep passengers informed.

It was an awful situation, and I commend the company for telling the truth, communicating it immediately, and issuing a very direct apology from Carnival Cruise Lines’ CEO, Gerry Cahill. He talked openly about the challenges facing the crew and passengers on board the cruise ship. And he made what had to be one of the most difficult statements of his career: “We are very, very sorry for the discomfort and the inconvenience that our guests have had to deal with in the past several days.” He meant it, and by saying not just “I’m sorry,” but saying, “I am very, very sorry,” he went a long way to defuse the situation. The trouble continued with a few days of negative stories from passengers on the boat, and Carnival continued to address the many questions that came up from customers even after the media had moved on to other news. The message Carnival sent was: mistakes happen in business, we feel awful, we’re going to make amends, and now let’s move on.

The smart and personal actions of Carnival’s leader minimized loss of future business, lawsuits, and other problems. Other CEOs would not be so forthright because mishaps on this level are hard to own. Bosses have egos and it’s hard to humanize them in situations like these if they are not willing to step up and say something. Brands often wait too long because they are listening to shareholders, or their own egos, or they simply choose to ignore the problem. Was it a good situation? No, but all things considered, the company did a great job communicating sincerely, honestly, and openly with the press, customers, and the public. Big kudos to Carnival.

Out of the Blue

JetBlue Airways is a company known for its attention to consumer service—comfortable seats with plenty of legroom, personal televisions, friendly service, and impressive on-time statistics. These are the qualities that made the brand a winner among weary travelers sick of being mistreated by others in the airline industry. But that all changed in February 2007 when JetBlue essentially held passengers hostage on an airplane for eight hours (some reports said it was closer to 10 hours) during an ice storm the airline thought would break, long after it was obvious that the weather wasn’t going to change and would cause systemic problems across the airline industry. It was a PR nightmare for JetBlue. Stories with accompanying photos of overflowing toilets on the jet ran in news outlets that same day. Unfortunately, the company waited until the next day to speak to the media via press releases—a lifetime in a world of immediate news.

JetBlue Airways founder and CEO David G. Neeleman did issue an apology for keeping customers hostage on the runway. He apologized on all of the major network morning shows and cable news networks. His initial conference call to shareholders certainly sounded sincere. His voice audibly cracked many times during the conversation, and he admitted to being “humiliated and mortified” by the huge breakdown in the airline’s operations that dragged on for nearly a week. People felt the emotion, but even so, they simply couldn’t understand why the airline refused for so many hours to taxi the few hundred feet back to an open gate and allow passengers to deplane.

While Neeleman spoke of compensating passengers and of his management team not being strong enough, JetBlueHostage.com was up and running online, and YouTube was hosting regular JetBlue segments from the late-night comedians and Comedy Central. People were angry at the airline, and with reason. This was a fight Neeleman couldn’t win because the crisis was handled so badly. JetBlue management underestimated just how much the public despises airlines, even without being held hostage on a stinking plane with minimal sanitary conditions.

It was really an impossible task. No matter how the CEO tried, JetBlue could not get ahead of the crisis. Although the company survived, Neeleman did not. He was pushed out as CEO and chairman, and the brand lost a lot of its hip, customer-friendly cachet. BusinessWeek magazine dropped the company from its list of “Top 25 client-pleasing brands.” Before the crisis, JetBlue had been number four on the list.

Perhaps if it had happened on another airline that was not known for its customer service, which includes most other U.S. airlines, the fiasco wouldn’t have been as big a deal. JetBlue’s branding as an airline that cares about passengers opens it to criticism in a way other airlines are not. People expect so little of most other airlines, they would have been mad at the situation but not surprised by it—it would not have created such a stir. So the whole brand message and promise got screwed up. Realize that when you establish your Worth Index, you are obligated to live up to it or suffer the consequences.

Follow-up Counts: When the Crisis Passes,Promises Matter

If, in the heat of the crisis, you say you are going to take some specific action to solve the problem, or you are going to compensate those affected, you’d better do it. Everyone is watching. If there’s no follow-through, you’ve just created another crisis. Many brands think they can pass around a few platitudes and promises, and then go back to business as usual. JetBlue paid out $10 million in refunds to passengers on canceled flights and issued $16 million worth of vouchers to delayed passengers for future travel. It lost $20 million in canceled flights. The airline has gone back to its core mission of focusing on service and while the crisis hurt it financially, the hit didn’t destroy the company.

Carnival delivered on its promise to fix the Splendor as well. It took more than three months of around-the-clock technical repairs, but as of February 2011, the 3,006-passenger, 113,300-ton ship sports a 218,000-pound diesel generator, two 106,000-pound alternators, and 110 miles of new electrical cable. CEO Garry Cahill announced at a press conference held on board the ship that the Splendor was certified to sail once again. Travel experts say guests are returning and seem to have a short memory regarding the fiasco, in large part due to Cahill’s smart response to the situation and overall strong management. Despite rising fuel costs and ever-more-strident environmental regulations, Carnival has continued to innovate and introduce new ships, keep its prices low, and its ships at capacity.

THE TRUTH WILL OUT

Whenever a client calls me in a crisis situation, I do what I can to assess their ability to tell the truth. We are able to ask board members, attorneys, or advisors blunt and painful questions about clients, and we expect honest answers. And after all these years, this boy from the Bronx has a good nose for the truth.

Truth is paramount; lying to media is a no-no. If you’re caught, your credibility is gone. Shout, cry, or swear but don’t lie. I know of one brand in particular that gave a tip to a top-tier columnist, and it turned out to be false. It wasn’t a mistake—it was misleading on purpose. The client and the client’s rep were both banned from the column. Reporters do have that kind of power and they use it. Moreover, if you lie to your PR person, your lawyers, your accountant, or other advisors, they can’t help you. The people you hire to advise you have to know the full story, so complete disclosure is essential. Otherwise, these professionals can’t strategize to your optimum benefit.

Dr. Keith Ablow, one of the most renowned psychiatrists in the United States, has always said that people react very powerfully and positively to the truth and to self-revelation. “People have a barometer of truth inside them and you can’t convince anyone of anything that they don’t already feel from you at a gut level,” he says. I agree; while I’m all for being positive, you have to come to it honestly.

We refused to take on a certain major celebrity in a time of crisis because of her history of not fulfilling promises and keeping her word. This celebrity is a big brand and someone who has a number of business offshoots, so we agreed to meet with her. Despite her public vows to stop taking drugs and associating with certain individuals who had gotten her into trouble in the past, we knew things that hadn’t been reported: she had been seen at certain venues in which a celeb can accomplish nothing but get in trouble and she was still partying privately. The star wasn’t straight or honest with anyone around her. I have been proven right since turning down the account; she’s been a train wreck and is now probably beyond the point of no return. To manage a recovery, one needs to really be prepared to want to change and address the issues that got him or her into trouble, or no amount of PR will work, no matter how brilliant your PR person may be. Saying one thing and doing another simply does not work. It’s a lesson I have learned and confirmed only through experience.

We represented the rapper DMX for a few interesting years. While he was erratic, his team, including his wife and his manager, continually thanked us for working with him. The last time I saw him, in 2005, he was at the tail end of his career. One day he showed up alone at my office. Chain-smoking, he told one of my senior people and me that we needed to issue a press release immediately slamming Universal Records because he wanted to get out of his contract with them. DMX told us he was planning to confront music executive L.A. Reid, who ran Universal at the time, and he wanted the press release out before that happened. The rapper then stood up and told us he’d be back in an hour. We never saw him again. He was always funny like that; he’d say he was around the corner and appear three days later. We didn’t release any information despite his requests, and needless to say, DMX hasn’t made any music in many years, although he has made the media for several crazy arrest stories.

  The people you hire to advise you have to know the full story so complete disclosure is essential. Otherwise, these pros can’t strategize to your optimum benefit.

Lil’ Kim: Trial and the Truth

One day, in the summer of 2004, I got a call from an acquaintance. He knew Lil’ Kim and wanted to introduce me. Of course, like many, I’d been following the tabloid story of the shootings at the New York City radio station Hot 97. On February 25, 2001, Kim and members of the Jr. M.A.F.I.A. rap group, who had helped her get started in music, appeared as on-air guests at Hot 97. As Kim and her entourage were leaving the radio station offices in downtown Manhattan, a rival rapper and his entourage approached the building. Shots rang out; one person was shot in the back by a bullet.

When police tried to investigate the day following the shootings, Kim reportedly refused to help establish the identities of the people who’d been with her outside the radio station. And later, while under oath as a witness before a grand jury, Kim denied that the alleged shooters had been with her or that she knew who they were.

Protecting her “street cred” is how Kim got into trouble. “Street cred” is an urban term that means earning and keeping a certain level of respect from the people in the streets or urban hard-knocks community where you’re from. At its core, street cred is about establishing and maintaining authenticity. The concept is a big and relatively new factor in PR, but it’s an important consideration not only for rap stars but also for any corporate brand (think Nike or Pepsi, for example) that wants to sell to urban markets and youth markets. Street cred is critical to getting branding right, to building and maintaining buzz, and in cases like that of Kim, to handling crisis communications just so.

Kim certainly had the pedigree. Born Kimberly Denise Jones in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a rough area of Brooklyn, Kim lived for a few years with her father after her parents broke up when she was nine. As a teen she found herself living with her friends and sometimes on the streets. Using the moniker Lil’ Kim, she got her start in music with the help of the rappers Junior M.A.F.I.A. and her sometimes-boyfriend, the slain legendary Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls). Kim was 21 when she released her first solo record, Hard Core. The title and cuts were descriptive of both her onstage persona as a sexed-up wild child and much of her subsequent multiplatinum, award-winning work. By the time of the Hot 97 shootings, Kim had firmly established her reputation as the first female rapper to focus on tough, rough-edged, street-talking rap with explicit sexuality, previously the province of male rappers. Her many albums and hit singles had topped charts that matter.

Although Kim was not charged in the shooting itself, her testimony was considered material to the grand jury’s investigation to determine, among other things, precisely what they had witnessed, what information they learned after the shooting, what information they might possess concerning the motive for the shooting, and what relationship they had had with the suspected shooters. I was following the story loosely in the newspapers and by April 2004, about the time her people called me, Kim had been indicted for perjury.

The stakes for Kim were high. There was the threat of imprisonment: she was facing a maximum sentence of five years in prison for conspiracy, five years for each count of perjury, five years on each count of making a false statement, and ten years for obstruction of justice. Regardless of the outcome in court, the indictments alone meant that Kim could lose her hard-earned credentials as a bankable talent.

I knew the basics about Kim’s history and what was at stake. She was about to launch a clothing line, and had just signed a deal for a line of wristwatches to be sold with the famed hip-hop jeweler Jacob the Jeweler. That was also in jeopardy. Whether it’s a celebrity or a corporate conglomerate, whenever I’m taking on a new client, especially those in a crisis situation, I always ask around. Are there drugs involved? Are they notorious for always being late or lying? Are they or their people difficult, mean, or just plain bad news? The answers to those questions give me a good sense of how much I can do for them, what I’m up against, and whether the job might be more trouble than it is worth. (You’d be amazed at how many high-profile people don’t pay their bills.)

Uncomfortable questions and straight talk are critical. (For example, is the product, in fact, harmful?) We knew there were some challenges we faced with Kim:

1. Her personal brand with the court and the judge.
2. Her personal brand within the music industry. (For fans and executives.)
3. Her personal brand with business partners if she ended up behind bars. (Who wants to create a clothing line or brand with a celebrity who can’t promote anything?)

How could we support the main task, which was to keep her out of prison? This meant shaping her public image so that the judge would have a more positive impression. Second, what could we do to keep her “street cred” alive? Even if she was pleading “not guilty” to perjury, she couldn’t exactly defend herself by now saying, “Hey, I cooperated with law enforcement.” Third, how could we help manage her brand to keep the revenue coming in? Kim had a burgeoning business selling blinged-out watches, so we put her on CNBC to discuss licensing. We wanted people to see Kim in a different light. As the trial grew close, we focused on how Kim was perceived by the court.

Critically, by April 2004, when the indictments against her came down, Kim was no longer the hot, hip-hop ingénue she’d been at 21. To be sure, her music was still trying to push the envelope. By the time we were hired to help shape the public’s perception, Kim was a nearly 30-year-old woman who lived a quiet suburban life in an affluent suburb of New Jersey with her dogs. And that was exactly how she needed the court to perceive her—that Lil’ Kim was a “character” played by Kimberly Jones. People had to see not only where she had come from but also see her as a law-abiding suburban citizen.

During the trial, Kim’s mom did one big story with a major journalist, a sit-down with press doyenne Cindy Adams of The New York Post. Family-centric stories humanize celebrities, especially those that involve their parents or children. While other high-profile journalists had clamored for interviews, we felt a New York–centric journalist was vital; the court needed to see Kim positively as much as possible.

The prosecution regularly leaked various pieces of information—the most damning, of course. One such leak was the release of Hot 97 security camera videotapes of Kim and her entourage in the radio station building. On the tape was Damion Butler, whom Kim had denied knowing under oath. Jurors instead were presented with images of Butler and Kim standing next to each other on that and many previous occasions. I remember the morning I woke up and saw that the prosecution had leaked the facts of the tapes’ existence to the New York Post (Cover story: “Kim Lies”). I realized from that point forward there wasn’t a lot PR could do.

In closing arguments, the prosecution dismantled Kim.

On March 17, 2005, Kim was found guilty of three counts of perjury and one count of conspiring with a friend to lie in front of the grand jury. I remember the madhouse of media as I walked out of the courthouse with Kim. In July 2005, Kimberly Jones was sentenced to one year and a day in the Philadelphia Detention Center. Lesson: if you lie, and it can be proven, even the best PR in the world can’t really help you.

MONITOR: PREVENT, AVERT, AND MINIMIZE

There are many crises that can be avoided and certainly curtailed if you pay attention and do what has to be done. We have had a certain billion-dollar company as a client for many years. We’re extremely close to the company’s board and executive management and have averted countless crises and managed its day-to-day PR needs. We know the company’s secrets—good, bad, and ugly—and are involved with all aspects of their business, and as such, the board and management regard us as ultimate insiders. After monitoring the behavior of one of its top executives who has a high profile, we had to go out on a limb. This married man was having an affair with a junior employee of the company. It had to stop because eventually analysts and the media would have discovered it, and it would have become a huge embarrassing story with major personal and professional implications.

After being confronted by the executives to whom he reported, he denied the affair and continued with the dalliance. Working with the number-two person at the company, and with the board’s blessing, we hired a photographer to stake this man out and take pictures of him with his mistress so we could show him the evidence in living color. It was a very stark example to him of how easy it would be for paparazzi to do the same thing, with the added embarrassment of also splashing the pictures all over the Internet and gossip and business magazines. (Who aren’t, by the way, immune to tabloid journalism when it fits their narrative.) After being confronted with this evidence and given a choice between his job and the mistress, he ended the affair and the company destroyed the photos. Mission accomplished. We were able to avoid potentially damaging exposure, which would have done a lot to hurt the brand.

Hit the Books and Get Rid of the Problem

Here’s a sordid story that you’ve probably not heard about on CNN or Fox News. Philip H. Brown, a tenured economics professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, resigned from the school after the institution announced it was either that or he’d be fired because he’d violated students’ privacy. What was the violation? Oh, it’s a doozy—perfect for tabloid journalism. On a trip to China in 2011, Brown placed a webcam in the bathrooms his female students would be using. As they traveled from province to province, the professor had apparently enlisted an unwitting student to place a first-aid kit containing a hidden webcam in the bathrooms.

The professor’s spying was uncovered when one of his students discovered a photo of her unclad bottom in the trash bin of Brown’s laptop, a computer that all students on the trip shared with their teacher. She had been searching the computer’s hard drive for a document she had inadvertently deleted.

Colby College president William Adams wrote to students and employees in late January that Brown had resigned after college officials told him they were prepared to fire him. Adams didn’t wait until Brown returned from the trip; he called him in China a day after receiving a complaint about the photos and verifying the claim was true. Adams also admitted that the matter had prompted an investigation by law enforcement, and that the college was cooperating fully with police.

In his letter to students and faculty, Adams also stated that the well-being of students was the college’s “utmost priority” and that “we do not and will not tolerate behavior that is antithetical to the fundamental values of our community. We take this matter very seriously. We took prompt action to address it, and we will continue to support the affected students in ways that are respectful of their privacy.”

Adams acted swiftly to reassure students, cooperated with the police investigation, and most important of all, got rid of the professor despite the fact that he had tenure, which allowed the story to stay local and within the academic community. It went away fairly quickly and became a story of a perverted professor, rather than a problem with the university. School officials rightfully distanced themselves from the conflict and made the issue about Brown.

Had the college dithered, the story would have had legs—lots of them. The college’s actions would have aroused suspicion and interest from outside journalists, and what has remained a short-lived local story might have become a national story, as well as the butt of the obligatory late-night jokes. It could have cost the college significant fund-raising dollars and state and federal grant money, and resulted in diminished enrollment. It would have affected not only Colby College’s reputation but also the personal reputation of its president; scandal tends to rub off on the people surrounding it. And it would have, had he not done the right thing.

Loyalty Has Its Limits

Conversely, long-term damage occurred at a financial research firm that refused to fire a staff member despite numerous harassment complaints over a number of years. Wealth and arrogance led the CEO to feel he didn’t have to take action, in part because in his view, the offending employee did a good job. He cared more about fighting back against the accusations—even though he knew some of them had merit—because the employee made him money. The CEO fought every charge of sexual harassment in his case because he knew hiring lawyers would cost the women who made the accusations so much money they could not fight him for long. He felt that fighting the charges would be too expensive for those making the accusations and he could give them a lengthy and expensive legal runaround.

And while he was right that attorneys are expensive, the story hit the local media. Recruitment was affected, and so were supplier relationships, the sales cycle, and the general morale at the company. The CEO was also affected when he went to join the board of a local charity; the board decided it didn’t want him involved due to this scandal. Local journalists wrote the story, which lasted and lasted. Surely a quick settlement and firing of the individual would have been much cheaper than all of this damage caused by the stories, attention, and focus on the lawsuit. Maybe the short-term immediate dollar impact would have been greater, but surely the years the story dragged on were more damaging, a point made clear throughout the lengthy battle. Ultimately, keeping this problem on his payroll for so many years has diminished the CEO’s chances of fulfilling other dreams and aspirations. He didn’t harass anyone, but that didn’t absolve him.

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT: GET YOUR GOOGLE ON

Search Engine Optimization [SEO] and Online Reputation Management [ORM] are areas that have seen rapid growth in recent years. Yet I’m surprised at how little attention is paid to SEO and ORM within public relations. One negative comment on a website can multiply quickly and become a reputation problem. SEO determines rankings on search engines, and Google is the leader. For example, search for a term, any term: “jewelry,” “jacket,” “flowers,” or what have you, and SEO affects what websites, brands, or stores pop up first. The first results on page one get the most attention; people don’t want to dig deep for the information. If your site comes up on the first page—“above the scroll,” i.e., the top half of the page visible without having to scroll down—it can change your business: 87 percent of people never go beyond the first page of search engine results.

Today’s “media” allows anyone with some time, an Internet connection, and motivation to become an authority on you, form strong opinions about you or your brand, and affect your Google rankings. Customers, investors, employees, fans, regulators, and partners all look to the Internet to form a credible perception of you personally, as well as your business and brand. Similarly, ORM can manipulate a company’s online reputation (improve it, reinvent it) and ensure that harmful feedback and negative stories are eliminated from high-ranking Web pages.

Major components of both PR and SEO involve content creation and, as such, SEO done properly has a long-term effect. Blog posts and commentary, for example, can directly affect what shows up at the top of Google. This front-page result can be a constructive by-product of a successful digital PR campaign. But it can also be a devastating crisis situation if someone is out to get you. If the opposition wants to blog about how bad you are, it can; and days, months, and years from now everyone can still read it—whether it’s true or not. Many social networking sites have little to no editorial control or oversight; personal blogs have even more autonomy. Yes, blog hosts have been known to shut down blogs, but it rarely happens, and more likely, the blog will continue to live on the Internet forever. Individual social networkers and bloggers can be as influential as any corporate chief or national news anchor—whether their information is accurate or not. Social media presence is synchronized with Google’s search engines, and your profiles (pictures, posts, and friends) are available to anyone trolling the Web.

One Person Can Become a Powerful Online Army

Those who avoid participating in social media to prevent potential public embarrassment may not be better off down the road. The first few Google entries are best “controlled” by you if you are an active participant in social media—your websites, blogs, and positive content should come up first in a search of your name. Ultimately, today everyone has become their own online reputation managers, and everyone needs to conduct PR campaigns for themselves.

The way to properly manage your reputation today goes through link building, content generation, and a well-managed synchronization between all channels that represent you—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, your website and blog sites, and news sites that mention your name and industry. Search results depend on search engines’ algorithms, which change frequently, and engines like Google and Yahoo! go to great pains to keep them secret. It’s advisable to hire an SEO pro to handle online crisis situations; it’s a complex and time-consuming task. Frankly, there’s no one better at it than 5WPR.

In the fall of 2010, a Canadian filmmaker called me frantically at eleven one evening. Another client had referred the thirtysomething entrepreneur and family man to me. He works hard making small, independent movies, and is not yet a Hollywood mover and shaker—just a small business guy who makes a living doing what he loves while he keeps his eyes on the prize.

The filmmaker told me someone had purchased a slew of domains in his name and was blogging nasty untruths about him on these sites and other film websites. He had never gotten much public attention or online exposure before; he had no website of his own, nor did he blog or engage in much social media. His enemy, whom he described as irrational, had posted negative information about the filmmaker that was easily found if you simply Googled the filmmaker’s name or any of the projects for which he was trying to raise funds. Personally and professionally, this was very damaging for obvious reasons, as people tend to believe what they read on Google, true or untrue.

The moviemaker’s enemy started off by commenting on as many online movie and entertainment websites as he could that the man was a “crook” and a “scumbag.” Eventually this escalated into calling him a drug addict and making other very cruel and false accusations, including things like, “If you give money to him, you might as well flush it down the toilet.” In addition to trying to find as many of the filmmaker’s contacts and investors as possible (easily accessible in today’s open world with sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook), he put the filmmaker squarely in the Internet sniper’s crosshairs. This kind of misinformation was having an immediate effect on the man’s psyche, and he was hesitant to seek out investors and raise money for films with all of this nonsense floating around. He was even concerned for his children’s well-being and safety. He felt hunted and unsafe.

The filmmaker spent around six figures with 5WPR to fight this online war using strategic ORM and SEO campaigns, which we quickly implemented in what became a stealth defensive war. We created our own blogs, generated positive, robust new content in as many online spaces as possible, and created new domain names. We optimized links to sites and stories referencing him to ensure our sites came up initially when searches for his name were launched. After hundreds of hours of work and painstaking dedication, we accomplished our mission. Today when you a do a search for the filmmaker, nothing but positive information comes up in the first seven pages of a search. It was an expensive lesson, but one he had to fight. Now, thankfully, the filmmaker has his own impenetrable wall—I see this barrier like a Great Wall of China.

A Great Wall of China is necessary as a preemptive strike because it only takes one negative consumer, client, enemy, or disgruntled nut job with a laptop and an Internet connection to forever change your online reputation. This kind of retribution by an angry person can and does happen to any business or brand, small or large, often, with devastating consequences. It’s necessary for brands to always monitor and protect themselves online from negative comments, bloggers or journalists with an agenda, and crackpots like the one my filmmaker client was facing. Fighting these battles strategically is necessary PR for the 21st century, a fight many brands don’t yet realize the importance of. A few crackpots can change a company’s stock price, Web reputation, sales, and, frankly, existence. In the Internet age, affecting search engine results are a necessary part of PR campaigns.

ACCEPT THE CONSEQUENCES

In the end, be resigned that there will be some fallout when a crisis occurs. Yes, you can minimize the damage, but realize that wrongdoing has occurred and you won’t be getting off scot-free. Once you’ve handled the situation properly and fulfilled your promises to your customers or constituents, get back to work and do what you do best. Putting out quality work is sometimes the best way to rehabilitate your reputation and legacy. And remember these rules:

1. Be the Master of Your Domain. Every person on Earth should buy the domain for their full name, and iterations of that name, for $10 a year.
2. Establish brand fan pages on Facebook and create a profile on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. I know of a company that felt having a fan page on Facebook was unnecessary; its leadership just did not get the value of it. It was a small business featuring gourmet food products. Well, a fan did what the company wouldn’t and created a fan page without consulting the company. When we alerted the company to this, the page had racked up 10,000 fans and was updated all the time. All of a sudden, the company “got it.” The company talked to Facebook, which arranged for it to take over the fan page and run it themselves. In this case, the page the fan started was positive, and the company was able to gain control of it in time. However, it could have just as easily been a negative page. Why wait for that to happen?
3. Create content. Make sure to express your thoughts and opinions on a blog. Don’t be afraid to run one yourself, using any of the existing user-friendly platforms like Blogger or WordPress (very SEO and user-friendly). Your posts reflect your thoughts, ideas, and insights and will often appear on page one of many Google searches. This virtually guarantees that by searching your name on Google, a user gets exposed to the relevant expressions that you have shared and that promote your name and reputation correctly, allowing you to create the content and shape your reputation.
4. Hyperlink. Create links, discussion, and chatter about positive content that exists. Hyperlink all positive content to other sources and channels that you own. This will lead to good synchronization between those posts and your social media entity.
5. Supervise. Be aware of what shows up on Google regularly because it is constantly changing. Create a Google Alert for your name and your company, which will be sent to you as soon as new content is posted. This way you will be the first to know what’s new with your reputation as it appears online. And you can then be the first to react.