12: The Art of Messaging a Divorce: The Jeff Bezos Method

Life is full of different risks. And I think that when you think about the things that you will regret when you're 80, they are almost always the things that you did not do. They are acts of omission. They're not. You're not. Very rarely are you going to regret something that you did and it failed and didn't work or whatever. But the acts of omission, the thing, you know, it's not. And again, I'm not just talking about business things. It's like, you know, I loved that person and I never told them. And then, you know, 50 years later, you'd be like, why didn't I tell her? You know, why didn't I go after it?

That quote is from an interview that took place in Berlin in late 2018. It was moderated by the CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer. That's not the most important part of the interview, but the important part is who he interviews. Did you recognize the voice? Probably not, because not many people know it. But it is an interesting quote and a very prescient quote because less than a month later, we all learned, and I mean, we all learned that he did go after it. He likely did tell her that he loved her. He took that huge risk. He is Jeff Bezos, and this is the story of what happened after he took that risk and why we all know about it today. When Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon and the world's richest man, and his wife, Mackenzie, announced their divorce last week, the couple ushered in a new era of the public divorce. The topic of divorce, of course, is a sad one. The pain for any couple going through a separation or divorce along with their children, and timeless. No matter who you are, no matter when it happens, it hurts. But for people in the spotlight, a divorce is usually public fodder. The bigger the name, the bigger the interest and the bigger the news story. And the Bezos split was a big story. And we are all witness to the public vivisection of Jeff Bezos and his new paramour, former television reporter and now helicopter pilot Lauren Sanchez. Now, hearing about any family splitting is always sad. And by all accounts, the family has already received a lot of good press outside of this divorce, and they seem like very dedicated parents. I don't want to minimize the pain and sadness for any parent going through a divorce, you know, especially with their four kids. So for today's episode, I do not want to focus on the split itself, but on the aftermath. From a communication point of view, what interests me about the story is the progression of it, the path it took from the formal announcement of the split to where the relationship is today. From a public perspective, and of course from a PR perspective, what anyone can learn from this story is how the message matters, what you say based on how you act. When will set the expectations of your public? It could be the public of Jeff Bezos and his customers and his family, or it could be you. So whether you are the richest man in the world or a person dealing with a split in your local community or with your group of friends, is there something to be learned from the public split of Jeff Bezos and his wife Mackenzie? Today I wanted to explore how this very, very public split can offer lessons to help people learn how to mess their private issues when they become quite public. And the Bezos divorce is as public as it gets. On the episode this week exploring the dynamics of communicating divorce in the digital news age, deconstructing the timeline to find the tactics the Bezos couple use to put a positive spin on this rather sad story, or at least try to do it. So again, the focus is not on the divorce itself. It's a story about the dots and how they connect in the story and how it was messaged. Last week I was a presenter at an industry conference for CEOs on executive reputation management just as this story was breaking. And I've mentioned before on the podcast how I love to introduce RIP from the headlines examples in all of my talks. It makes every talk or training current. I can bring everybody into the same place at the same time based on a major news story. Now, on January 9, it was reported that Bezos and his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie, had announced their intent to divorce after a, quote, long period of separation, end quote. And that is noted. And I'll come back to that later. When I received a notification on my phone about their split, I could not open the app fast enough because it's not really the gossip that gets me all charged up. It's the PR person in me. So as someone who works in the business of crisis communication, I am always intrigued by messaging, its intent and the timing of it and the tells. You know, stories like this always have them and this one did not disappoint. Two things I noted right off the bat when I saw the tweet released by Jeff Bezos on his verified account. First, the fact that Jeff Bezos used a tweet to announce a divorce. So the tell first is in using Twitter. Now, Twitter is a medium nowadays for the public apology or the mea culpa. We're now moving out of this world of press releases. So the press release is no longer in the arena for rapid response. The press release was a method used for controlled news when the media had control of the story. And this is a time when television stations had newscasts and they had deadlines. You know, you had to get a story in or you had to get a quote in by the deadline when they were going to go on the air. The same thing with newspaper, they had a deadline. Usually it was at 4 o' clock in the afternoon deadline that you had to get all your quotes in. You had to get a response. Sometimes if it was a negative story, a reporter might call you around 3:15 to get your response to usually it was a negative story. But back then, and let's say a decade ago and earlier, the news had control of the story. And the press release was this important tool that a lot of organizations to try and control their messaging. But what the press release did, it gave reporters time to follow up with any of that information that was on the press release. It contained paragraphs of information that would just marinate as everyone had to wait for the news deadline and as it approached. So whether it was going to press or it was going to air. So the press release always gave the power to the reporter. And if you were on the other end of the equation, if you were public relations, public affairs or a spokesperson, you were at the will of the reporter and the publication or the news outlet. PR folks found a workaround to these long press releases by creating media statements. Now, a media statement is a shorter, more succinct version of the press release that still gives the reporter enough information, but it's just a statement. You're in with a few sentences, maybe a direct quote, and then you are out. However, the problem with the media statement, there is still a name, there's still a contact attached to the statement, a person who can be contacted about the story. And if that person does not respond to a reporter's call or email, then you might see so and so was contacted but did not return our calls. But the tweet, now that is the savviest of PR plays. There's no contact information, no place to follow up, there's no names, no response expected. It's just a tweet. Now, people can reply to the tweet, people can send a direct message for getting a response to that tweet, but social media etiquette says you don't have to reply back. So it is the Ideal place now to release any type of apology, mea culpa, or some sticky issue that you don't want to have to keep messaging. Now, the second item that I noticed on the Bezos announcement was the quote, after a long period of separation, that is the point when my PR antenna went whoop. Because I know whenever someone attaches a timestamp of any sort, it was meant to be noted. The deliberate wording of a long separation told me that there was someone else in the mix. Because long used by many in the public philandering category, it's meant to quell the deception. We don't want the head of the world's largest company or one of the world's largest companies to be labeled as a cheat. That's bad for biz. Now back to the tweet. It wasn't a real tweet in the sense of Twitter tweets, because Twitter only allows 280 characters to be used. And what that means is when you type a word, every letter, every space is considered a character. And this was up from 140 characters in 2017. Now, it's difficult to build a full narrative and then respond to it in only 280 characters. So the medium of choice for people in the public eye nowadays is to still use Twitter, but to use a specific app to tweet the information. And the app of choice is the iPhone app notes. Now you've seen that that looks like the little post it app in your iPhone. Now, I noted the use of notes in one of my trainings last week. So I had mentioned, I had mentioned this split to a number of people prior to going into my training because I was kind of testing it and I had asked, I was at a dinner and because I was in a very male centric industry down there, there were more males at the table than females. And as a tester, I kind of floated the balloon to ask what they thought of the Jeff Bezos split and what their opinion was of it. And what was funny is that every guy at the table said, what? What? I don't even know what you're talking about. Jeff Bezos. What? Who? He split. But if I were to ask a woman about it, they certainly knew about the split. So right there, that tell tells me that it's not a very comfortable subject to talk about whether they knew about it or not. Now, in fairness, some of them did say, well, we're at a conference and we're not checking our phones. But then again, you know, I, I noted it immediately when it came on my phone. But what that did tell me, though, is that it was a conversation that people, it made people a little nervous to talk about, understandably. But I did want to bring in the public piece of it, the public relations piece, and especially being at a CEO conference. This is a CEO of one of the countries, one the world's largest companies. So there is a takeaway in here, you know, for me and for others to use. So I did note the use of the Note app in the training. And then a couple days later, I see the New York Times came out with the same article about the exact same thing. So in a parallel life, I'd probably be a news editor or a bureau chief. But anyway, the New York Times had an article that was titled How We Apologize now, and it was by Lindsey Weber. And the article noted the spate of public apologies using the Note app, like Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Bezos did last week. Now, also using the Note app was Lady Gaga. She had sent an apologetic message to her followers, like 77 million followers, to let them know that she decided to pull a music track that she had recorded from R. Kelly. He's the embattled singer right now, going through his own PR nightmare, rightfully so. But she was pulling the track from streaming music services. And I also suspect the ramp up to the awards had a small part to play in the timing of this public mea culpa. But she had used the Notes app. Some other celebrities that were noted in this article, Armie Hammer used it when he apologized for criticizing peers for posting grief selfies after Stan Lee's death. Kendall Jenner apologized for an insensitive tweet. And it really doesn't matter what she tweeted about, but just the fact that she used it and her Ariana Grande, who's also going through her kind of PR swing, you know, post Pete Davidson breakup. But she once apologized for licking a donut. Yes. So there. And she attached it using the Note app. Now, those are not all apologies of import, but we are in the middle of a federal shutdown, so let's transition to bigger, more noteworthy stories. But the, the Jeff Bezos story certainly fits in there because that's, you know, that's major news because it does involve such a formidable. But the point of that article, and I think the examples that she used in that article is that they are examples from the younger set, you know, the trend makers, the millennials, or the really, really young Gen Xers. And then it's notable to note that Jeff Bezos he's probably a cusp Gen Xer, early baby boomer. He used this device to announce the split. So that tells me that this tactic is here to stay, at least for the time being until someone creates a new one. But Jeff Bezos using the sticky note apology in Twitter tells me now we're going to see a lot more of it. Now, that note, to use the sticky note in public. Now, why use that now? Like, why would they want to do it? Well, here's the reason. One, it's quick. You're just quickly typing out the notes app, assuming it's on your phone, if you're doing it on your own. So it's quick, it's short. Brevity is essential for many, many apologies. You get in and then you get out. So using the note app allows the statement to go viral. News organizations, websites, they can take a screen grab of the note itself and use it in their content. It's very, very easy to share. Also, it's authentic. At times you may see grammatical or spelling errors, unwitting or not that give it that one point of contact, direct to the source apology feel. And that direct to the source apology or direct to source information is something that talk to a lot of my clients about, about kind of garnering this authenticity. When you're hearing it firsthand from a leader, it's like they sat down on their phone and quickly typed out the note as a direct communication to the public. Jeff Bezos wanted to give the impression that he and Mackenzie were sitting on their house in their manse in the state of Washington, typing this note out together, which we know probably was not the case. Probably likely. Now, moving on from the technology that was used in the statement, let's talk about the statement itself and really dig into it. Now, if you saw it, it came out on the Jeff Bezos, as I mentioned, his verified Twitter account. You know that a Twitter account is verified when you see the blue check next to the name. So only came out in his account. Now, reading the statement, you really want to kind of dig into what is being said. There's a lot of nuggets that we can learn. So it starts out like this. We want to make people aware of a development in our lives. As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared life as friends. Hmm. Note the use of the word we and our that is telling us that they wanted to know or that Jeff Bezos wanted everyone to know that it was a We event they both mutually decided to split. Now, the purpose of that dual message is to note that the we is key here, that Jeff Bezos did not do anything wrong and that MacKenzie is certainly a part of that statement and the use of loving exploration. So someone was lovingly exploring. All right, but it wasn't Jeff Ann MacKenzie. And the other point to note is that they're using the word friends here. And friends, I believe, is very deliberate. They're telling us that this is not an acrimonious divorce, that it is a friendly one. Next, we feel incredibly lucky to have found each other and deeply grateful for every one of the years we have been married to each other. If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again. Now, that's a really, really good statement. I like it. It's touchy feely. And of course, they are incredibly lucky to have found each other because they created one of the top businesses in the world and now they are the wealthiest couple in the world. So everyone, I think, would agree that that was incredibly lucky and it would be no surprise that they would do it again if they had those 25 years. We've had a great life together as a married couple, and we also see wonderful futures ahead as parents, friends, partners in ventures. So this is where I feel this is a little bit more Jeff, and it's a little bit more of a head scratcher. Because, ladies, I don't know if you're like me, but I'm reading into the mackenzie side of the story that I'm thinking that she doesn't see a wonderful future ahead at all. She's going to walk away with a lot of money, but she doesn't have a partner in Venture. The only partner in Venture she had is the shares to Amazon and the money and their kids. But other than that, there isn't that much there. So that, to me, tells me that that's very much of a Jeff Bezos statement. And though the labels might be different, we remain a family and we remain cherished friends. Labels may be different. That's such a meta term, labels. You don't attach them to couples. But I believe it does work here. But that they remain a family and that remain. They remain cherished friends. Yeah, I don't believe that they'll remain cherished friends at all. The opposite of cherished friends. Then they did sign it, Jeff and MacKenzie. So it sounded like a Christmas card that they're together, but it's very much not the Christmas card. It's a Divorce announcement. So if you were to look at this from a business reputation point of view, can you pull something out from just a regular hoi polloi point of view, just the regular person who needs to message through a divorce. And the answer is yes, first, that it was even messaged in the first place. So in this modern age of communication, it seems everyone messages online over family news from your kids, winning a contest or winning a hockey game. Okay, two things that I did in the past week myself, but to significant life changes, changes or illnesses. We're in the middle of a federal shutdown right now. And as someone who is directly affected by it, I am reading a lot of stories online firsthand from people from the families that are truly suffering. So there's a lot of narratives that you can see online, especially on Facebook, when families are going through something or struggling with something. A huge takeaway from this Bezos announcement that other people can use going through their life changes. You're sending a unified message. You're telling your friends and your family that all is well. And it also removes that direct point of contact to discuss it when you are out in public with other friends or if you're at games or if you're at dinners or events in your community where you really don't want to talk about it. Putting it on Facebook says we can talk about it just enough that you know about it. But when I see you in person, I don't want to talk about that. This is purely social conversation. Use the Bezos statement from Twitter as a boilerplate for how you might message a significant shift in your family, in your life. So what is the best way specifically to message a divorce on social media? I will add the disclaimer here. I have never messaged a divorce on social media. So this is only based on my research and what I've seen just in my circle, friends in my community and all the news stories that I read about. But how do we go about doing this now, just from my point of view? Well, one, it does go without saying that you need to tell your close family, your kids, you know, first before you put anything on social media. Could you imagine getting news like that if you were a family member? So make sure you go the analog route and speak to people first. Now the next thing you need to do is you need to make sure that the decision is final before you do. That's why I'm reading a lot of stories about Jeff Bezos. You know, is this going to be a long term separation? Is he going to stay with Lauren Sanchez. And the answer is yeah, at least for the meantime, because he made that public declaration, so he did not go into it lightly. That tells me it's final. And this is a decision that he made. So the same can apply to any family as well. Make sure it final because everyone you know will read it and share it and screenshot it and then text it. And all of this will happen within an hour. And so if there's still a chance for reconciliation, do not send that post. Next, stay positive. Keep the message brief. Frame it on social media how you would want to frame it in your real life. And I highly recommend not maligning or disparaging the other party. That's just bad form. Use the Bezos we. Use it as often as you can. The we and the are are two ways to show that you are united, especially if you have kids. Next, remove all blame. You want to still stay united as a family, just as Bezos mentioned, they still are family, but just with a different label. Now, next, you want to tell the truth. There is no room for any lies in any type of statement that you put on social media, because social media lasts forever. And remember, this statement that you make, this very public but private statement that you are making about yourself or your family or the couple, is a media statement. You are making an official statement about what is happening in your family now. So here is a chance to frame your narrative and your family's narrative. People will pick apart every single detail, just like I did with the Jeff Bezos statement. I mean, they may not make a podcast about it, but people will talk about it and they will gossip about it, but they will also care about you and the message that you're sending. So this message that you're posting on social media will go a long, long way in setting the tone of the split or divorce. Now, I, for one, don't think for a minute that Mackenzie Bezos was lovingly doing anything in the past few weeks when she heard this news. I could picture her in her living room finding this out. It's a talk that happened maybe at, oh, I don't know, 11:30 at night, the kids are in bed, and Mackenzie's saying to herself, what is happening here? I don't even know what he's doing. She was probably, like, had that out of body experience. And then I picture her saying, alexa, throw this dish at my husband's head. Alexa, bring up my husband's schedule over the past few months. Alexa, call my lawyer. However, by sending the message that they were united that Jeff and Mackenzie were in this together is simply telling the public to butt out, don't ask any questions. This is how we are messaging this divorce. This is how we are setting the narrative that we are together. And whether you believe it or not, publicly, we are doing this jointly. So anyone that is going through a divorce in the digital age can employ those same tactics. Now, the PR person in me, whenever I see a statement like this, I start to set my watch because I know just from the wording that there was, as I said earlier, there was someone else in the mix. We didn't know who this person was. But you know, when there's a statement announcing a divorce, something precipitated this. There was some event and you knew that something was going to be leaked. And it was just a matter of time when we all found out that yes, there was a story. And no surprise, the New York Post and the National Enquirer were the two tabloids that that broke the story of the Jeff Bezos. Lafaire with Lauren Sanchez. The National Enquirer released a statement about about the story. They said During a blockbuster four month investigation, the Inquirer tracked Bezos, who turns 55 on January 12, and Secret Lava Sanchez across five states and 40,000 miles tailed them in private jets, swanky limos, helicopter rides, romantic hikes, five star hotel hideaways, intimate dinner dates and quote, unquote, quality time in hidden love nests. And when this statement was released, my first thought was who was the reporter that got the Bezos beat? My goodness, that would be fun. You're living the life of Bezos. You're not living it with them, but you're certainly you're following it. But here's the interesting angle to the story that PR people like me likely noted. So I'll connect some of the dots here. In attacking the founder and chief executive of Amazon, the National Enquirer was pitting itself against Amazon. The head of Amazon, but also the owner of the Washington Post. Now this is of course the publication located in Washington D.C. now, another resident of Washington D.C. does not care for Amazon, nor does he care for the Washington Post, and that would be President Trump. When the story broke, he of course went to Twitter and he praised the Inquirer for publishing the article that will come out on January 28th. And his tweet said Bezos divorced the cheating photos that ended his marriage. So he was promoting the Inquirer article and then also in the same tweet where he used a lot of sarcasm, he insulted the Washington Post and Bezos and Bezos has owned the Washington Post since 2013. So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting I understand is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post. So follow these dots with me. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos and his wife Mackenzie, own the largest private property home in Washington, D.C. much larger than the White House. President Trump doesn't care for Bezos. President Trump does not care for most of the mainstream media, and that includes the Washington Post. The Amazon also has warehouse in nearby Crystal City. So they're now in. They now have business in Arlington, Virginia, which is adjacent to Washington, D.C. now, the National Enquirer is owned by American Media, and the chairman of America Media is David Pecker, who at one time, at least, was very close to President Trump. And he allegedly arranged for silencing Karen McDougal. And Karen McDougal was a playboy model who claimed to have affair, have an affair with Mr. Trump. And then there was an exchange of money. So at one time, at least, the National Enquirer and President Trump were working together. So it's an obvious target that Trump would go after Jeff Bezos. Food for thought. And this was the part of the Jeff Bezos, Mackenzie Bezos split that I did mention to the executives that I was speaking to last week. Is the PR effort at play here in bringing down Jeff Bezos, that the digital age has ushered in this new tactic when it comes to attacking someone. Years ago, the leak was effective in maybe bringing down a name, a person, a company, an administration, like the Nixon administration, with the use of Deep Throat, who turned out to be an FBI agent named Mark Felt when Woodward and Bernstein wrote the story, and ironically, the Washington Post. But the leak was a big power move to make change. Nowadays, in the news space and in the culture that we're in, it's all about the target. Companies, organizations, people who represent organizations or boards or brands, CEOs, other leaders. They need to worry about the target now because people are using digital media, social media, the Internet, to compile information and to target people. And it's so difficult to protect yourself in a social world, in a digital world. So this is today's state of affairs when it comes to messaging, big changes in your life, or in the case of Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos, how to message a divorce. What is the takeaway for the average person who is struggling with a new life event like a divorce? It's important to understand that we're living in A different world now, 20 years ago, announcing a divorce or separation be very analog. It would be something you would do over the phone or when you happen to see someone. But now socially, it's going to be talked about it. And you can control the message, you can control the narrative. If you do post something on social media, and if you do, follow the McKenzie and Jeff Bezos method of reaching out to your public, to your family, to your friends. And if you're going to do it socially, make sure that you do it jointly. Write the statement together. Use the articles that show unity. Say we say are we are still a family. Make sure you tell everyone that you're united, even in the case of a separation, that you're still together. Because any narrative that you set online can stay online. It means that you don't have to talk about it in public. That's the great thing about social media. There's many things to complain about it and there's many things that make people nervous and scared when they think of the word viral and people talking about them online. That may happen, but now the power and the messaging is with you. You get to set the record straight and you get to do it on your timing, your schedule, and at your will. I hope this episode was helpful for anyone struggling through a divorce or anyone that knows someone struggling through a divorce. We're in a whole new age nowadays when it comes to communicating digitally, whether it's on the Internet or through social media. I'll mention here that this episode is brought to you by my new course. My new course is called Communicate with Power in Less Than an Hour. And if you're like most people who communicate online or professionals, you spend most of your time communicating in the space of social media or email. It's how everyone does business today. But most people know that women and men communicate differently, both online and off. And it's important to be heard by the people who matter in your life, whether they're professional, whether they're personal. You want to get your message out accurately and timely. And it's also important to be relevant in the digital age. So how can you do that? Well, this course, Communicate with Power in Less than an Hour, is available now. It is on my website@mollymcpherson.com communicatewithpower or you can look for the link in the episode show notes. I did wanna mention the course though, because one of the questions that I get asked a lot when I meet with clients or if I'm giving a talk is I note this fear in communicating online. People are nervous how to do it. So the question they ask is, how do I do it? How do I write? What do I say? And that's the reason why I developed this course, is because I can't be everywhere. And I wanted to provide something to people that need help in this area. And that was the reason why I did this episode. This week, when I saw the news story about Jeff Bezos, it wasn't about the split itself, but it was the impact of announcing the split and how it can impact your family. So if you are going through a divorce, I hope you were able to glean some information that might make that transition less painful. And if you haven't friend or family member that's going through a divorce or a separation or struggling with some type of announcement that they have to make online in the social space, I hope you can share this podcast or at least share some of the information that you learned. It's not easy out there, folks. If the world's richest man has to struggle through it, then we all have to struggle through it. Thank you for joining me this week. I hope to speak with you next week. Bye for now.