152: How to Successfully Manage a PR Backpedal: Mulaney, Hollis, Murdaugh, and OnlyFans

There are so many trending stories in the news lately about the about face. Saying one thing but doing another. And all these stories are PR stories, which is why I'm interested. So let's talk about onlyfans, but only the PR crisis, not the content. Rachel Hollis again, that crazy Murdoch family story down in South Carolina. And then there's this guy and his PR nightmare, which reminds me of his story.

It's like there's a horse loose in a hospital. I think eventually everything's gonna be okay, but I have no idea what's gonna happen next.

Welcome to a podcast that explains what to do when a horse is loose in the hospital. I help create indestructible reputations by sharing the communication strategies that can withstand a crisis. Many people are faced with a problem, problem, an issue, a crisis where all eyes are on them, watching and waiting for the response. A good response, the right one, not only gets you through the crisis, but it enhances everything you want to say about yourself to everyone. You're saying, I've got this. I own it, I'll fix it. So in this episode, how to use a tactic to get you out of a crisis or to stop one dead in its track. It's how to use the backpedal and if you need to use it, how to use it effectively. I'll explore the use of this response tactic as a communication for self defense. The tactic is used as a result of an incident where a person's character is called into question or a brand and a move they've made is called into question when there is any perceived wrongdoing. So I'm going to share four examples from the past few weeks. All of them made the press, all of them made social media. And you've likely heard about these stories and we're going to talk about the rating system if it worked to get them through the crisis. So we're going to look at the apology as it relates to their image restoration and renewal. So the grading system, I'm going to make this simple. I'm going to use the social media model. Do we like or do we dislike this strategy? So it's a thumbs up or a thumbs down? This is Scull and Ebert reference as well. So the inspiration for this backpedal episode came from a listener. Her name is Josie and I find her to be so cool because she took the time to reach out to me. She reached out to me on LinkedIn a while back and we set up a conversation on Zoom. She just wanted to connect. She was starting a new job in reputation management at a well known hospitality brand, and she wanted to talk a mutual hot topic, and that is crisis and reputation management. And, you know, that's why I'm all in on this younger generation. They just come out boldly and ask for something and I'm here for it. So she follows the same type of crises I do, which made the conversation so interesting. And she recently reached out to me to ask if I would do a podcast on the only fan story that happened. When Josie reached out to me, I was out of town at the time, but I did like the story that she brought up because the response that OnlyFans used, which was a backpedal, I thought I could build a podcast around that because I was sure that there would be plenty of other people who used the backpedal. And sure enough, people did not disappoint. So we'll start here back at the Horse in the Hospital. John Mulaney. What the heck is happening here? Last week, my favorite comedian John Mulaney was a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers where he revealed that he and actress celebrity Olivia Munn are happily expecting a baby together, but not convincingly.

Then in the spring, I went to Los Angeles and met and started to date a wonderful woman named Olivia, who I know well. Yes, lovely woman, Olivia Munn. Very well. I met her actually for the first time in life at your wedding. Yes. To Alexi, your wife. Yeah, yeah.

That was the setup. Followed by awkward diversions to make their meeting of Olivia and John funny and quirky because Mulaney was taking a rather circuitous route, a painful one, to get there, to get to the point of when they met.

I got into this relationship that's been really beautiful and with someone incredible who has like, you know, dealt with the non coked up Bambi version of me, and that's been very incredible. And she's kind of held my hand through that hell. And we're having a baby together.

See what I mean? It's. It's cringy to even listen to it. Now, here's the backstory. In addition to attending rehab more than once for cocaine and alcohol addiction in 2020, Mulaney also divorced his wife of seven years, Amory Tendler, who, by the way, is crushing it on Instagram with her artistic response to not only the breakup John Mulaney, but the fact that he went out and had and got a woman, a celebrity, pregnant when part of his brand was that they were never going to have kids. Now, watching the nearly 19 minute interview from Seth Meyers, I will include a link to the show, notes, everything that was going on. It was really painful to watch, especially if you're a fan of John Mullaney. You could see the line of demarcation from when he was talking about drug abuse, the intervention and rehab was all grounded in truth to when he had to transition to discussing his relationship with Mun. Specifically, the timeline. This is where the dodging came in. This is where he was reaffirming doubly down on when they met. So it made for a very contradictory viewing experience. Now, as I mentioned, I love John Mulaney, but the problem is I no longer trust John Mulaney. Now, does it matter how I feel or anyone else feels? Not really. I mean, most people like me. They're still going to watch everything he does. We're still going to love him. But it did change my perception of him. And perception is a very important component of a reputation because Mullany's recent behavior sharply contradicted the public Persona that he created that helped him become so popular. He was this smart kid from Chicago who graduated from Georgetown, so he had a bit of a drug problem in the past. He talked about being an insecure kid, and he used all of it in his act in a very, very humorous way. He also dedicated so much of his work in his act and in his last specials to how much he loved his wife. Saw her all over Instagram, and their dog, Petunia, and how happily married they were and how they chose mutually to not have children or not anymore. So my rating of Mulaney is not based on his behavior. He got help for his drug abuse. People can make choices in life. They can make mistakes in life. We don't want to judge people solely on the mistakes that they made, but it's what they've learned from the mistakes and how they respond. Who are we to judge what someone does with their life? But because Mullaney is trying to navigate a timeline that he very well knows does not add up, and his legions of fans, his Stans, they're angry because they're picking apart his timeline bit by bit. And if there was ever a sure thing in social media, it's an army of stands like on TikTok. They will get to the bottom of any. Any mystery. So his response, I give it a thumbs down, a big dislike, primarily because he isn't owning it. He's trying to dodge it. So, John, this is what I have to say.

I'm sorry.

Next, let's go from John Mulaney's sex life to a sex app. Now, how's that for a transition? So in late August, the app, the subscriber only social media site, Only Fans, known for its popularity with sex workers and adult entertainment creators, announced on August 19 that there'd be a ban on its site. So the CEO of OnlyFans, Tim Stokely, cited a growing lack of cooperation with the site's business model. So he made the response about business. But it caused a major uprising online. So what did they have to do? Enter the backpedal? They released a statement via Twitter saying that after getting called out over these new rules, the explicit content would be continued. It would be allowed to be back on Only Fans. So the statement was this. Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard. We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community. I love that creator community. And have suspended the planned October 1st policy change. Only Fans stands for inclusion, and we will continue to provide a home for all creators. Now, that initial announcement that they made that they were going to, you know, ban the content, they were slammed primarily because they were stopping, again, what created their brand. Here's the theme here. John Molini did the same thing, and when I move on to Rachel Hollis, we'll talk about the same thing. You don't want to cut down your. Your growth at the knees. But the truth of the matter is here, which they explicitly laid out not in the first statement, but a latter one, that this decision was made because investors were backing out. They were hesitant to do business with the site due to their explicit content. Now, that was a problem that they were backpedaling on the core of what they offered. But what they did in their response, which was so, which worked, which was a good PR strategy, is they really made it about the business. They didn't go into why they had a problem with the content. While they were starting to get a little nervous, perhaps about the sexual content that was on the site, they were discussing the reputational risk to their business when they didn't have the financial backing. So his statement, this is the founder said, we pay over 1 million creators, over $300 million every month for making sure that these funds get to creators. And that involves using the banking sector. Because several banks have cut off only fans from making wire transfers. This has made it difficult to pay creators. And there it is right there. They explain precisely why they did that backpedal. What it stated was, we couldn't pay our creators anymore. We wanted to support you, but we couldn't. That's the statement that lives up to the indestructible PR response. The CEO explained it and he explained it, you know, somewhat thoroughly. It became a money story specifically about the backing from banks so people can buy that reasoning that they made an initial probably knee jerk shift based on their investors. If they don't have investors, they can't remain in business. But they did. They owned up to it. They explained why and they discussed what was happening in the future. They said that the changes were no longer going to be required because now the banks kind of flip flopped as well. I mean, maybe it could be all one big stunt to get people excited about, about only fans. I don't think it is. But it certainly gave them a lot of press and reminded people who they stood for and that was for their creators. So the thumbs up for a statement. I like it because it made sense. Now what didn't make any sense last week was the story of Alex Murdaugh and his family. I'm sure many of you have heard this story or at least heard pieces of that story. Murda is a lawyer and a sign of a powerful, wealthy South Carolina legal family. And back in June he found the bodies of his murder, well, of his son and his wife. They were both executed near the dog kennel. And some part of the story I remembered back in June and he was recorded on 911 leaving a very hysterical message. The news story was tied in to the previous story that he was being sued in connection with a fatal boating accident involving his son who was killed, Paul Murdaugh. Paul Murdaugh was accused of killing 19 year old boat passenger Mallory beach in 2019. He had crashed into a bridge and he was suspected of driving the boat while intoxicated. So he was facing three felony counts of boating under the influence at the time of his death in June. Now fast forward to August and Alex Murdaugh appears in the news again because he called 911 again to state that he had been shot along a rural road. And there were a lot of mysterious circumstances about this. So he shot in the head and he survived. He was able to call 91 1. He had stated that he had car trouble and then someone turned around in a truck and shot him. It's one of those statements that's just dripping in sus. And it's one of those statements that get me and my friend Julie to start talking. Julie, we met in Washington D.C. we were in the same book club together. She's down in North Carolina. But whenever there's like a, a tawdry tale that pops up in the news. She and I always start to gab about it and she knows people who knows this family or have seen this family. So it's really interesting. But where I'm bringing it into this podcast this week is about his statement. So last Monday, Murdoch released a statement announcing that he was resigning from his law firm and entering rehab. Here's a statement. The murders of my wife and son have caused an incredibly difficult time in my life. I've made a lot of decisions that I truly regret. I am resigning from my law firm and entering rehab after a long battle. That has been exacerbated, that has, that has been exacerbated by these murders. That may be a typo. I am immensely sorry to anyone I've hurt, including my family, friends and colleagues. I ask for prayers as I rehabilitate myself and my relationships. That statement, when I read it, and I read it over and over again, personally, I think it's a statement of guilt. He is covering himself by even right off the bat, you know, that the murders of his wife and son cause an incredibly difficult time in his life. I mean, that's true. It has created a spiral for him. And the fact that he admits that he made a lot of decision that he truly regrets in the statement he could be indicating. What we now found out is that he embezzled money, over a million dollars from his law firm that he worked at. So maybe he is speaking directly to that. Maybe he's speaking directly to the opioid addiction where he allegedly has an opioid addiction. But. But he also could be speaking to the fact that he played a role and had a hand in the killing of his wife and his son. We don't know, we may find out. But this gunshot, it's alleged that was when he was shot in the head that I called, by the way with my friend Julie, is that it was self inflicted. That's the buzz on the ground in South Carolina. So his statement. Oh, the rating on this one, it's just sad. It is a sad, sad story about anyone with a family that goes down. Like it's a thumbs down for the explanation because obviously he's not giving an explanation for anything. But it does offer a possible motive for when he will likely be arrested. So in this case, if he did have a hand in the murder of his wife and his son, it is a thumbs up if it helps. Well, we'll say this, if it helps lead to an arrest to the people who killed this mother and son. But sources had said down in South Carolina that, that he does have an opiate addiction and that he is certainly a person of interest in the death of his wife and his son. Like I said, such a sad story. Now the last story here that was in the news this week and I had tweeted about it and I had also mentioned it on Instagram. And that is again of Rachel Hollis. She's the self help guru. She was back in the news this week. You know, sort of not the mainstream press, but there's a lot of chatter about her on social media. I was following the news of the, of the dissolution of her company and I was following it on Reddit and TikTok. So Rachel Hollis is, as I mentioned, a self help guru. She built her empire starting from, you know, being. She was a, she was an author, a fiction author in California, married a Disney executive, Dave Hollis, then created her brand. She was a non fiction author, but then she created a blog, she was an event planner and the Disney exec husband helped fund her blog. And her empire, like, grew tremendously from that. They moved to Austin. The brand exploded. They created these conferences, these rise conferences. So the last few years they received, they made a lot of money off of these conferences and selling the merch that went along with it. Well, not surprising. The pandemic took a huge, made a huge impact to her business. And the mistake that she made is she also wrote a book called Didn't See that Coming. And it's about the breakdown of her marriage. But the problem with her is that she, she created a problem, as she often does, is that her problem is more like a tick. It's like an egocentric problem. Rachel Hollis keeps following her gut, you know, to do these kind of gut moves, you know, write a book, you know, divorce her husband. Even though they had made all this money as a couple and one of their conferences was a marriage retreat where they were charging couples over a thousand dollars to learn how to have an amazing marriage when their marriage was falling apart. So the unraveling of Rachel Hollis and her guru empire is a car crash that I just can't seem to look away from. And what really nailed the coffin in her career was a TikTok video. And I had mentioned this in a previous podcast. I will include a link to the show notes. But as a refresher, here's a part of the TikTok.

Okay, yesterday I was doing a live stream and I mentioned that there's a sweet woman who comes to my house twice a week and cleans. She's My, my house cleaner, she cleans the toilets. Someone commented and said, you are privileged af. And I was like, you're right, I'm super freaking privileged.

But also, I worked my ass off.

To have the money to have someone come twice a week and clean my toilets.

Now, this Tick tock video that many, many people who follow her consider to be the death knell TikTok tour brand, no one had an issue per se with her mentioning that she had a house cleaner. Lots of people have house cleaners. But it's how she delivered that message. It came across as very demeaning. But also she bookended it by gaslighting her audience, by speaking down in a very condescending way to her audience, saying, what makes you think that I'm relatable or that I want to be relatable? But the problem is, is that Rachel was not portraying herself as a relatable person in this video. Her whole brand was built on relatability. All of it. The mountain of money she made was built on relatability. Her book, her podcast, her Instagram feed, her Instagram stories, the Rise conferences, the planner she sold at Target. The entire business was built to succeed and to sell based on Rachel Hollis's relatability. So in that same post, she listed names such as Harriet Tubman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Marie Curie, Oprah Winfrey, Amelia Earhart, Malala, and she said they were all relatable af. You know what that means? Oof. So that was it. So this self help guru, this motivational speaker who everyone knew made her wealth using women, speaking to women who were caught up in MLMs, you know, pushing the Girl Boss brand, you know, trying to reach this Christian female crowd with her toxic positivity with her Disney exec husband. And she's making all this money off the backs of these women, yet she's clearly like spitting at them at the same time because these women, these socially savvy women, they weren't having any of it. So the author of Girl Don't Apologize, ironically refused to apologize. So now let's fast forward to last week. This is the reason why we're talking about it again. It's rumored that her company, the Hollis Company, was no more. It wasn't verified anywhere. I saw it on social media. That's where I'm getting all my, all my proof from social proof. I read it on Reddit, it was talked about on TikTok. It was certainly insta worthy on Instagram. If you followed the, if you followed the hashtag, and if you Search the name of her company, which is Chick Media llc. It was revealed that the company was closed due to tax forfeiture. And it also lists as an alternative name a dba, the Hollis Company. So there we go. We have it in the tax forms. But did Rachel Hollis admit to anything? Well, she worked her way around it again, trying to be savvy. So the first thing that she did, she had her rise conference, her last one, as it was revealed. Now, this was a conference that used to have, I think it used to fill arenas, so maybe four or five thousand screaming women who fawned all over her. There was video of this conference. She had easily less than 50, maybe 40 in some cases. It looked like 30 women on the floor of a room. It was actually kind of sad. You kind of felt sorry for. And at the end, she was filmed speaking on stage about the end of her conference, her rise conference. So there we have a confirmation. But she also locked down her Twitter feed, which is interesting for a CEO of a company to do that. That simply means I'm not going to take the time to scrub everything and look for things that I've said in the past. I'm just going to lock it down for now so I don't have to deal with it. Also, what she did is she posted on September 11, timing. She had a photo of a cup like her holding up a cup. So there's a cup in a hand. It looks like an African design. So there was a rendering of a lion on front. And once she held up the cup, you could see a crack in it. And in the crack was the sun. So cue the metaphor. You know that there's going to be something about lights in the cracks. So under the picture is the caption, Ms. Rachel Hollis says, ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, A crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen. At least this time she quoted and didn't plagiarize. But okay, so we have here, let's take a crack at it. So we have a cracked cup. That's Rachel. Rachel's the cup. It's cracked, it's flawed, it's imperfect, or the circumstance is flawed, or life is crack. Because maybe Rachel doesn't spend a lot of time thinking that there are cracks in her character, only others and circumstance. So I'm going to go with the circumstance. It's also symbolizing perhaps a new beginning or the next phase. Turns out I was right in this assessment, because on Sunday, she sent an email to her followers with the subject line, what will happen next? And in this email, she explains everything in detail and takes ownership for everything that she's done wrong. Wrong. That's not true. She didn't do any of that. She dodged all over the place. So she's talked about her Rise women's conference, and she billed it as, in this email, taking full ownership of your life and the woman you want to become. Which is incredibly ironic coming from a woman who never owns up to anything. She continues that she learned a lesson from the pandemic, and she learned, and this was in bold, to let it go. The pandemic affected her business, her employees, and how difficult it was to keep it all together. She was given so many signs that she did not spot telling her that she was not responsible for everyone and everything. Rachel Hollis is the CEO. It is your sole responsibility to be responsible for everyone and everything. That's the job title. That's the role. She's insufferable. She really is. So Rachel talks about filling her cup, but really, Rach, your cup had a huge crack in it. You said so yourself on Instagram. I'm so confused. So when it comes to rating the Rachel Hollis response, do we like or dislike? We dislike it because again, she's not owning up to anything. She is just dodging. What I think really happened is that her business was tanking and it was partially due the pandemic. Also massively due to her PR fail of how she responded. Poor response crushed her and it crushed her reputation. Then I think as it was going down the drain, and she let it continue down the drain because she wanted to take that final break from her husband. I think perhaps somewhere in that divorce decree, he probably had some ownership in that company. So she said, you know what? I'm just going to let it go down and then I'm going to rebrand into something new. And as she does this, there is no way she is going to take responsibility for any of it. Will the rebrand work? Who knows? Let's see. Maybe she'll get some crazy glue and glue that cup back together. So in every podcast, I add an indestructible tip, a communication tactic that you can use to strengthen your brand. So when it comes to the backpedal, if you have to use it, use it lightly and use it with integrity. Never assume that you are smarter than your audience. Never assume that your words alone are going to get you out of your mess. Do not try to talk your way out of the truth. If you can't tell it. If your backpedal only serves to misdirect people, it won't work. And in the end, you will create a crack in your reputation that you will never be able to glue together. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you here next week. Bye for now.