163: Is There Any Truth to the Saying, "All Publicity is Good Publicity?"

As the saying goes, all publicity is good publicity. That is, until you need to swallow a jagged little pill. Sorry, different artist, different breakup album.

The hardest job in Hollywood is probably being Taylor Swift's ex. And Jake Gyllenhaal understands this a little too well.

I feel like people like, we gotta explain what's going on. Like, everybody's so busy and I feel like I should just tell you. Like I wrote. I wrote and directed a short film based on the premise of the song.

All too well.

I remember she went out with Jake Gyllenhaal like 10 years ago, right? And now I hear she's got this 10 minute song about how he did her wrong. And I'm like, he did it again.

A different source told Life and Style that Jake is mortified that Taylor has targeted him. In all too well. The source said he's such a private person and goes out of his way to avoid drama. So having their three month fling dragged up in the song and hearing people gossip about it is a hard pill for him to swallow.

Welcome to a podcast that uses current events and tested media and PR strategies to help you manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. In this episode, we're going to get to the truth of the matter. Is all publicity good publicity? Consider your Thanksgiving weekend. For a moment, compare how many people you interacted with in person to the number of people who knew what you were doing all weekend from seeing it online. Friends, family, maybe your kids, maybe your parents posted information about you, either directly or maybe you were in the background. People form opinions about you, about anyone, based on what you do and how you spend your time or. Or what they see other people do and how they're spending their time. For example, I ran in a turkey trot this weekend. My time was the worst time of my career. And I'm not going to lie when I thought like many runners do. Ah, great. Now my time is online. This time will be there forever to haunt me. But the reputation, you know, usually it's all going so well. Everything goes well in your life if you're living a good life. That is, until it doesn't. And really everyone goes through it at some point. And last week in the public domain, it was actor Jake Gyllenhaal. So in this episode we're going to discuss adverse publicity and how it can hurt your brand's reputation. But is there any chance it can help you? Is there any truth to. All publicity is good publicity? Let's talk about it. Did you know that Taylor Swift Came out with a RE recording of her album Red I do. And how do I know that? I saw it on TikTok and then my daughters talked about it and then it was on Spotify and then I had to watch the video on YouTube. It was frankly everywhere. And it was so popular that when Taylor's version of Red dropped, Spotify appeared to have crashed for a moment because so many of her fans wanted to hear it. Taylor Swift was all over social media promoting the album. You could go to her Instagram page and you could see a photo, a flawless photo of Taylor sitting in a car, a red car, red lips, with the hat at promoting the album. Now, quick backstory, if you're not a Swifty. Taylor Swift began RE recording her first six albums when the ownership of their masters was transferred to Scooter Braun. Another story about bad publicity, but he won't be the focus of this one. This is just the karma portion of the story. After his company purchased the masters to Taylor's songs, Braun apparently told investors and potential buyers of his company that Swift would not re record the albums like she threatened that she would and that it was an empty promise. Lesson don't threaten Taylor Swift. So prior to Red, she released and re recorded an album, Fearless. And that was from her 2008 album. And she released that in 2021. So her fans were rallying around her because she was wronged by Scooter Braun, in their opinion. So her whole energy now is devoted to bringing her fans along for the revenge ride. She's bringing them music in her own terms. Her latest release read it was chalk filled full of interactive genius in my opinion. She had the release on social, on Spotify. You could listen to it. There were clues, cryptic videos, riddles all over social media. It was a masterclass in revenge against Scooter Braun and also our boy Jake. So there was a 10 minute version of the song All Too well, which was also released in 2012. And now in the re recording, that song has become even more scrutinized since Swift released the original unedited version almost a decade ago. And that's because her fans have often speculated that the Red album, which came out in 2012, was about a three month relationship with actor Jake Gyllenhaal. And this is at a time when Taylor Swift was 20 and she all but confirmed the rumors when she created. So she wrote and directed a 14 minute video to accompany the song. All too well. If you are a parent of a daughter, you have watched this video, you've walked by the video in the background, why it's been on your television or on their phone. And I have to say it's quite good. I was riveted. I watched it over Thanksgiving weekend. But this song, it validates her fans obsession over the details in the song's lyrics, which seem to perfectly correlate to her relationship, her romance with Jake Gyllenhaal. And it also focuses on this scarf that she left at Jake's sister's house. That's actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. And that scarf is the one that reminds him of him all these years later. So the fans had already been talking about it and Taylor delivered. So to bring it back to the focus of this podc, which is all about the reputation because one of my daughters told me, mom, you should do a podcast about Jake Gyllenhaal. And I thought, well, I don't know if my listeners care so much about Jake Gyllenhaal per se, but I know a lot of them and I know the people who tell me that they listen. I know that you watch this video and you are following this story. So I thought I would just pull back the lens a little and looked at negative publicity because naturally I'm thinking about Jake Gyllenhaal, his reaction to this video and what Jake Gyllenhaal's handlers, his PR handlers are doing over this video. There is no playbook for what to do when a girl you dated a decade ago for three months happens to be a huge pop star and she's brilliant, like genius level on social media and she is putting your head on a virtual silver platter. Now what does Jake Gyllenhaal really think about this attention over Taylor Swift's like imagine a three month relationship from over a decade ago is now a trending news story. So I had to dig around because I wasn't seeing Jake's response anywhere but a source. I'm putting quotes now, finger quotes. A source close to the actor spoke with E. News and said that Jake is paying no mind at all to the gossip. Note the word gossip. People will use the word gossip when they don't want to validate that it's even a story. Quote, Jake has no interest in any of it. The insider said, quote, he doesn't read gossip or pay any attention to that. He's living his life and focused on himself. He's ignoring all the noise. Well, that noise, since the time of this recording has 48,074,182 views on YouTube. I repeat, don't threaten Taylor Swift, sir, for a dollar, name a celebrity you hate.

Go scream it.

Scream it. Jake Gyllenhaal. Yes. Take it. Take it. Bye. Jake Gyllenhaal wasn't the first to go down this road. Now, granted, there's no playbook for what to do when there is a video and Dylan o' Brien is cast in the part playing you. There have been other people, other that have been dragged through the vocal mud. People my age would know that Carly Simon wrote a song youg're so Vain. It was often rumored to be written about Warren Beatty. Jagged Little Pill, the song I had mentioned earlier. The album I had mentioned earlier from Alanis Morissette, who I love, by the way, that is her iconic breakup album with Ryan Reynolds. Did you know that Alanis Morissette dated Ryan Reynolds for a number of years? I did. I remembered that. Now, Jagged Little Pill is not to be confused with the Alanis Morissette song you Oughta Know, which was the breakup revenge song allegedly about Dave Coulier from the TV series Full House and now from the Netflix series Fuller House. People my age, we still can't picture him in that role in that song. But oh, such a good song. Every running mixtape needs to have. Oh, listen to me mixtape. Such a Gen Xer. But every, every workout run playlist needs to have that song in it. But then we go back to Fuller House, it's a one degree of separation from his co star Lori Loughlin. She was the one who was tied up in the Varsity Blues scandal with buying their way into their kids, buying their way into college, and that was bad publicity for her brand. Think about the other actress, Felicity Huffman, who was tied into the Varsity Blues scandal as well. Both of them did prison time. Speaking of incarcerated women, did the negative publicity help Martha Stewart when she was indicted for insider trading? So is it true that all publicity is good publicity? For some it helps Lori Loughlin. She just got hired to do a show. Felicity Huffman, she has been hired. I've seen for a movie out of the three. I would say Martha Stewart knew how to turn it around. It softened her image and one would argue, actually helped it. The phrase is rumored to have been coined by American showman and circus owner Phineas T. Barnum in the 19th century. Oscar Wilde also once said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. A lot has changed since then, however, because consumers now, and that's really what we all are, choose where to spend their money and on whom. So in Today's world, bad publicity can spell doom for a brand. And a brand could be a company, it could be a product, it can be a person. PR nightmares can result in unrecoverable downfalls for companies, for people, for brands. When bad publicity really is bad publicity, in addition to the legal fees and the damage, reputation, there's a lot of PR nightmares out there that have happened, that have caused a lot of damage. They resulted in a drastically reduced fan base or consumer base, and in many cases a change in leadership. So let's look at what publicity is. You know, how do you measure it and how can you decide, you know, is all publicity bad publicity? It depends. It could be a PR stunt straight out of PT Barnum. It could be a brand of someone who always puts people down. Andrew Dice Clay, back in the day, he always made a lot of news. Howard Stern, well, he's kind of back in the day as well. They were known for putting people down. That's how they got their publicity. From that bad publicity, there's the shock effect. Think about tennis player Naomi Osaka, her stance on mental health. Some people called it brave to cancel a press conference and pull out of the tennis tournament. Others derided her. There could be a negative review from a movie, television program or a book. That negative publicity might generate sales. Or you look at a negative review on Amazon. What do you think when you see a one star review next to a product? Again, we could look at a person like President Trump. He was someone who was lambasted by the mainstream media and he was viewed as, as someone who was always put in a negative light. But at the same time, this anti establishment brand of Trump became incredibly popular with his base. Another example that I saw in a research study about this topic, the movie Borat. When that movie came out with Sacha Baron Cohen, he made relentless fun of Kazakhstan over and over. It was a joke about the country. Yet Hotels.com reported a 300% increase in requests for information about the country after the film was released. So I think we need to determine if all publicity is good publicity. What is the desired outcome? Is it for fame? Is it for sales? Is it for notoriety? Or is it just getting through it clean? And the truth is, the answer is it depends. So here are some factors to consider when negative publicity hits. Number one, what is the cost to the reputation? If something happens to you or to your company, or if we're thinking about other people or educating other people or giving them counsel, what is the actual cost? An example might be when Uber's Value dropped by an estimated $10 billion in 2017 when the founder and CEO at the time, Travis Kalanick, had to resign after growing pressure resulting from public reports of the company's unethical culture, and that included allegations that he ignored several reports of sexual harassment at the company. An employee wrote a blog. That blog got out, and then Travis Kalanick soon followed. Or how about Ellen DeGeneres? I've talked about her before in episode 94 and 101. I include a link in the show notes. One of the topics was, you know, how to apologize during a PR crisis when she was going through her crisis following the allegations of workplace misconduct. I had predicted in episode 101 that Ellen's show would end, and it is after 19 seasons. There is a cost to a reputation. Number two, the blowback you might receive from a socially conscious consumer. When it comes to products and services and brands that we follow and interact with, consumers have more choices than ever before, meaning in addition to taking budget and their preference into account, they can also buy based on their values. If a brand is slammed in the media for poor leadership, poor working conditions, poor treatment, their customer base can jump ship. They can go to a competitor and they can talk about it online. For example, look at what happened to the NFL. Look at how far the Colin Kaepernick taking a knee has come. Look where it started. Look where we are now. There's also corporate walkouts. In 2019, Google had given a $90 million payout to a former Google executive. His name was Andy Rubin. Despite finding that there were a number of sexual misconduct claims against him that were credible. A woman started a campaign and they became activists and they scheduled a walkout. There's also protests at Netflix. We had talked about it recently in an Instagram Live with another PR practitioner, Jodi Fisher, and I. We were talking about Dave Chappelle and the workers at Netflix who coined the term Team Trans. They felt that Netflix was being transphobic by having that program on the air. They created and formed a corporate walkout. Amazon employees have done the same thing over the working conditions. So there is that blowback there with negative publicity. And the last one in the culture that we're in now, of course, is cancellation. The brand, the name could be canceled altogether. It could stem from sexual charges a la Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Matt Lauer. Matt Lauer, by the way. Oh my gosh. If you're watching the morning show on Apple TV the last three episodes, I cannot help but think, who has an eye On Matt Lauer right now, watching it. Oh my gosh, Steve Carell, which is based on Matt Lauer. And I talked about this in my book Indestructible link. In the show notes. I had talked about how it was portrayed. Steve Carell was portraying Matt Lauer. Well, my goodness, Season two, it was a dark turn. I don't want to give a spoiler there, but I wonder in my head, wow, Matt Lauer, that guy is not recovering. There's also crimes like O.J. simpson and there's also the cancellation of the social nature where it grows and spreads on social media. You've heard me mention Chrissy Teigen before. She lost brand deals and roles after it was revealed that she was bullying like C list stars on social media. There was actor Armie Hammer. I had talked about him previously on the podcast as well. There were alleged direct messages on social media of him talking about cannibalism and other just dark sexual stuff that leaked naturally and it led to him dropping out in a number of projects. One which was a movie with Jennifer Lopez. When I went to a movie with my kids this weekend with was the preview for that movie in the trailers and the first thing I thought of was, huh, that was Armie Hammer's movie. I wonder what Armie Hammer is doing now. Nothing. And another example would be Justin Timberlake. So he was almost like recanceled after framing Britney Spears came out. And now that everyone is analyzing and going through the Britney Spears campaign of Free Britney and now that she's free, people were scrutinizing what Justin Timberlake had to do and how he was a big part of that. So you can see that those are three different ways in the society that we're in nowadays that they don't tolerate certain behavior. So it is difficult to get out of these negative publicity situations. Now there can be a comeback. You know, Justin Timberlake, he's doing well, he's doing okay, but the stain remains. And that's where the solution lies. The bottom line is this. And if you've listened to this podcast for some time, you're going to know the saying here. All publicity is good. Publicity really is a bunch of Barnum thanks to the Internet. Unlike in a time when P.T. barnum and Oscar Wilde roamed about nowadays, firsthand information is online information. It's captured and it's not captured in a story that can be woven in a different way. The truth is out there. The Internet lives forever. When everyone's reputation is just one Google search away from the truth, well then all publicity isn't good publicity. That's notoriety. Now, in every podcast I add one indestructible PR tip, and here it is. If you find yourself dealing with negative publicity, never ignore bad press. Don't let it sit out there to simmer. Take responsibility for it right away and make it work in your favor. That's the definition of indestructible pr. Just turn it around. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.