82: Eating Your Words: Cookbook author Alison Roman's recipe for an apology

The kitchen got a little hot recently for chef and writer Allison Roman. On May 7, 2020, the new consumer released a conversational interview with Roman about her growing popularity as a cookbook author and brand. This story was a feature on the rise of this millennial Martha Stewart. So if you were to swap a small Brooklyn apartment for Martha's sprawling bucolic real estate of Connecticut, or use streaming live video and compare that against Martha's glossy mag, you get the idea. So now you know Martha Stewart's cool and measured style of speaking. Well, Alison, she's more quick. She's more off the cuff. She peppers her speaking style with a lot of spicy language. In other words, it could be a recipe for an online disaster. This week on the podcast how not to Get Roasted Online and if your contempt spills online, how to blanch the heat. Alison Roman's recipe for In a Pod for so many of you who post commentary online, tweeting your thoughts about a breaking news story, or posting your political opinions on Facebook or something even more treacherous, posting your opinions on a local matter in your town on Facebook, it's likely you're looking for agreement. You want the likes, the retweets that tell you that you're onto something, perhaps even viral fame. But what you fear is viral infamy. No one wants to go into a long term reputational tailspin over one short term thought you posted on social media. Many, many people have done irreparable damage to their name or on behalf of a company from words they either wrote or said that eventually found their way online. Now I understand that fear. That fear is my business model. When I was working in external affairs for FEMA in the post Hurricane Katrina, I felt that retribution with every reporter who I spoke with on the phone or in person. I wanted to share the good work that FEMA was doing, but all they could think about or tell me about was the bad impression that tainted the agency during that national emergency in New Orleans. So losing control of a story is certainly a sickening feeling alone if you're just doing it for an organization that you work for. But it's even worse if it's your own reputation taking a pummeling. What do you need to do to find an ending if your name is trending on this episode? Three ingredients for putting the kibosh on an online kerfuffle what to do, what to say. How to move on from it. How to survive a self destructive act with savvy, indestructible communications. Now Allison Roman, if you're not familiar with her. She is a Brooklyn based co and writer. She's a bi weekly columnist for the New York Times Cooking section. She is also the author of a New York Times bestseller called Dining in and also her latest book is Nothing Fancy. Now listen to the blurb for the latter book. It's not entertaining. It's having people over an unexpected weeknight meal with a neighbor or a weekend dinner party with 15 of your closest friends. Either way and everywhere in between. Now that's a great brand. And she is the brand of the time. She uses Instagram, she uses Instagram livestream. She's very good on social media. Well, in some things. Now she's also set to expand her brand. She's filming her own cooking series and she has a capsule collaboration with a cookware startup company. It's called Material. So it sounds pretty familiar. You've seen the blueprint before. If you walk into Target, you know, you've seen the brands. You've seen Magnolia and you've seen the brand of someone I'll talk about in a moment, Alison Roman. She's doing pretty well for herself, but she had a little bit of a hiccup because the hand that feedeth well, it can also taketh away. Now Roman's reputation took a massive hit after parts of that new consumer article titled what Allison Roman Wants. That's always a bad title. She never should approve that title if she had the chance. What she got was a viral rump kicking after what was likely supposed to be a nice simple chit chat. She was probably going for the very authentic chitchat with the reporter. It spiraled after Roman made some pretty petty and mean and some people pointed out racist comments about other women in that home betterment space. I completely made up that term right there. But the whole space of cooking and cleaning, in this case, Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo. Now the interview. I have a link to the interview in the show notes, if you're familiar with it or not. The interview starts off well enough. She's speaking in a very conversational style. It's very authentic. I would think that's the angle she was going for. This is the real me. I'm not manufactured. I'm very, very real. Now the article then moves into more perilous territory by discussing fame and selling it. So the writer of the piece, in my opinion, baits Roman by asking her about Gwyneth Paltrow. And when you hear Gwyneth Paltrow, you immediately think, or at least I do, of goop it's her brand and what it means to sell out. And this is the point in the article where the kitchen gets hot. Now, Roman says here a statement that tells us where she's going. She says, I'm really sensitive to over saturation. That's a passive aggressive way of saying that she doesn't want to be Gwyneth Beltrow, who she finds to be oversaturated. She goes on to say, I would also have to let go of so much control, she's trying to fix it. There, Roman says about her growing brand. So quoting again, the idea that I would ever not do that and that I would somehow lend my brand to someone else who is going to approximate me horrifies me. I'd rather stay small and always be myself. That probably would have been an okay statement, but she attached it to Gwyneth Paltrow. That wasn't wise. The reporter likely knew where they were going at this point because this is the point where Roman places her foot directly into her mouth. When she was asked about putting her name to a restaurant or products, she referred first to Marie Kondo. Now she's the Japanese organizing consultant. She wrote the book the Life Changing Pulsing Magic of Tidying Up. If you're not familiar with that, I bet you're familiar with the term spark joy. That's where you go through your all of your belongings and you hold it and you touch it and you smell it and you decide if it sparks joy or not. If it does, you keep it. If you don't, you toss it. She also has a Netflix series, popular Netflix series Tidying up with Marie Kondo. Roman goes on to say, like the idea that when Marie Kondo decided to capitalize on her fame and make stuff that you can buy, that's completely antithetical to everything she's ever taught you. I'm like, damn, bitch, you bleep just sold out immediately. Editor's note, I added the bleep. Someone's like, you should make stuff. And she's like, okay, slap my name on it. I don't give a shite. Now, she also didn't say shite. Next, this is where she makes an even more tone deaf remark. If that first one wasn't tone deaf enough, not only for the content, but for the subject. Chrissy Teigen. Now, Chrissy Teigen, let's see, how do you explain her if you're not familiar with her? Well, first, she's a model. She also co hosted a number of TV shows, but most notably, she's married to singer and songwriter John Legend. He's saying all of me. And she also created the brand cravingsby. Chrissyteigen.com she's basically a huge, huge brand. But Chrissy Teigen is also. And here's Allison Roman's biggest miscalculation in the whole sordid affair. Chrissy Teigen is not only a master at cultivating her brand, but she's also a master of Twitter. She gets it. 12.8 million followers means she gets it. Teagan is not afraid to tell people exactly how she feels on a given topic. Back to the story and the topic. Here's what Alison Roman said about Teagan and her Cravings by Kristy Brand, which is on sale now at Target. Like, what Chrissy Teigen has done is so crazy to me. She had a successful cookbook and then it was like, boom, line at Target. Boom. Now she has an Instagram page that has over a million followers, where it's just like people running a content farm for her. That horrifies me. And it's not something that I would ever do. I don't aspire to that. But, like, who's laughing now because she's making a ton of effing money? She didn't say effing. Now that was a huge mistake because she's basically throwing a flamethrower at Chrissy Teigen. Chrissy Teigen responded, as did, well, the entire social media universe on the same day. No surprise, because Chrissy's on it, she says on Twitter, replying back to the article. It was in Page Six. This is a huge bummer, and it hit me hard. I have made her recipes for years now, bought the cookbook, supported her on social, and praised her in interviews. I even signed on to executive produce the very show she talks about doing in this article. Ouch. And so after initially announcing that she was planning a social media break on Twitter, which she has almost 13 million followers, you really can't be private by doing that. And that also created a lot of means against Teagan. So she knew what she was doing. She flipped the switch and went back on. But she is the one that caused the Alison Roman story. For most people who probably weren't familiar with her, she became, in theory, a front page story. Now let's set a pause button right here. You're Alison Roman. The Internet has lit up against you. What do you do? Okay, let's bring the moment to you, the listener listening right now to the podcast. Perhaps you're not as insta famous as a New York Times cooking columnist. But you know people. You have a reputation to uphold. You have social media accounts. What do you do if you step in it online? And not only does it seem like everyone noticed, they likely did, but they aren't exactly lining up in your defense. What you need is an indestructible recipe for response. The ingredients in this order are as easy as ABC 123. All right. And they will sound familiar to you if you listen to the podcast. 1. Accountability. 2. A basis for that. Accountability a basis for the apology. This is like the contact section and three, change. So in other words, accountability is acknowledging what you did, what you said, what you wrote. Don't hide it. Social media has a way of uncovering liars quickly. Show remorse. Take accountability. If you insulted a person, apologize to that person. If you insulted two people, apologize to both of them. And do not, and I repeat, do not ever say or write an apology to only the people who you offended and no one else. If you only serve one piece of cake at a party, the rest of the guests will be annoyed with you. 2. The basis for the apology. So once you atone, you are allowed to place that misdeed into context. In other words, why did it happen? What did you really mean? Why now do you realize your words are hurtful or whatever you did? Okay, three is the change. One. What's next? How are you going to change? Why will this incident, or something like it never, ever happen again? If you combine all three and cook it in the oven for Baby and me, you will be rewarded with a reputational do over. Now back to the kitchen with Allison. Her recipe got off to a rough start, so she attempted the apology with a tweet right back at Chrissy Teigen. On the same day she said on May 8, hi, Chrissy Teigen. So that means it's tagged to her, so she'll see it. I sent an email, but also wanted to say here that I'm genuinely sorry I caused you pain with what I said. I shouldn't have used you or your business or Marie's in Parens as an example to show what I wanted for my own career. It was flippant, careless, and I'm so sorry. End of tweet. She found out that it wasn't enough. Do you know why? If you go back to what I said with, number one, that accountability piece, that apology piece, she parsed it like she only served a slice of cake to Chrissy and to Marie Kondo. What about all the other people who she offended? Not directly, but certainly indirectly. It wasn't enough people and brands weren't buying it. She only used one tweet, 280 characters worth of an apology. There's a brand called Cherry Bomb. It's for women and foodies. Basically this entire audience, they posted something on Instagram that said, in part, women calling other women sellouts and bitches for their hard earned accomplishments is not acceptable. White women calling women of color sellouts and bitches for their hard earned accomplishments is not acceptable. There's no excuse in 2020 for not knowing better, especially when you're a gatekeeper or celebrated individual in the food world. Those in a privileged position need to check their privilege and humility on a regular basis. That's a pretty good statement. And that is a template that you're going to hear over and over again, no matter what the issue is. If someone has been maligned, especially if you're getting into gender and you're getting into race, a statement like that and multiplied across a number of people and brands, well, that hurts and it burns for Alison Roman. So she likely stewed on all of this over the weekend. And by Monday, another tweet, another apology, and this time a better apology. On May 11, Allison Roman writes, I've thought a lot this weekend about my interview and the things I said. I know this is a lengthy note. Succinctness has never been my strong suit. I appreciate you taking the time to read. That was like a subtle nod, maybe for her trying to explain the first tweet that she's not good with short succinct phrases, which in a social media world, I'm not buying that. But here we go. So I've included a link to the show Notes so you can read the apology, but it's a two page apology typed in the Apple's Notes app. You know, very millennial. But also a lot of people, when they pen an apology, they like to put it in notes because it can be rather small and they just slap it up on a tweet and Instagram and then you don't have to deal with it again. So let's look at the three part accountability framework that I'd mentioned earlier. Accountability, the basis for the apology and the change. The first paragraph is one. Accountability and apologizing. I need to formally apologize to Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo. I use their names disparagingly to try and distinguish myself, which I absolutely do not have an excuse for. It was stupid, careless and insensitive. I need to learn and respect the difference between being unfiltered and honest versus being uneducated and flippant. The burden is not on them or anyone else to teach me, and I am deeply sorry that my learning came at Chrissy and Marie's expense. They worked extremely hard to get where they are and both deserve better than my tone deaf remark. She's missing a hag tag in there for writer, but for that paragraph, that's a good. That's a good apology. Then she goes on, now this is the b the basis for the accountability, the basis for the apology. I asked myself a lot this weekend why I said what I said. Why couldn't I express myself without tearing someone down? I definitely could have, and I'm embarrassed I didn't. Among the many uncomfortable things I begun processing is the knowledge that my comments were rooted in my own insecurity. My inability to appreciate my own success without comparing myself to and knocking down others. In this case, two accomplished women is something I recognize I most definitely struggle with, and I am working to fix it. I don't want to be a person like that. Now she's bleeding the a accountability and the apology into the basis. So you hear the context of why she did it. She's doubting herself. She's saying I need to learn. But she's also bleeding into the change. The last piece of the apology. I'm not the victim here, and my insecurities don't excuse this behavior. I'm a white woman who has and will continue to benefit from white privilege, and I recognize that makes what I said even more inexcusable and hurtful. The fact that it didn't occur to me that I had singled out two Asian women is one 100% a function of my privilege. Being blind to racial insensitivities is a discriminatory luxury. I know that our culture frequently goes after women, especially women of color, and I'm ashamed to have contributed to that. I want to lift up and support women of color. My actions indicated the opposite. And that last line, that was the c It's all about the change. She's going to lift up and support women of color. And her actions indicated the opposite. So Alison Roman will have to answer to this incident for some time to come and it will always be hanging in the air. But along with it will also be the context and this apology. So she's less likely to be raked over the coals because she said all of that. And because of this apologies, she is less likely to be raked over the coals again because she laid it out and she was pretty clear about it. So the question of its impact will likely come up in future interviews and she will definitely have her haters. But Alison Roman, for the most part, can move on and carry on. So can you if something like this happens. And by the way, this happens every single day. Perhaps not at a Chrissy Teigen level, but when everyone is piling up on you on Twitter or on Facebook, it's a mess that can turn into an even bigger mess if you don't clean it up quickly. You can do this in your professional life. You can do this if you've insulted customers. You can do it if you've made a tone deaf remark that impacts your reputation. Also the reputation of your business. That's all for this week on the podcast. If you want to share your feelings with me about the Alison Chrissy Kitchen kerfuffle, you can follow me on Twitter, Molly McPherson and everyone. Remember, in PR, it's all about the response. If you do it correctly the first time, then you won't have to do it again. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.