97: 5 of the Best-Worst PR Excuses from the Week: The rhetoric behind the response

I'm sorry, but the excuses that I saw or heard last week in the news and online. Ugh. Not good tip. When an official response becomes a story, it's a bad response. Now I understand in the time of the cancel culture, it's nerve wracking to cobble together the appropriate response. One never knows how it will be received. But when someone does find themselves in the middle of the media mix, they should at least try to find the right words to quell the story, not say something lame to cause a reputation to go kablooey. So today on the podcast Rhetoric for Rehabilitation, some of the best worst excuses from the best worst behavior. I heard about this week, just this past week, pointing out the problems of these responses to help you, the listener, create the right response at the right time and when your time comes up to help you rebuild your reputation. Let's talk about the rhetoric behind rebuilding a reputation. Now these are the quasi formal response strategies that focus on rehabilitation, restoration or renewal of your reputation with alliteration. Someone lands in hot water, they respond to cool down the situation. But if that response is botched, they will fall out of the frying pan and into the fire. If you are a frequent listener to the podcast, thank you. You've heard me discuss my framework for response. How to respond to a crisis, issue or pending cancellation. It's a framework for rehabilitation. Step one Own it. Admit, apologize, accept. Acknowledge your role fully. Now on to the rebuild. Step 2 Clarify it. Why did it happen? Put the person into your story. Let the public hear your story, your words, your context. STEP 3 Promise it. Here you are on your way to rehabilitation or renewing your reputation. What did you learn? What will you change? What will you promise? How is it going to get better? Do all three in order and by the third step you have turned the corner. My framework for response puts an emphasis on a positive view of the future rather rather than dwelling on what got you there in the first place. I have always said every crisis is an opportunity for change. Post fallout, you can chart a new direction, a new purpose, and grow from there. The reputational damage is often from the response to the act, not the act itself that causes the most damage. So a reputation will inflict far more damage from the reaction to that first hit. Just like a hurricane, everyone focuses on the damaging winds, but the greatest threat to life is actually from the water in the form of a storm surge. The surge is the backlash from the public and the press. It's the social surge. So this week I want to show some examples of crisis response. All top of mind examples ripped from the headlines that will serve as a lesson I How not to respond Sidebar I am not going to touch the dominant sad stories of the week and what a week it was. Hurricane Laura, Kenosha, Wisconsin. It's tough. My former FEMA self watched the hurricane story with a lump in my throat. And Kenosha, that's a heavy heart story. Ideology, politics, race. If you want to know how I feel about that story, well, just tune into any episode of mine from June. I'm going to leave those heavy stories with the heavy hitters. Today I'm going to offer five examples from the week that are a little lighter, focusing on the rhetoric from official PR responses from the people and the institution. The three things I'm going to focus on today, I'm going to give you the background of the story, the response that the person or the organization used and what was the strategy behind the response. The technique that they used to help rebuild the reputation or hurt it. So five of the best, worst PR excuses from the week. The rhetoric for rebuilding a reputation. First up. Oh boy. Jerry Falwell Jr. Now he's first because I had to get through a whole lot of information so his story could probably be an entire podcast. I'm going to try and make it as short as possible, but there's so many details in here that I they're juicy enough that I can't leave out. There's a lot to be learned here. The background Jerry Falwell Jr. Was suspended as president of Virginia's Liberty University. It was a Christian university after a string of problems that became public. The first you may have seen floating around the Internet. He originally posted it to Instagram and it was a photo of him with his arm around a younger woman. The caption more vacation shots. Lots of good friends. Visit us on the yacht. Now that I'm reading this, I wonder if he meant vacation shots as in drinking shots and not photo shots. Anyway, it continues, I promise that's just black water in my glass. It was a prop only. Did I mention Falwell posted this on his own Instagram. Now he did not mention in the post, and I don't know if you saw it or not, but both he and the young woman had their pants undone, right? Nice. Okay, the first crisis response. We'll call this Good Intentions. I meant well. And when he was on a radio program in Lynchburg, Virginia, he had a light hearted interview with the host and his response this is from Jerry Falwell. She's pregnant so she couldn't get her pants up. Really, if he had a PR person right there, they would have yanked him off the air. But he continues, and I had on a pair of jeans that I hadn't worn in a long time, so I couldn't get mine zipped either. And so I just put my belly out there like hers. She's a sweetheart, he added, and I should never have put it up and embarrassed her. There you have it. Good intentions, but all that means well does not end well for Falwell. Turns out the sweetheart he mentioned in the photo, he said, was his wife Becky's assistant. More on Beck in a sec. Now remember what I said about the cancel culture. Oftentimes it isn't the act itself, but the actions you took in response to the initial act. So if you botch that initial response, you're likely exposing yourself to future scrutiny. With scrutiny comes for evidence, with evidence cancellation. So when Falwell tried a good intention response to hope it would go away, it resulted in Liberty's board decision to put him on paid leave. But it wasn't over. And this is still in the same week, which it never is, with a weak response. So as many of you know by now, it was revealed that Jerry Falwell and his wife Becky had engaged in a long term sexual relationship with a pool boy named Giancarlo Granda. Granda said that he met the falwells as a 20 year old pool attendant at a Miami beach hotel back in 2012. And that encounter, quote, blossomed into a six year relationship in which Mr. Falwell watched Mr. Granda have sexual intercourse with his wife multiple times a year. So again, usually when you try that first response and you botch it, it's going to come back to bite you. Now Jerry Falwell's next response. In a story published on August 25th in the Washington Post, Falwell said he had not been involved in an affair, but his wife Becky had. Falwell said he was leaving Liberty in part because he did not want his wife's conduct to embarrass the school. But he also said he had been bored and wanted to move on. He also said he had suffered depression caused by his wife's affair and accused the pool boy of threatening to expose it. He said, I'm just tired of it and it's just got to end. Oh boy. The response strategy there? Well, many. So many, too many that no one is buying any of them. So number one, we heard one response. Simple denial. I didn't do it the second response, bus throw under. In other words, she did it. So using a more theoretical term, that would be shifting the blame to the wife who does that. All right, number three, transcendence. So that's placing the act in a different context and direction. So in Falwell's case, this was not a swinging relationship between three consenting adults. It was my wife's affair and extortion. And for good measure, he attacked the accuser, the pool boy, who, no surprise, challenged his story. Because that's what happens when someone is falsely accused. They accused right back. So in a statement, Granda accused Falwell of being a predator. Now I can't let this go because I have to read one more response from Falwell and then I promise I will move on to number two. So this response is to a story where Granda said that when Falwell and his wife were out of town, there was a foot photo that was forwarded to him. So Falwell forwarded an inappropriate photo of a woman to Granda. Now Falwell in his response, follow along if you will. He said Granda may have been referring to an incident. This is about the photograph when he and his wife were out of town. So in other words, they have nothing to do with this. His daughters in law and a friend were using the family's guest house to cook a meal, Fowl said, and the friend pulled up her skirt as a joke while she was cooking. The daughters in law were videotaping the girl and sent screenshots around. He said she had on, I don't know how to say this, granny panties, he said, saying the image wasn't sexual. Falwell said he sent the screenshot to several people because he thought it was funny. He said he does not remember whether he sent it to Granda, whom he called a criminal and a liar. Okay, that's an actual story. That was an actual response. So the crisis response technique that Falwell was using there, obviously he's creating like a bluster and trying. It's like a red herring story. He wants to use so many details to his story to explain it. For more information on this, I have two episodes online that I will include in the show notes and you can learn all about what Falwell was doing there. Now listen to this next response. So this is a crisis response strategy from Falwell. I grew up as a preacher's kid and we were under a microscope. He said he was describing the influence of his devout Christian mother. She just instilled in me how important it was that I be so concerned about not doing anything that people could point a finger at. He said, I can't control everybody else. Okay, so that technique, there's some denial in there, there's shifting the blame, but there's also bolstering. And that is a technique to remind you of a person's positive qualities. Falwell is trying to remind you of his past and he went to his devout Christian mother. Okay, that was just example one. And that was all last week when that happened. All right, moving on. Number two, this person has a through line role here because she had tweeted about the Jerry Falwell Instagram post standing next to his wife's assistant, and her tweet said, help. I tried to look anywhere not alarming in this Jerry Falwell Jr. Photo and I sprained my eyeballs, wrote the actress Bette midler on an August 3rd check tweet. Now, that tweet is not the reason why she's on the list this week. So background Bet went on a bit of a tweet rant during the First Lady Melania Trump speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention that aired last week. So she was tweeting last Tuesday evening. Her tweet said, oh God, she still can't speak English, referring to Trump, who immigrated to the US From Slovenia. So she doubled down on the Another tweet be best is back a huge bore. She can speak several words in a few languages. Get that illegal alien off the stage. Well, no surprise. After all, this is Bette Midler, CC Bloom. But enough talk about me and let's talk about you. What do you think of me? Midler's remarks were instantly shamed and slammed as xenophobic and she apologize she had to. Bette Midler on August 26 responded on Twitter, well, all hell has broken loose because I said Melania still can't speak English. Last night I was wrong to make fun of her accent. America is made up of people who speak with all kinds of accents and they are all welcomed. Always. The response strategy, mortification, which is asking for forgiveness, admitting guilt and expressing regret, but only slightly for our Cc Bloom. Next example, Jerry Seinfeld. Hello Jerry. Background on this story. It annoyed me. Last Monday, the New York Times published an op ed from Seinfeld in which he authored a scathing rebuke to a recent piece penned by a hedge fund manager slash authority. His name is James Altucher and he had published a lengthy article on LinkedIn on August 13, and he had highlighted several Reasons as to why he believed New York City would forever be altered amid the pandemic, with residents fleeing to nearby states. Enter uber wealthy comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who called him a putz for writing that New York City was dead. And he also snarkily added that he pointed out that Altucher was staying in Florida. This is when that hypocrite Seinfeld was likely writing this op ed from his mansion in the Hamptons. But that's not what got me on this issue. So Seinfeld continues. He says he knows people who have left New York for Maine, Vermont, Tennessee and Indiana. I have been to all these places many, many times over many decades, and with all due respect and affection. Are you kidding me? I am sorry, but what an out of touch, asshole kind of response is that. Jerry Seinfeld. The people in Maine, Vermont, Tennessee, Indiana, they made you who you are today. And when Seinfeld called him a putz, oh, please. That is arrogance, hubris, ego, you name it, all wrapped up into one op ed. Now, I like Seinfeld as much as the next person. I've been to his shows. I like to watch Seinfeld. I watched his last Netflix special and I thought it was a little out of touch. And honestly, I'm not surprised by this op ed. But Seinfeld got blowback, rightfully so. It was arrogance. So his crisis response strategy, it was the right one. Silence. He didn't say a thing because he knows if he did. And thankfully, he had someone tell him, don't say anything, Jerry. You're only going to make it worse. All right, next, number four, Roll Tide. Background. The University of Alabama made headlines last week with the shocking announcement that more than 500 students, faculty and staff had tested positive for the coronavirus in the first five days of classes. I had posted a tweet gif of a confused person standing in front of a blackboard saying it was the head of communications. I can't imagine writing that press release. But what happened was to make it even worse, professors at the university said that they were distributed emails from the administration telling them not to speak up about the outbreaks. And in an email to the politics department, professors were explicitly instructed not to tell their students if someone in class tested positive. Now, the crisis response strategy here is minimization. The strategy is to minimize offensiveness to the act or the event and claim as little damage as possible. Now, it is understandable that a school would do this because you need to manage a stampede of information and fear on campus. But come on with Social media, with all the social leaking, it is next to impossible to contain an email like that. It just looks like a cover up. All right, next, finally, number five, the holy grail of response for the week. The last story that I read before I recorded this, and it's such a good one. Background Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown told his side of the story after his wife of 21 years accused him of a secret life of lies. Now, if you didn't read the story back in June, I did. And what happened was that Dan Brown's former wife, Blythe Brown, who helped him research and did all the backbreaking work on his novels, they were divorced. Since the divorce, Blythe released a bombshell of a statement saying that her husband, former husband, lavished a fortune on a string of mistresses and also that he had hidden assets. He was working on a television program with NBC, like things she didn't know about. So she was accusing him of dissipating their funds but also keeping future, future funds from her. And I remember reading this story. I was in a parking lot outside of Boston and I was reading the Boston Globe. It was outside of a stationery store because I had to buy stationery for my daughter who's heading off to college. And I couldn't get out of the car. I had to read every word because I was picturing what it would be like to be married to Dan Brown. So as you can imagine, there was a lens on the story for me. But here are some of the statements. So the original statement, the one that stuck out with me. So there were two of them. The first one was from Blythe. And this was the story of. This is the response back in June, she said, as it turns out, for the last several years of the marriage, Dan engaged in a systematic pattern of deception and lies. It sounds like it from the guy who wrote the Da Vinci Code, it all kind of goes hand in hand. So according to the lawsuit, he also secretly used their money to buy gifts for women with whom he had affairs, diminishing their shared wealth. Allegedly, there were many a horse trainer from Holland that he flew over and that the wife had hired a hairdresser in New Hampshire, a politician, and also someone in Anguilla where the couple had a vacation home. Oh, my gosh. And I love this. In the newspaper it said, less creatively, a personal trainer. So the Browns have a lot of money. And through his attorney, Brown had denied hiding any assets from. From his wife. Now here is a response that I remember from that June story. This was the response that would not let me get out of the car because I had to keep reading it over and over again. Dan Brown said, I am saddened that there is not enough goodwill from 21 years of marriage to temper her unfortunate actions. Can you tell what the response strategy that Dan Brown used right there? Well, one just in the writing, he is shifting the blame while he's trying to deny it. But all I hear, frankly, is probably 21 years of gaslighting in this marriage. So he's saying, I'm saddened. He's not angered, he's not furious. He's just saddened that there's not enough goodwill from 21 years of marriage, which means I was good to you for 21 years of marriage. So he's using the word good, which is a positive word, to temper, which is a word one associates with anger and bursts of anger to temper her unfortunate actions. So the next response he used was provocation. That's the official response to someone's action. Now, the reason why Dan Brown likely had to come out with this story this week is because he has a children's book coming out soon. And it's likely that the publishers or the publicist behind it said, listen, Dan, every interview you do about this children's book about music and animals, like all these wonderful things, you know, for kids, we don't want them to ask questions about your divorce and the affair with the horse trainer. So you need to say something now so you can put it to rest. So when a reporter does ask, or the interviewer if they want a response, we can say, we're not talking about it. Just read his response right there. But that was his response. That's all he did this week. Will it make the story go away? I don't know. I'm interested. So there you have it, five of the best, worst PR excuses from the week. It's the rhetoric for rebuilding a reputation. The key takeaway, the best framework for response puts an emphasis on the positive view of the future rather than dwelling on what got you there in the first place. Your crisis response should be crafted and delivered with forward momentum and rehabilitation in mind. If you need it, put the story to rest. Don't say anything to give it legs. Now. That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. But speaking of reputation, I am feeling buoyed and grateful for all of the feedback that I've been getting from the listeners, whether it's people who have reached out to me online, on social media or replied to my weekly emails I just want to say thank you. I. I appreciate it. Now you can subscribe to my weekly emails@mollymcpherson.com, subscribe. You can also follow me on Twitter @molly McPherson. I love chatting with people on Twitter and also I am pleased that over the next few weeks, couple months now, I have a lot of bookings, a lot of virtual keynotes and presentations on topics like today's episode. So if you are looking for virtual keynote speakers at the end of the year or heading into next year, if you need social media, media or reputation management training, reach out to me. I am having a blast, an absolute blast doing these trainings and these sessions online. So definitely reach out to me. You know. But enough about me. Let's talk about you. What do you think of me again? That's CC Blue, not me. Let me know on how you feel on the Apple Podcast reviews. I would love to to hear from you. Thanks for listening. I'll see you here again next week. Bye for now.