Silent vs. Vocal: Zach Bryan and Brianna LaPaglia's Breakup PR Battle

I mean, that in itself. $12 million to not talk about this relationship that you posted on Instagram that was so beautiful and you had so much love for me. What the are you hiding, dude? What are you scared of?

$12 million to not talk about a relationship. I would talk about it for $12. Heck, I'd even talk about it for free. Welcome Back to the PR breakdown with me, your host, Molly McPherson. This is the podcast where we public relations strategies behind the headlines and scandals shaping pop culture and the news. Why? Because I think there's always something to learn. We're talking about the relationship between singer Zach Bryan and Briana Chicken Fry lapaglia. People know her from her podcast. She is a barstool personality. But their relationship has all the elements of a country song, from a chance meeting to a bittersweet ending that turned into a social media soap opera. There's also a messy, greasy part of it, a public breakup involving the Internet. When country music's rising star and social media's outspoken podcaster collided, of course, it was bound to create fireworks. Now, who could have predicted that the explosive aftermath would play out all over social media? If you answered everyone, Yeah, I would second that, because this story isn't just about heartbreak. That's what a lot of people on the Internet get focused on. Understandably, I look at it as a crash course into very different PR strategies. Now, let me set the stage here. I recognize that some of you maybe have no idea who either person is. I just finished recording a live chat on patreon patreon.commollymcpherson and I also popped on TikTok and did a TikTok live. A lot of people on the Internet, you know, on social media, they know who Zach Bryan is. He's a singer. And there's definitely a segment of the Internet who's aware of Briana. She's a young TikTok content creator. Turn like even bigger podcaster. She's a part of the barstool sports network. Her personality has been built on a brand of oversharing and unfiltered honesty. Their love story started innocently enough, a fan photo at the Academy of Country Music Awards in May of 2023. But what followed was a masterclass in how different social media strategies can turn a breakup to a PR battlefield. In May of last year, Luke Bryan announced his split from a previous girlfriend. Then In June of 2023, Briana and I'll call her Brianna. People know her as Brianna Chicken Fry, but she has a different last name. So I'll just go with Briana. Brianna joins Luke Bryan on stage at his concert in New York City. And on the podcast, she also mentioned that she was with her boyfriend at that time. Next month, July, Brianna confirms on her podcast that she and Luke Bryan have been talking for about three weeks, confirming that they didn't say any to each other apart from her asking to take a photo. She did mention that she had some, quote, stuff to address with her listeners, that she'd been hanging out with a guy named Zach. So she mentioned this in one of her episodes and then it turns into a big relationship. Fast forward a year later, they're both sharing heartfelt posts on Instagram commemorating their first anniversary. Briana says, quote, there isn't a damn thing I wouldn't do for you, my person. Forever. Love you, my Zachary. That's really putting yourself out there. But then fans, listeners, begin to notice that her social media behavior was shifting. Then the queen of oversharing goes mysteriously quiet about her personal life. And we all know what social media silence means in 2024. There's more to the story. Then comes the cryptic posting phase. Brianna starts sharing song lyrics about betrayal. Zach Brian counters with vague tweets about truth and perspective. It's the modern equivalent of celebrity PR warfare, you know, played out in stories and tweets and TikToks. October is when Zach Bryan confirms that he split with Brianna, then drops what seems like a perfectly crafted too perfectly crafted PR statement on Instagram stories, which means it's temporary. It's a controlled release. It's playbook for celebrity breakups. Here's some of the things that he said. I'm thinking he didn't write this. I'm thinking he didn't write it. He didn't post it. He had nothing to do with it other than to give his two cents to someone else to write it. Addressing something, one word, colon. Brianna and me have broken up with each other, each other being one word. And I respect and love her with every ounce of my heart. She has loved me unconditionally for a very long time. And for that I'll always thank her. Thank you, Brianna, for loving me for a long time. I have had an incredibly hard year personally and struggled through some pretty severe things. Okay, so there we go. The phase where we are creating like a narrative that's framing there that he's struggling with stuff. So if things happen to come out about me, know that I've been struggling with some things. Okay, so back to the statement. I thought it would be beneficial for both of us to go our different ways. And note I thought it would be beneficial. Not we. I. I am not perfect and never will be Again. Framing. Please respect Brianna's privacy and space in this and if you have it in your heart, comma, mine too. Again, he didn't write this. So a cryptic, non cryptic post. He's laying it out. They broke up. It looks like he's the one doing the breaking up at this time. But now we have two entirely different approaches for how to handle a breakup and how to do it so it works. Now, Brianna is the social media native. She lets her platform do the talking through subtle jabs and coded messages. So she said in a post on an Instagram story, hey guys, I'm feeling really blindsided right now. Gonna hop off social media for a while and attempt to heal privately. When I'm ready, I'll be back and ready to talk. That type of language written in an Instagram story, which, no fault there, she's sharing vocal vulnerability. Why I believe that she was hurt and blindsided and dumped is just in her language. She's someone who's created a brand around being. Yes, we hear the word authentic and it's so overused, it's almost trait now. But I like using the word real. These are real feelings. The word blindsided, that's I got dumped out of the blue. I may have found out I'm dumped because of this. Stories we don't know, but she follows. I love you guys so much. Thank you for all your kind words. Remember, you are so loved and everything's always going to be okay. Now do I think she wrote that? 100%. I think she wrote that. That seems like her. Now here's where things become a little messy, particularly for Zach Bryan. So once the breakup became public, that's when the drama, the real drama, kicked off because of the app Raya. Now, for anyone unfamiliar with the app, it's an exclusive invite only dating app that caters to celebrities, influencers. And that's where we find that Zach Brian had a profile on Raya.

He left, never saw me again, posted it on Instagram, made a Raya and like publicly humiliated me, then called me to say it's all my fault. Like, this isn't me being like I was. I dated a douchebag that like cheated on me at the bar. No, this is something so much deeper than that.

So that discovery really was the match that lit the whole PR firestorm for Zach Bryan. But this is also where the PR strategies diverge. So what makes this Breakup. Fascinating to me. Celebrities are just people where we can all follow the same stories. That's what I find interesting. This type of relationship happens all the time. It's a clash of two completely different approaches to fame. On the one side, you have Zach Bryan. He's representing old school celebrity privacy, doesn't want to talk about it other than a statement. On the other other hand, Brianna is embodying this new era of influencer transparency where their breakup isn't just a split between two people. It's a collision between two different worlds of celebrity culture. Because once again, Brianna now makes more headlines by dropping a bit of a bomb that Zach Bryan's team asked her to sign a non disclosure agreement after the breakup. Now, non disclosure agreement in NDA is often used by high profile individuals, especially celebrities, in order to protect their privacy and reputation. Typically, these agreements prevent the disclosure of confidential information such as personal details, photos, intimate moments shared during the relationship. Having control over your public narrative, particularly in a relationship, helps prevent exploitation of you during the time of that relationship. And it would also prevent your former girlfriend from doing a post dump interview with Dave Portnoy, co host on the podcast. The irony of Dave Portnoy dissing how Zach Bryan treated Brianna is quite humorous because Dave Portnoy has been awful to women, absolutely awful. So he should not even be in this conversation. But with the NDA, she wanted it to be known that she was not going to be bought off for silence. So on her podcast, she let it out.

They started low, then they went up to 10 million, then they went up to 12 million, then they wanted to give me a house, then they wanted to give me a New York apartment, then they wanted to do all these things.

Now, as of this recording, Zach Bryan has not publicly responded to her claims about the NDA. But for Brian, the NDA does raise questions. When it became public, some people might think, why offer such a large sum? Was he trying to keep something private? In the absence of comments, the public will fill in the gaps. The other option is to move on quickly in order to clear a path for future projects. For Zach Bryan, I think there's a little bit of both and definitely the latter because there are no signs that Brian is going to slow down in the country music scene. So a few weeks ago he released two new songs and he accompanied the releases with heartfelt Instagram posts, you know, to let people know he kind of went through a time and now he's back and he really is back. He received numerous nominations for the 2024 Billboard Music Awards. So this was a significant leap from his first time finalist status last year. So he leads the field with 18 nominations and 21 entries. Fair to say that a lot of this voting happened before the big breakup, but the timing for him is incredibly beneficial. Refusing the NDA positioned Brianna as someone who prioritizes honesty and authenticity over money. In Zach Brian's case, it was a tool silence that allowed him to clear the way for these new releases and to receive the glow from the award nominations. The NDA wasn't the end of Briana's story. She was very forthright in what it was like in that relationship. According to her podcast, she suffered emotional abuse during her relationship with Zach Bryan. Her words reveal the root of almost every public relations crisis, celebrity or institution. This is the reason why.

I mean, I went through literal, narcissistic emotional abuse for a year and he made me believe everything was my fault. He isolated me for my whole entire life. He wouldn't let me be who I wanted to be. He made me hate everything that I loved about myself. He broke me down and then made me feel like he was all I had left. And he just kept repeatedly beating me down and beating me down, even to the point of like yesterday or like when I gave you guys the call when I'm. I'm finally standing up for myself and being like, no, you.

When you dig beneath the surface, her narrative gains emotional depth due to the heavy allegations. But also the public disclosure of these allegations comes from the reason why the PR crisis began in the first place. And that was pain. By sharing her side, by sharing her pain, Briana wasn't just trying to shift public perception. She was attempting to reclaim her story. It was her pain on her massive platform that became both her sword and her shield. Her audience transformed into a digital support system, turning her private pain into public vindication. And then, well, then the Internet does what the Internet does best. The drama evolved beyond their personal story and it morphed into memes and viral moments and endless TikTok takes. Believe me, I know because so many people ask me about it. And barstool sports all of a sudden isn't just covering this breakup, press is. There's all these press stories about it as well, and one could say, feeding off of it. So transforming personal heartbreak into consumable content for millions. Not just for digital outlets, digital news outlets, not just for podcasters, but also for Brianna Zach's choice to remain silent. It worked a lot better, honestly, in a pre social media era. But now in 2024, heading into 25, every moment can be turned into a podcast episode or an Instagram story. Because silence creates a vaccine vacuum. Silence creates a platform for people to weigh in. It's the weigh in that creates the algorithm. Now, in the attention economy of social media, the one who speaks often speaks loudest. And while Zach might have thought he was taking the high road with the silence, he was actually ceding control of the narrative to Brianna and everyone else. However, here's where it gets interesting. Could the strategy have actually worked for Zach Bryan? Was it the right move? The outcome that we see now is something that I call strategic silence. It's a PR tactic that plays in crisis management. If you go back to a year last September, I covered extensively a breakup that happened mostly online. One side celebrity, they chose to go the digital tabloid scorched earth route. They dropped as many negative stories as they could drop about their soon to be ex partner. The other partner said nothing. Do you remember who it was? Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner. I saw this as a seismic shift. I wrote about it in Forbes. I did an interview with the New York Times. I think I did two interviews with the New York Times, also NBC. I mean, I was just. It was incredible that so many people were interested in this idea that Sophie Turner was doing something to offset what Joe Jonas's team was trying to do. They were using the old playbook where you smear someone via a digital tabloid. It's the old smear campaign, but it wasn't working. Sophie Turner came out on top. It's Zach's strategic silence versus Briana's raw authenticity. And in this new media landscape, both approaches can come with their own risks and rewards. You can win and you can lose. So what can we learn from this high stakes game of social media? A chess. So here are three takeaways that emerge from this. Zach Bryan, Brianna LaPaglia Chicken Fry PR battle. Number one, strategic silence is evolving as implemented by Sophie Turner has worked for traditional celebrities. It's a different game for influencers. Influencers can find rewards from speaking out. Zach Bryan, who is more of the ilk of the celebrity, went the silent route. And that created a power vacuum that Briana with her built in audience certainly took off and ran with. She has content creation expertise. She could easily fill that vacuum. So in 2024, silence isn't just golden, it's territory up for grabs. Number two, the rules are different for influencers versus traditional celebrities. When your brand is built on authenticity and oversharing like Brianna's, you can't suddenly go silent without raising eyebrows. You know your audience expects real time reactions, emotional vul, unfiltered truth. Traditional PR strategies simply don't work in the influencer economy, where authenticity, even messy authenticity, is currency. And finally, number three, the most powerful PR strategy in 2024 isn't about controlling the narrative. I believe it's about owning your truth before someone else does. Brianna understood this instinctively. While Zach tried to maintain dignity through his distance, she recognized that in today's digital landscape, your story will be told with or without you. The only choice is whether you'll be the one telling it. But in the end, this isn't just about a country star and an influencer's breakup. It's about how the rules of engagement and celebrity PR being rewritten in real time. One story, one post, one podcast at a time. And that's a wrap for this week's episode of the PR Breakdown. I want to hear your thoughts on this PR showdown. Which strategy resonates with you? The strategic silence or the authentic over Share and no, you cannot reach me on Raya, though that would be something, wouldn't it? Here's how you can join the conversation Head on over to prbreakdown.com hit the voicemail button. I listen to every message and it might even feature your take in a future episode. You'll find the link everywhere. It's in my social media bio show notes. Or you can just type prbreakdown.com in your browser. Until next time, keep your eyes on those headlines, your finger on the pulse. And remember, in pr, it's not just what you say, it's how and when you say it.