reputation management

During his short and meteoric media career, Milo Yiannopoulos has lived by provoking. He built his brand punking and trolling people on Twitter, then added to it by writing controversial articles and giving incendiary speeches specifically targeted to enrage various groups. When enough people were talking about him – rather than his positions – big media companies saw a potential gold mine. Milo began making the rounds on cable news shows, and he was picked up as a reporter and, later, as an editor for Breitbart. As his star continued to grow, controversy stalked him like an angry shadow. Yiannopoulos... Read More >

Howard Stern, the once and possibly future King of All Media is in trouble again. This time, Stern is being sued in federal court over a taped and rebroadcast phone conversation. The story is a weird one if you believe the official report. According to the lawsuit, the woman called the IRS and was connected to an agent, who had been scheduled to appear on Stern’s radio program. “Somehow” Stern’s producers were able to listen in – and tape – the conversation between the woman, Judith Barrigas, and the IRS agent. Stern subsequently played excerpts of the 45-minute conversation between... Read More >

The allegations rocked the very foundations of one of the world’s largest religions. Catholic clergy were being accused of vile crimes against the children they had been called and commissioned to serve. Not in isolated incidents, but in numbers that filled headlines in nearly every paper in the free world. The embarrassment for the church was total. There were apologies and payouts and all manner of crisis PR management. Then came the even harder work of helping the victims. For many years, the man at the head of that effort was David Clohessy. Clohessy became the face of the national... Read More >

Allegations of sexual misconduct can sink a political career or at least raise serious doubts and leave a wide-open lane for a challenger in the next election cycle. But when you openly admit to sexual misconduct that creates a whole different sort of political PR scenario. Such is the case of South Dakota House member Mathew Wollmann, a 26-year-old former Marine, who admitted having sexual conduct with interns in both 2015 and 2016. This bombshell acknowledgment sent shockwaves across this relatively sleepy South Dakota town. Pierre, despite being the capital city, is home to only about 14,000 people, and many... Read More >

Just by scanning the headlines in recent days, you would think an entire gender was on the warpath against Donald Trump. Every news agency covered the so-called “Million Women March” which descended on Washington DC the day after the Inauguration to protest Trump and all he stands for. Media counts put the numbers at well below a million, but there’s no doubt that tens of thousands of women showed up, and many more publicly supported them on social media. Actress America Ferrera was on hand to deliver this quote: “We march today for the moral core of this nation, against... Read More >

If you are judging just by the standard news headlines, Samsung had a pretty rough 2016. From some of its phones exploding and, eventually being banned on U.S. airplanes, to washing machines that also exploded and launched lids across the room like giant Frisbees, the company faced a pretty steep uphill PR battle. Top execs were forced to recall and replace certain handsets and washing machines, and with each announcement came another negative headline. But there’s a fairly bright silver lining for a company you might think was in a serious downturn. Even after all the mistakes, miscues, and negative press,... Read More >

Let’s face it, there are likely to be several corporations every year that run afoul of the public in one way or another. Some of the problems are mainly about poor timing and bad choices trying to move toward recovery afterward and some of them are choices made by the company that progressed until someone exposed the ugly lies and actions underneath. It’s not like there were only three big ones happening in 2016, but let’s look at just three to see what went wrong and how it could have been differently… and we hope, better. Wells Fargo and Playing... Read More >

Ever since they got caught trying to scam U.S. emissions inspectors with their diesel vehicles, Volkswagen has been fighting two parallel battles. One group was working to repair the massive public relations damage done to the brand. The other was working feverishly to come up with a cost-effective “fix” for the mechanical issue that triggered the investigation in the first place. Now, finally, VW might have an answer that the EPA will approve. According to various media reports, last week both the EPA and the California Air Resources Board okayed the fix that will help put up to 67,000 VWs... Read More >

[caption id="attachment_86244" align="aligncenter" width="880"] Ronn Torossian on Mariah Carey's New Years Eve performance.[/caption] This advice is not new: When it comes to a PR crisis, own up to the mistake quickly. Don’t deflect blame, don’t try to sweep it under the rug; admit the problem, do what you can to fix it and let people know what you’re doing along those lines, and move past it as fast as you can. What did Mariah Carey do after the debacle that was her performance on New Year’s Eve at Time Square? None of the above. Instead, she’s blamed others, gone so... Read More >

When it was reported that Wells Fargo had created untold numbers of fake bank and credit accounts in order to meet quotas, the public was furious. Thousands of employees, including some management, were fired … but it gets worse. Now, according to CNN, it may not have just been bank accounts. Reports are coming out that Prudential insurance products were sold to Wells Fargo customers without their consent or even knowledge of the transactions. The allegations came to light after a trio of former Prudential employees sued the company about the fake sales. And, apparently, the insurance products didn’t even... Read More >