249: Point of No Return: Three Telling Signs of an Unrecoverable Public Relations Crisis

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In the tumultuous realm of public relations, skilled observers can often find themselves uncovering subtle clues that can unravel the intricate storylines of a PR crisis.

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Alright, maybe I'm the only skilled observer, and maybe I'm the only one who's calling myself skilled at this.

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Correction.

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I just love it.

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Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast, where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation.

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In this episode, the point of no return also called passing the Rubicon three telling signs of an unrecoverable public relations crisis.

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Now, i mentioned earlier that skilled observers can often find themselves looking for the clues that unravel these PR crises that we see in the news.

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You don't even need to be a skilled observer, and skill can be a very loose definition of it.

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It could be like me, someone who's trained in it I've worked in it in decades or it could be someone who just spends a lot of time on tic-tac or now the new app threads.

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That's a podcast for a different time, but I should have been sleeping on my plane ride home last night from vacation and instead I was downloading the threads and I spent all my time on the app.

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But right now I want to talk about something else that I find fascinating, and that is watching a trajectory of a PR crisis.

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I love storylines, i love through lines, i love things that appear to be coincidences, but they're really clues to telling us something else.

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Now, a PR crisis can be an absolute nightmare for organizations and individuals, but when that individual is a celebrity or someone in the public eye, it gives us all the opportunity to follow along and learn what we can about the trajectory of a reputation.

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Now, in these PR crisis, it can potentially tarnish a reputation, their credibility, and, in many cases, can lead to long-term reputational damage.

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Now, some PR crises can be effectively managed and resolved.

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I mean, those are people who work with me.

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Naturally, i'm in PR.

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Why wouldn't I say that unless they don't listen, and then things can go sideways.

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But in some cases, people or brands, celebrities, people in the public eye can reach a point where recovery seems insurmountable.

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Now, in these dire situations, there are often unmistakable signs that indicate this individual or an organization is just headed for disaster.

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So in this episode, let's just delve into three signs only three, even though there are many, many more and explore why they often signify in a reputable PR crisis.

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Okay, the first one is oh, and this one is key.

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This one is key.

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If you listened to the two previous podcast episodes if you're listening in order then you've already listened to them.

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It was episode 248, and then I had a bonus episode in there as well.

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It was all about Colleen Ballinger And I was discussing her PR crisis.

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I did a YouTube live about it as well, even if you don't know who Colleen Ballinger is, and she was a YouTube star that hit mainstream.

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But now she is having the most bizarre public relations crisis And I'm fascinated by it because it just follows these certain red flags and clues that you happen to see, and one of the biggest that you will see in almost every PR crisis that the person is not going to recover from.

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And again, let's just talk about the celebrity realm right here, but the same can apply to people who aren't necessarily in the public eye, but they may be in a new story or organizations.

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Number one is escalating public outrage.

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The moment I knew that Colleen Ballinger was not going to, as I mentioned in a previous TikTok, clear the fences of a PR crisis is when she released the 10-minute plus ukulele video titled High, the toxic train video.

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Everybody, almost everybody universally thought it was a horrible, horrible idea.

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So I put this as number one because it's really the first clear sign of an unmanageable peer crisis, because a peer crisis and a reputation surviving it hinges on public opinion.

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And if the public's opinion of you is overwhelmingly on one side and that side says this ain't cutting it, you're not going to get through it.

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It is as simple as that.

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If TikTok is against you, the crisis is against you, and that outrage is usually this rapid escalation of public outrage.

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You'll see it all over on social media and then plop, it will be on a newscast.

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It could be on a local newscast, it could be on a nightly newscast from a national perspective.

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So in this interconnected world that we're in, you know, news spreads like wildfire on social media, gets picked up by the press.

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They put it on their digital channels as well.

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But I have been saying this for a while and I say this more than ever, specifically since April Public sentiment is the thing that swiftly turns people against an individual organization.

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in a crisis, it's that intensity and the volume of the negative feedback that can increase And it just leads to this widespread loss of trust and credibility.

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That's where Colleen Ballinger is right now.

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Nothing is protecting her.

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So when a person is genuinely in a crisis and they won't make it, the public outrage becomes so pervasive And it transcends like a niche audience or a targeted audience.

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It's like similar to Me Too.

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It's when Me Too happened and someone was accused If there was a hashtag Me Too attached to someone's name, it was really really, really difficult for them to overcome it.

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So when social media platforms, they get hit with the critical posts, the comments, the hashtag that attracts significant media attention And then that outrage spills over into mainstream news and it just amplifies the negative perception to a broader audience.

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So, number one escalating public outrage.

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Number two mass exodus of the stakeholders.

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This is another easy way of saying the fans are leaving and they're leaving in droves.

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One of the articles that I had cited in a tech talk that I just posted as I'm recording this was about an attorney I was using a variety as a source.

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It was from an article published on April 20th 2022, is written by Peter Carranacus And I could be mingling his name.

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He is a features editor for Variety And last year he wrote a profile on attorney Andrew Brutler and he was talking about defending controversial clients.

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These clients include Chris Knoth, armie Hammer, prince Andrew, bryan Singer, danny Masterson, and the through line between all those clients is they all were accused of some form of sexual impropriety.

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To put it lightly, they all were brushing up against the law in their fights for the court of public opinion and the court of legality.

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And what I found interesting about him is, as you go through this article and you read the names and you read his job, there's a through line in here discussing how difficult it is to manage clients like this, sometimes because the court of public opinion is so strongly and firmly against them And some of the things that he had mentioned in this article that I found interesting that he felt that people get judged by a Twitter mob And I love the word mob.

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Whenever I hear the word or read the word mob in any type of response, i know they're deflecting and they're using the internet and social media as a distraction, or in this case I think it's like a red herring.

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Their job like in the case of this Breitler his job is to be a legal fixer, not a PR fixer.

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So his job is to get them off legally with any criminal charges that are there.

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But what they do in articles like this is they put a lot of energy and a lot of emphasis on the court of public opinion And the public perception is usually based on rumor mill and gossip.

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And it's strategic.

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They're doing that for a very, very strategic reason.

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And that leads us to the second sign this mass exodus of stakeholders.

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And these stakeholders could be fans, they could be customers, you know, they could be anyone.

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They could be voters.

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But when there's a mass exodus of voters, meaning it's like a spiral, it's a downward digital spiral that's happening.

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So when the PR crisis has reached this irreparable stage is when the people start abandoning chip.

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You know those are people that are the key players that could once be like the backbone of support, but they start to sever the ties, they start distancing themselves from the organization or the individual.

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So you know again, stakeholders can be customers, employees, investors, partners.

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They could be other influential people in the industry or whatever industry that the person or the organization is dealing with, because once a customer stakeholder loses faith in a product or a person, it just leads to that rapid decline And the decline could be in sales or it just could be in trust.

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Eventually it leads to some type of meltdown.

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So it could be the end of a campaign, it could be financial meltdown, it could be the meltdown of a reputation, but ultimately, when the mass exodus of these stakeholders happens, it just reinforces the notion that the PR crisis has reached an unmanageable state.

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The third sign of an unrecoverable public relations crisis is the erosion of the legal defenses.

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Now, i just cited earlier this Andrew Butler.

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He is an attorney that was brought in to help these public figures manage a very, very sticky situation for them that included legal ramifications.

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But when there is an erosion of the legal defenses, it becomes this decisive factor that indicates that the individual or the organization is beyond the redemption piece.

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So as the crisis deepens, the legal battles mount And in some cases it could be lawsuits that are mounting.

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So at this stage it just becomes increasingly clear that the situation is spiraling out of control and that legal maneuvering alone cannot salvage the reputation, it cannot mitigate the damage.

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So the legal defenses in the beginning they're usually robust, they're formidable, like in the case of Colleen Ballinger, like right now her legal representative, this attorney Brettler.

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He came out with official statement, the first official statement from Colleen Ballinger that wasn't a song or involved at Yooka-Laylee And they had focused on an incident where she was being accused of wearing blackface in a video.

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It was leaked video And the truth of the matter is she was performing, you know, as Miranda sings.

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I believe it was Miranda sings that she was performing, that someone captured this video.

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She did have face pain on her face and it was a dark color, but what the attorney came out to say is that it was green face pain because she was doing a bit off of Wicked, where Alphaba the witch has, you know, green makeup, but she just had splashes on there And one could absolutely buy that because when you watch the video you could see, oh, she is doing a take on Wicked.

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However and that's what the statement indicated, however, she quickly segues and does a quick kind of change costume change, a quick one to start singing a Beyonce song.

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All the single ladies And two other dancers come behind her and she has face paint on her face.

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Okay, it's still green, but it's dark and still face paint.

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It's like an incredibly poor choice to segue into that.

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You could sing any song you wanted to sing.

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Why would you sing that song when you had face paint on you?

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Take off the face paint or better yet, don't do a song.

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That could lead people And reasonable people not people who are out to make a point, not woke people, but any reasonable person would say, hmm, this is a bad transition, this is a bad transition.

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So where we are right now in the case of Ballinger is now the legal problems are gonna start with her because she had PR problems.

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Now she's got legal problems, so we need to watch next.

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So by the time this recording comes out, we'll see.

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I mean, maybe she'll be in a place right now where the legal issues are starting to come out.

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So once you have a legal defense which is strong, like in the case of having attorney come out and speaking on your behalf, when the mounting evidence starts to happen, then the public's gonna perceive that these legal battles are going to create more problems for them down the road.

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Now in some cases, a public person could mount their own PR cases.

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They're going to countersue to prove that they are right, but in this case it can appear to be evading accountability.

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It could just exacerbate negative perceptions.

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That's happening there.

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You could look at it from the political realm, like what's happening with former President Trump and that indictment there, how he is screaming that there's other things that were happening legal things against him.

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So the inability to defend against any legal challenge is going to be a significant sign that the individual is on the verge of reputation collapse.

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All right, so again, the point of no return.

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The three telling signs One, it's the escalating public outrage.

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Two, it's the mass exodus of stakeholders.

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And again, stakeholders can be fans, customers, ticket buyers, employees, investors, partners, influential figures within your industry could be viewers.

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And number three, the erosion of legal defenses.

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You could be.

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It's when the person is using legal defenses to try and clear their name or the legal defense that they have is starting to erode.

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There's just nothing left for them to stand on.

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Now, identifying signs like this can serve as a valuable, valuable tool or lesson for people to learn from, because when these rapidly escalating public outrage moments happen, when the people start to leave you, when things can become legal or there's legal threats there, those are clear indicators that the crisis has reached an irreversible stage.

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So it's crucial to understand.

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If you are someone who works in a business or someone who has a brand as their own name, you want to be able to recognize these signs and you wanna take proactive measures to address the PR issues before they escalate into an uncontrollable event for you.

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So, while every PR crisis is definitely unique, the early intervention is important.

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Open communication is important and a willingness to take responsibility to tell people how you're gonna prevent a situation like that happening in the future.

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If that sounds familiar, that is a formula that I use.

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That is the indestructible PR framework Own it, explain it, promise it.

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Now, in every episode I include one indestructible PR tip.

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It's an easily behind back pocket tip that will help you protect your reputation.

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Some might even call it indestructible.

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It's important to understand the difference between a legal fixer and a PR fixer.

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In crisis management, there's a common misconception that a legal fixer can effortlessly swing back and forth and double as a PR fixer.

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Oftentimes in the news you'll hear about people getting in a mess, like Jonathan Major, for instance.

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He was in Creed III.

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I did a podcast episode on him.

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I'll put a link in the show notes.

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He was someone who was accused by a girlfriend now a former girlfriend of abuse.

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His attorney female attorney came out and essentially said it's impossible but also blame the victim.

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I did an entire podcast episode on that because I knew that was an attorney and the attorney was trying to protect him legally and trying to protect his reputational interests.

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However, she is not a PR fixer.

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She was also the attorney behind Jen Shaw, who was the housewife of Salt Lake, who also happens to be in jail right now, serving alongside Elizabeth Holmes.

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How's that?

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for connection Legal fixers?

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they're there for navigating laws and regulations.

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So when there's legal troubles, when they arise, they're going to swoop in to protect their client's interests In the courtroom.

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Their primary goal is to minimize the legal consequences.

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A PR fixer, on the other hand, we're the superheroes of reputation management.

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So when the crisis hits, we step in and tackle the problem of a public misperception.

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We write narratives, we foster positive relationships with stakeholders.

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We do everything we can to mitigate reputational damage.

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Pr fixers we know the power of communication, strategic messaging.

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We understand empathy when it comes to rebuilding trust, because we want to reshape public opinion around that person.

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So our goal is to preserve the reputation and credibility of an individual or a reputation.

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So remember, if you find yourself in a crisis, it's important to assemble a team of people that can understand both legal and PR fixes recognize that the roles are different.

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They're distinct, but they are complementary And together you can work that PR crisis.

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No, not for nothing.

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If you need help in a PR crisis, if you find yourself in a bit of a PR snafu, come on over to my website mollymcphersoncom and just click how you can work with me And you can schedule time to meet with me and we can walk through your crisis together as your fixer.

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But I'm really not a fixer.

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I don't fix bad things.

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But if you come clean, if you're going to own it and you need help working through it, i'm your fixer.

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That's all for this week on the podcast.

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Bye for now.

249: Point of No Return: Three Telling Signs of an Unrecoverable Public Relations Crisis

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