In a 1997 film called “Wag the Dog” with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, an American president is about to be engulfed in a huge scandal. The solution by the political consultants is to invent a war and demonstrate that the President is in command, acting to control the foreign madman. The film is comic at its core but prescient and tragic in its message: PR is metastasized into propaganda to delude a gullible public.
So imagine my horror in waking up to a huge feature piece in the Financial Times on September 28 titled “Spies, Lies and the Oligarch: Inside London’s Booming Secrets Industry.” The Saturday morning article covered the battle between the Kazakh government and fugitive billionaire Mukhtar Ablyazov, whose bank had been nationalized. Better than a John le Carré novel, the story includes a lengthy section on London PR firms working for the Kazakhs, including Tim Allan of Portland Communications, FTI Consulting and sole practitioner Patrick Robertson.
In a section of the article titled “black PR,” the FT catalogues a series of unacceptable behaviors, which are the basis of my call for a PR Compact. Among the unprofessional tactics are unauthorized alteration of a Wikipedia page to hurt a competitor; search engine optimization to use negative words such as “fraudster”; payments to an NGO to generate an “ostensibly independent report”; use of a documentary to conduct “espionage on the billionaire…to undermine his confidence…using media manipulation globally”; plus calls to human rights lawyers designed to intimidate. All of this is done in the name of “putting out the negatives of your opponents without any fingerprints.”
The stakes for global corporations could not be higher as public trust is at a breaking point. This year’s Edelman Trust Barometer revealed an implosion of trust in all four institutions while faith in democracy and capitalism rapidly erodes. In his morning newsletter yesterday, Axios’s Mike Allen talked about the New CEO Scare…Culture Wars: “In these high-stakes collisions, CEOs are getting pulled into immigration, climate change, diversity, inclusiveness…Big companies are run by straight, white men who are unaccustomed to navigating a fast-changing America…And most communications departments were built for 1990s media with 1990s speed.”
Many, including politicians like President Trump, use this new landscape to communicate directly to the end-user or target, negating the media’s ability to serve as gatekeepers of facts and truth. For the past few weeks the president, via Twitter and a campaign rally for a Senate candidate, has been calling out the NFL for what he sees as a lack of leadership for not forcing its players to stand during the National Anthem. The league nor its commissioner, Roger Goodell, never engaged the President in a war of tweets, and rightfully so. Instead they did the right thing. The commissioner issued a statement criticizing the President’s initial remarks; Goodell and the league spoke to core constituents and players expressing support for freedom of speech; and many NFL owners followed suit, either issuing statements condemning the president’s remarks or taking the field with their players and locking arms in a show of solidarity. Engaging politicians in a contentious back-and-forth debate is a trap. Companies should take the long view and not fall prey to an immediate response, except in the case of a crisis when they need to communicate with employees and customers.
Later in Allen’s piece, Axios CEO Jim VandeHei offers his point of view: “Think of your brand as a political candidate…be vigilant for signs of erosion in your base, respond forcefully to negative attacks, utilize technology to connect with your people in authentic and compelling ways.”
“Black PR,” as the FT described it, or political campaign-type tactics have no place in the business world and should not be the prism through which corporate reputation or brand image is managed. A more useful construct is to change corporate strategy consistent with serving society, and making a long-term commitment to transparency and education of employees and stakeholders.
Richard Edelman is president and CEO.