CEOs: Let your PR person get you out of the latest jam
OPINION - My View
From the October 1, 2004 print edition


Over the past few months, Taser has come under a lot of heat for deaths supposedly caused by its weaponry. Their spokesperson, someone I know from the 28 years I have been in public relations, has spoken to the media on a number of issues, and I know him to be a well-measured, seasoned executive.

The question remains on how often a PR executive really has the opportunity to set the record straight, or how often CEOs and lawyers are calling the "covering your bases" public-comment shots.

As a crisis executive, I have been fortunate enough to work for, be inspired by and personally guide CEOs and corporations down the road of honesty and forthrightness, even when they didn't want it.

The natural reaction of a company chief is to avoid the unpleasant, and their missteps often take a two-day-in-your face negative press hit and turn it into a month-long investigation that is sure to cripple the company and send shareholders running for cover -- or the courts.

For more than a decade, I served as senior vice president, communications for New York-based MTV Networks. If there ever was a global entertainment company that consistently has been in the cross hairs of special interest groups or politicians, this was the one.

The practice of public relations is neither spin nor dodging the bullet. It is not a job to be relegated to young publicists in training nor marketing and advertising executives because one practices hype and glitz, and the other intends to disseminate information and tell the truth.

Press is much different from PR. Press gets headlines, PR creates brands, images and industry leadership positions. Anyone can tell you, a brand is the most valuable thing a company has.

Coverage of a restaurant opening is not PR. It's publicity. Coverage of a restaurant chain's expansion, its long-term goal to capture a category and yes, a random food-poisoning incident or fire, is pure PR. The latter affects a standing in a community, continued faith in the products and the company's ability to recover from a scandal or setback.

In 1995, while an executive at Prodigy Inc., we dealt with everything ranging from Internet child pornography to mergers and acquisitions to competition from a new online entrant called Microsoft. PR was guided by professionals with an understanding and relationship with the media who needed real answers and demanded them.

These truth-seekers were not the enemy, and while some companies loathed them when they came poking around, they loved them when they needed to get a positive story out.

In life, you take the good with the bad, and the quicker CEOs let their public relations professionals use their contacts and acumen and steer a company through a crisis, the quicker those same PR aces will guide the company through calm waters.

Taser is not too different from many others here in Arizona that don't always understand or appreciate the job that needs to be done by their "official spokesperson."

The job is not to send out a release. The job is not an art, it is indeed a science. The same balance sheets used to take a company from infancy to maturity are used by their own communications experts.

There surely will be missteps by experienced crisis executives or ones who should not be in the business.

But it's time for CEOs to put the trust in those who are out there every day, taking the calls, dodging the bullets or confronting the difficult issues.

I can tell you: It ain't no picnic, because with a full plate out there, they are the ones who truly get out of the trenches and fight an often very public and very ugly war.

Barry Kluger