Are we the new ambulance chasers?
Great. If people outside of the communications world weren’t already confused by what PR is, the international news of Octi-Mom (Nadya Suleman) is screwing with our image. It seems I have to explain the difference between PR, publicists and media relations at least once a week to people. But in the past few days, now that people have seen how a mom of 14 kids chooses a publicist over a nanny, I get a horrified look from strangers when they hear I am in PR. Has our industry become so confusing that we’ve replaced lawyers as the “ambulance chasers”?
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Comments
February 13th, 2009 at 9:09 am
In short, there are always going to be people under the publicist brand that choose to take this kind of work. Most of us will assess a situation like this and not work with the client, but being in a field that has no standard requirement or official guideline to be labeled as a “PR Professional” we have to expect this kind of stuff. I would hope, as real PR professionals, we are able to handle our own brand image management and crisis communications.
February 13th, 2009 at 9:16 am
I watched Nadya’s publicist on Dr. Phil the other night, and was ashamed for our profession. As Matthew says, there will always be PR people who take on this kind of work. I draw the line, however, right or wrong, at helping people who have willfully created their own crisis. I put Nadya, Madoff, and the peanut company all in the same category.
February 13th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Ugh. I agree; it’s sad that this is what the general public thinks PR is all about. Since those of us who are good at our jobs do it discreetly in the background, we’ll never get the notoriety the publicists perpetrating this bad rap get!
February 13th, 2009 at 10:58 am
I also saw the interview on Dr. Phil. The publicist’s biggest blunder, was that she broke rule #1 in crisis management – come clean with the public, admit the mistakes, and create solutions. Dr. Phil, much to his credit, tried numerous times to get her to admit that Nadya is not playing with a full deck, and only once this fact is owned up to, can the problems i.e. the taking care of her 14 children can be pro-actively handled.
Sadly, this will all come out with subsequent investigations and perhaps the dangerous situations these children will face. As far as we are concerned, publicity has to be based on honest and truthful communication, otherwise the media, the public, and businesses lose trust in us completely.
February 13th, 2009 at 11:50 am
I love this day we live in. I see this post, rush to YouTube (the Dr. Phil interview wasn’t there, but Larry King was) and see what I missed.
30 years ago, it was run to the library, use index cards and spend hours doing a half-”done” job because all the information you can get today was not in your library.
The problem with our field is licensing. PR experts have pushed for this since the mid-’50s. 10 years in media, then into PR.
It takes more effort to get a driver’s license than it does to get in to PR. Barry Kluger told an excellent story on this site about last week a waitress, this week a PR pro.
Yet, it is employers, and clients like Nadya Suleman, that ruin the field. While nearly 200 journalists laid off last year in Phoenix are currently un- or under- employed, waitresses and secretaries are still getting PR jobs.
On the other hand, almost anyone can get a TV show – Larry King, Dr. Phil, Jerry Springer, Michael Hanity on and on.
February 13th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
We can debate the effectiveness, but I hate to tell you Charlotte, the PR people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
First, I don’t think she was the one who hired the PR pros. (I hope not!) I presume it was Kaiser Permanente/the hospital, who hired the PR help. If that is the case, Kaiser got exactly what they needed.
Let’s put our moral judgments of the mother aside for a moment and look at what PR people are supposed to do in a crisis: get out in front and present and defend the client’s side of the story so the client can focus on operations (i.e. what they’re really supposed to be doing).
Ideally, you turn public opinion in the process.
You had a hospital that was under siege from the press while doctors and staff were trying to do the delicate work of helping 8, 1-pound babies grow. You had a mother of then 6 kids who’s post-partum and trying to recover (from childbirth/surgery) and ultimately get adjusted to raising 14 kids.
Getting someone to coordinate this madness for 30-90 days was exactly the right call.
The PR people are not the problem – the client/personality is the problem.
Back to moral judgments – she is a nut-job on welfare and food stamps who thinks she’s Angelina Jolie and was enabled/emboldened by other nut jobs (fertility doc, sperm donor, etc).
Remember: “great product is the best PR” also works in reverse. If she was more aligned with societal norms like the squeaky-clean septuplet families who came before her or say, a widow, she’d be celebrated and the 8 would be awash in diaper endorsements and a big bucks photo exclusive in People magazine.
Hate the playa not the game.
February 14th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Well, I think in this particular instance, we can hate the player. And the reason is her (the publicist’s)performance on a couple of different TV shows. She didn’t do her client any favors, and it made me wonder where she got her crisis PR training and how she is able to claim that niche for herself and her agency. I also suspect that her agency made itself known to Nadya, and that Kaiser had nothing to do with it. Maybe we’ll known in a few more weeks…
February 15th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
I read a comment from the PR agency this morning declaring that they were resigning the account because of death threats. (The account was pro bono. What astounded me was the statement (roughly) “We got her through the tough part.”
I’m thinking that Suleman’s reputation was tarnished from day one…and cascaded downhill in a free fall downhill every day after that…especially once the PR firm got into the act! I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone go down that fast and with that much rabid and intense dislike from the public. Even the recently deposed Illinois governor (who name I’ll spare you from my spelling) had a few ups with his downs.
If the PR agency was a therapy group or life coach, I’d understand the comment but it seemed like taking credit for the sinking of the Titanic.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
I WANT to believe the firm did pro bono work to help out a single mother being trashed in the media, but do I REALLY believe that? No.
Moral of the story?
Don’t do pro bono “PR” for whack jobs who think they look like Angelina Jolie (Brad Pitt won’t be marrying her!, but then again he DOES like kids…)
Brent Diggins
Mindspace PR
@bdiggs
February 16th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Rod Blagojevich also hired an agency to serve as his publicity advisor. They are the ones who encouraged and set up B’s disastrous media tour. Disastrous unless you count the book deal and radio talk show invites the former governor got.
Everybody is entitled to have advisors — there’s nothing in the rule book that says the advisors have to be smart, ethical and professional.
We are PR Practicioners, Not Ambulance Chasers « PR Campaigns - The blog Says:
February 16th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
[...] 3′s Company PR — lmdavis2 @ 7:58 pm Tags: JMC417, PR Charlotte Risch made an interesting post in last week’s Valley PR Blog, she claimed that PR practioners may be the [...]
February 17th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Obviously, I was wrong above about the hospital’s involvement.
The moral is don’t do pro bono work if you’re not going to stick around to stick up for the client or cause. That’s shameful. If they really believed in her, they would have stuck around. It’s clear they wanted to show they could do a good job so they everyone would know them and they could get the payoff of new clients down the line.
BTW, Charlotte’s right, that PR person *IS* an ambulance chaser.
GateTraffic» Quotes for the week ending 15 Feb 2009 Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
[...] VandeVrede, on ValleyPRBlog.com, commenting on a post about PR becoming tainted by [...]
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:17 am
I’m disturbed by this seemingly new trend of hiring a “publicist” for major news story subjects. It appears that some PR people have decided that taking on handling the image of a murder suspect, abduction (Natalie Halloway), Michael Jackson’s trial, Octomom, etc., is the latest way to drum up business and supposedly improve their exposure. I’m sorry, but I would NOT hire the publicist handling something like that. Whatever happened to guilt by association?