Valley PR Blog

Sean Avery: latest ‘publicist’ victim

By Dan Wool on January 12th, 2009 In Hype!

With all the talk about Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones’s interview with CBS Sports this weekend, there was a different sports celeb who got my attention.

This week’s Sports Illustrated has an article on hockey player Sean Avery . After a career spent agitating players on and off the ice, the National Hockey League suspended him earlier this season and his team, the Dallas Stars, essentially made it permanent.

Why do I share? Aside from my being a life-long Los Angeles Kings fan (where Avery once played), there are two telling lines in the story, which is a thoughtfully written, though reputation-damning piece. First:

Avery, who declined to be interviewed for this story, retains the services of a Hollywood public relations firm, the only active NHL player known to have a non-sports publicist.

And in the last paragraph of the story:

An email message to SI from…Avery’s publicist, late last month, read, in part, “We at this point are just trying to weather the storm as best as we can. The comeback story will be amazing, but we are a ways away with all the details still to be sorted out.”

With all the talk about Lois Whitman, maybe we should also be focused on “Hollywood publicists”.

Now, I’ll give Avery’s team the benefit of the doubt and say that his “publicists” may have had a reluctant client who doesn’t care what people think. Their hands could have been tied too with his rehab, etc. Their email could be quoted out of context. I get that. But, really, this was the start of his comeback — and they all missed the boat.

In a crisis — and Avery’s reputation is in major crisis — you respond and you respond right this second. You do it honestly and transparently and you do it as completely as possible — especially to the leading national sports magazine — i.e. a main audience for his once and future employers.

The response had an all-too-”publicist” feel. And herein lies the difference between publicists and public relations counsel:

Public relations consultants are strategists. They (we) are problem solvers. Crisis PR consultants are even better problem solvers. Sean Avery has a major problem. He is unofficially banned from hockey, for a career of — not violence — but poor behavior. Short of a major change on his part, his hockey career is over. That behavior/reputation change can start in the press. A good PR strategist would have a plan to get him back “in” with hockey management and report progress to the media. Step by step and selectively so one tactic builds on another, the damage is repaired. Client becomes lifelong blood brother.

Publicists get press. They are promoters. The job is highly tactical. Movie or music publicity is the best example. Get out there, drum up as much media noise as possible to get butts in theater seats or to get people to purchase a new record album so it tops the charts. (I did this early in my career). Nevermind if it’s good, just get the up-front sales, and momentum will follow one way or the other.

Whitman’s methods could be seen as one version of this, improperly applied to tech clients. Avery’s reps are another. They probably managed his celeb media requests when he was dating starlets. Now, it comes to the flipside of the client’s reputation — a crisis — and while the credits are rolling on his career, they want to wait and create the perfect Hollywood “comeback” story. Hockey is the man’s passion in life, as he becomes irreparably damaged goods, he will soon regret not repairing things sooner. Client becomes rich and bitter; firm is a distant memory.

Avery’s PR reps should have “dropped the gloves” with him, pulled the sweater over his head and fought until he collpsed onto the ice to make sure he did this story. If he was unable or unwilling, they should have got in between him and the media with some solid statements. “Weathering the storm” — that’s your statement?! Where’s the protection? “Sean respects the league….is doing X, Y, Z…etc.?”

Why? At worst, (ideally) Avery (or the rep) gets quoted several times and helps to mitigate the story about him. At best, SI could have side-barred something positive – he’s sorry, he’s made ameds with players, he’s still skating every day in hopes of returning, he reveals a few details of his psych counselling, etc. If he’s acknowledging or remorseful, he starts down the road to career salvation. Until he corrects his reputation, he’s tainted, more so because of this feature. (Even Pacman Jones for as lame as he sounded — about much worst offenses — got this; he even had had his lawyer on air with him to save his butt during the James Brown interview).

We say it all the time: when you “no comment,” silence = death. Duck and cover might be good for small, one-time negative events — but always after you participate and get your side of the story out. For your reputation, you must stay engaged. Without his — and his publicists’ — participation, Sean Avery just told the NHL and hockey fans everywhere that he’d rather take the multi-million buyout than play hockey.

But then, maybe Avery got the help he deserved.

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