This is slightly a stretch if you aren’t me — but go with me on this one for a minute:

Kim Kardashian gets a lot of ragging for her sex tape, her airhead behaviour on screen etc.,

I personally think it’s terrible publicity and I think she’s a terrible role model. On that note, she might just “want to be famous” and milked her scandals to get her there. In her case, besides for her sex tape, which even I don’t think she was “sorry for” (if you saw her Tyra Banks interview and the segment on Keeping Up the Kardashians where she went to the Tyra Banks show), but the point is — all of PR, even the bad stuff, to her, might have been abso-frickin-lutely great stuff.

It’s subjective.

Chris Brown, like perhaps, Michael Jackson are extreme cases that really go against a social norm. In the case of Kim, well, Paris Hilton did it first…and well, some people LOVE her.

It’s a great post Rachel, excellent topic. I wish more people thought about it like you. But alas, it’s not a perfect world.

Best wishes,
Sasha

Of course, just like positive publicity, it doesn’t matter if you can’t leverage the buzz afterwords.

So perhaps, it’s not the type of publicity that actually matters, but what you do with the buzz that follows. In this space we hear it all the time. Turn a customer with a problem into an evangelist by showing you truly care about their needs. Well if you do something bad, that gets a lot of publicity, how you deal with it afterward can actually build more support than you had in the first place.

@DavidSpinks

I certainly didn’t suggest that they ignore it – crisis communication is a very different post that I’ve tackled before and will probably again. My intent wasn’t to give personalized advice to Chris Brown or Sigg on how to deal with bad publicity.

My point with the post is that I’ve heard a lot of people suggesting that even the most detrimental coverage is a benefit because it gets people talking. I disagree with that. It’s important that clients, companies and anyone enlisting PR counsel understand that simply seeing a name in a headline doesn’t equal “job well done.”

Thanks for commenting!

I love your example of the Tylenol case, one of the best examples in our history of crisis communication. I agree, they did a good job and it goes to show the importance of a strong crisis team and strategy. I’d say though that despite the uproar it was negatively publicity they would have loved to have done without. Definitely an example of not all publicity being good even if it does get people talking.

Rachel

There will probably always be wife-beating, prostitute-seeking celebrities. Corporate polluters will be around forever. Anyone can get hit out of the blue with a bolt of stupid. It seems to me the more effective defense is to admit error without excuses, then move on. There may well be losses but an honest apology is about the only thing to mitigate those losses.

Attention span is something else: how long to live down a bad reputation, how long will people hold a grudge? Example: Today ExxonMobil is making big profits. Yes the price of oil is a big reason, but it also suggests that plenty of people are still pulling into Exxon stations. FWIW.