Proactive and Responsive Public Relations

Chan Desai is a publicist at Otter PR

Knowing what to communicate and how to best accomplish it in the world, whether as an individual or brand, can be confusing and surprising. This means opportunities can be lost, mistakes become more likely and errors can be magnified and become problematic, expensive and painful.

Yet problems can also be prevented, mitigated and resolved intelligently.

Chan Desai is a publicist at Otter PR, and in this Communication Intelligence Question-and-Answer feature, she provides professional insights into public relations, communication within disputes and conflicts, the media, problem solving, and “cancel culture.”

David Purdy, someone you know as a publicist at Otter PR, shared a quote with me from Vox, “The debate around cancel culture is partly about how we treat each other, and partly about frustration with the lack of real consequences for powerful people.” I consider that fairly accurate. Maybe incomplete yet accurate about what it does say. This is what gets lost I think when talking about “cancel culture,” a term a lot of people I know detest. So, I have a question for you:

How can public relations ethically help leaders or organizations and brands be perceived and judged in a manner that is helpful?

Public relations professionals must have the following fundamental values: advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty, and fairness.

Each of these values helps PR representatives guide their clients in the right direction because they place the element of ethics at the forefront. Your PR team serves as a second layer of advisors per se.

They enable clients to understand and consider alternative perspectives to their own.  One person can’t think of every potential option and situation that could arise.

Still, with a team backing you up at all times, room for error is minimal because PR professionals tend to consider all avenues and communicate those to the client before anything is executed. 

That strategy has to be an attractive one for mitigating risk, which has always been important but seemingly, these days, maybe more so than ever. You have said that, like journalism, a certain level of permanence accompanies public relations, as it’s highly influential.

What do you mean specifically?

You can shape, or reshape an entire narrative with the help of your PR team, so ethics must always be at the forefront of the work being done, which is a crucial element of the PR representative's role. 

The role of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing. So naturally, as a complementary role to that of journalists, the role of a publicist is to bring these stories to reporters in a compelling enough manner that they are picked and spread across the nation and the globe.

What can PR do that maybe is not well known or undervalued and would be helpful for people to know?

Public relations can help shape how a leader, brand, or organization is perceived and can help increase awareness, boost online credibility and promote public favorability from essential parties, such as stakeholders, investors, employees, and more. 

Your PR team will always work closely with you to ensure you are positioned in the right way, despite it being difficult to do so at times.

Dave broached the topic of discussing the phenomena of cancel culture and you have some firm counsel on how to first and best approach that type of developing scenario.

Accountability from the get-go prevents crises before they occur, which is the actual value of a PR representative. We have seen countless things happen in the media where people, especially celebrities, have received backlash over something, and the first question that comes to mind for me, is, “What was their PR team thinking?”

With that being said, your PR team can be helpful in shaping your public perception and narrative in the media through careful planning, strategy, and execution of campaigns.

The phrase I have been regularly hearing and reading about people or brands is "reputation laundering." We've also heard a slight variation of it, communicated as some form of "washing.” It’s used in a negative context when it comes to reputation.

How can people ethically and successfully use public relations to help them respond to where they won’t be accused of reputation laundering or some sort of deceptive washing of reputation?

Public relations is extremely effective in combating crises ethically. It enables people to humanize their brand and show a more compelling side of themselves, especially during a crisis.

Most businesses go through a PR crises, whether its continuous negative reviews, or a serious executive-level scandal. It’s important to note that while these issues are occurring, the effects of them will be more than noticeable.

To successfully and ethically combat a crisis, you need a team of publicists ready to act on your response team. Their primary role is to curate a response as quickly as possible, to prevent further scrutiny for a delay in response, and have some sort of solution.

Might you have a story from the news that might clearly illustrate this point?

A recent example is (entertainer) Lizzo and her team. Lizzo had a derogatory term in her new song, and was quick to release a carefully crafted statement to her Instagram followers, stating she acknowledges what the problem was, and her solution was a brand new release, with the lyrics changed.

She could’ve been cancelled over this, but her quick response and accountability prevented a crisis before it got to its extremities. 

It is recommended that a response team is in place before anything is even released. Once (a) strategy is in place, it must be communicated to the entire team and executed efficiently.

Public relations experts can help craft a message, like Lizzo’s, and ensure it reaches the right people, typically those that would be affected by the given issue. Once everything is released back to the media and the correct audience, it is important to have your PR team monitor what is being said and how it’s being received.

You have said it’s not necessary to obsess over problematic situations that happened, and most individuals and organizations don’t, yet it is important to pause and look at what happened and think about it.

There is no point in dwelling on the situation, but it’s important to learn from it and continue to make actionable choices that stand by your statement. If you mess up, and do it again, it just reduces the trust factor because you had your second chance essentially. 

How important or necessary is media training for organizational leaders and spokespeople when it comes to understanding the lay of the land in which they operate and need to communicate, whether they want to or not? And what is expected they understand and communicate?

Media training is vital as it helps people better understand the media landscape and, more importantly, how the media operates and what makes headlines.

At the end of the day, the media can make or break you, so media training is an excellent opportunity to prevent negative backlash or a PR fiasco.

Despite the common misconception, not all press is good press, and it’s crucial to remain in a positive light in the media.

Media training is beneficial in shaping people into compelling storytellers that still get their point across efficiently. A media training session is a great time to help clients feel comfortable in discomfort through preparation.

Any good PR professional knows how important preparing their client is because it can help them shape the narrative and tell their story the right way, with minimal room for miscommunication and misinterpretation.

People can and do get caught off guard in media requests and interviews and it unnerves them. It can knock them off balance. How can you help people lessen such a reaction?

Some reporters will try to dig up information for angles that are non-existent, and that’s just their job. The role of the publicist during media training is to teach clients how to decline and move past subjects politely they don’t feel comfortable speaking to.

Ensuring that the client feels confident to handle unexpected situations helps boost their credibility and amplifies their trust to the public.

There needs to be a sense of confidence, and there is power in declining to comment on something and being honest when you are unsure. It’s better to say, “I can’t speak on this, but I can speak about this” in reference to another topic that veers away from the initial question.

All very interesting. How would you summarize the ‘good’ to consider?

There are so many beneficial components of media training, such as understanding different interview styles, delivering clear and confident speech, controlling the interview, shaping the narrative, sharing expertise, speaking in a way which engages listeners and avoiding being misquoted. 

Back to the term “cancel culture,” for a moment if I may. There is a large group of society that doesn’t see the behavior as canceling at all and feel that accountability is a critically necessary thing. Most all of us were raised to distinguish between right and wrong and we don’t like wrongdoers escaping uncorrected and undisciplined, i.e. punished. Many others however see this social mobbing has having gone way too far, past good intentions to behavior that is intended to create immoral harm.

How can and should public relations navigate it in a way that is helpful yet not enabling and earns respect, not derision as a practice?

I completely understand why people feel upset when they hear the term “cancel culture,” because I myself feel that cancel culture can be quite unforgiving.

We often talk about second chances and the opportunity to grow and do better, but cancel culture eradicates that human element. We all make mistakes and it’s important to give people the chance to better themselves, and “cancel culture” can sometimes do the opposite, especially to authority or public figures.

If someone is repeatedly making the same mistakes, that’s a different story, but in terms of a one-time mistake that is reversible, public relations can help prevent social mobbing and act as a platform for the person or organization in the hot seat, to communicate their side of the story.

It all boils down to accountability at the end of the day. People want to see real change, and if they don’t, there will be an issue. Gen Z in particular are known to call people and businesses out for any level of “washing” and reputation laundering.

This combined with the social media boom we are currently in makes the media an extremely volatile place where ideas and concepts can be misconstrued for the worse.

Whether we like it or not, it seems wise to gain a deeper understanding. In your professional opinion, how can we become smarter to the reality?

I think at the end of the day, everyone just wants to see do-gooders thrive and bad people be held accountable, but we see situations daily, where there are no consequences, and that’s the main problem here.

Public relations professionals can help navigate issues and reshape the narrative when possible and help the public understand the consequences of cancel culture by providing new perspectives.

Chan Desai is a publicist at Otter PR. She earned a masters in Management Communication, with a focus on Marketing Communication and a bachelor’s in Communication Studies with a focus on Media Studies. She has a double minor in Public Relations and Journalism. She has helped her clients communicate in Forbes, the Washington Post, Fast Company, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Benzinga, MSN, New York Weekly, California Business Journal and WWD.

This interview was slighted edited for length.