Lately, I have seen several instances of local politicians or movie stars sending out PR blasts, and even a local press conference, to let people know they are either getting a divorce or in some cases ‘working through’ issues.
While I understand the importance of reputation management, does this technique really work? Or does this just bring more light to an already tough topic to make public? My local mayor in our city called a press conference and stopped local programming to let everyone know he was getting a divorce. I am sympathetic, but also wonder did my tax dollars pay for him to stop the local programing to tell us that? If so, wouldn’t a simple blast or Tweet have been enough? If things are so mutual between both parties why did he have to come out in person to announce it?
On the other hand, celeb websites get this information and run with their own version anyway. There are hundreds of instances where you hear celebs say, “hey it just really isn’t true.” So where are their publicists? What do they actually do? In short, they accentuate the positive and downplay the negative. Say a celebrity gets caught lip-syncing or has a very public breakup, it’s the publicist who puts a positive spin on the event. Once you really take a chance to notice, it’s pretty difficult to read the gossip pages without seeing their influence. Oh no, he wasn’t drunk on that talk show it was jet lag. Who knew jet lag was the end-all explanation for all so much. Hey, she wasn’t slurring her speech during that award show, she is exhausted from work. Most of the time, the truth eventually comes out about what had happened. So why not just come clean about what happened and apologize. After all, that’s what a publicist would eventually tell you to do.
