(Martha Stewart's lawyers recently asked for a new trial for the
domestic diva after saying that they uncovered evidence that one of
the jurors who convicted her last month lied about his past. Will
Martha get another day in court? Perhaps, but as PR NEWS
contributing editor and legal PR guru Richard Levick makes clear,
Martha already has her hands full trying to undo the damage already
done.)
Martha Stewart is not so soon off the vine that she was not
around to learn the lesson taught so painfully by Richard Nixon and
repeated many times over the past three decades: It's not the
crime, it's the cover- up.
For $55,000, she has sabotaged her remarkable career, endangered
her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., and created a
story that, like the Exxon Valdez before it, will live on for years
in the annals of public relations as an example of what not to do
when faced with a corporate legal and media challenge.
Lawyers who think that saying nothing or saying very little
preserves all of a client's options need look no further than the
Martha Stewart case for the fatal flaws in this approach. The media
can do as much harm - or more - than a judge or jury.
The list of her self-defeating actions - or inactions - doesn't
quite make a baker's dozen, but the logic behind them can certainly
serve as a primer for what not to do when you've been charged with
financial chicanery.
Cooperate, cooperate, cooperate.
You are not an ostrich - and ignoring them won't make them go
away.
Did Martha really think that by dismissing them with a regal
flip of the hand, the investigators would slink off, never to
return?
Don't put off until tomorrow that which will make you look
bad for life.
In a style more reminiscent of Freddy Kruger than America's
Homemaker, Martha angrily chopped cabbage on CBS' "The Early Show,"
apparently taken by surprise by questions about the charges. If
Scarlet O'Hara didn't get away with "I'll think about that
tomorrow," Martha's "Can't we just talk about the salad?" was even
more implausible. Suddenly, she publicly confirmed that she was a
mean person.
Apparently you can pick your family....
Martha's family portrait claims a close relationship with Sam
Waksal of ImClone, but she later referedreferred to her
relationship with him as "no closer than the family pet."
I am an island (not).
Martha headed a publicly traded company for several years and
had a seat on the NYSE for several months, but wanted America to
believe that she had no inside relationships.
Make sure that your own house is in order.
She built a hugely successful magazine empire, but was slow to
develop her own communications strategy, falling so far behind the
news curve as to never catch up.
Who says that there's never too much of a good thing?
When she finally got the right PR firms on her side, Martha had
so many of them (four by one count) that it must have been
difficult to keep them straight.
Don't forget the little people.
Martha wanted to be "one of "us" but wore carried a $6,000
Hermes purse to court. That screamed, "I don't care, I play by
different rules."
Use tools appropriately.
She developed her marthatalks.com web Web site to some acclaim,
but then failed to use it for much more than groveling testimonials
from shocked fans. Note that several hours after her statement
about the verdict was posted on her site, the phrase, "I did
nothing wrong" disappeared from the statement.
OJ's strategy may not work for you.
Martha claimed to be the victim of an overreaching SEC, yet
never organized others in a grassroots effort to communicate the
danger posed to everyone by "Big Government."
"We are not amused" is an ineffective strategy.
She claimed to be a target (she was) but never considered this
therefused to take the SEC's most powerful weapon seriously when
they first came to her, when she failedfailing to reach any
agreement over $55,000 in trading.
Don't offer juries options you don't want them to
take.
Martha claimed to be innocent, but failed to testify at trial,
leaving only only two possible conclusions for the jury - either
she couldn't imagine that the jury would dare to cross her (the
cost of theto her imagine of that purse again) or she could not
honestly testify. Federal rules do make testifying an increased
challenge, but the PR rule of celebrity defendants is that juries
expect them to testify.
Sticking to your guns is a good thing. Shooting yourself in
the foot, however, is not.
Even upon conviction, she stuck to her half- pregnant media
strategy, so determined to preserving preserve her right of appeal
that she refused to say a convincing "I'm sorry" in any form.
For lawyers On June 5th, of 2003, the New York Times wrote, "In
maintaining her innocence and standing for trial, Stewart is
subjecting herself and her company... to even more relentlessly
negative news media than it has had in the last year and a
half."
Maybe, absent all best media practices, Martha Stewart should
have taken another media cue from the redoubtable Richard Nixon.
Just stand up in front of the world and say, "I am not a cook!"
Well, maybe not.
By Richard S. Levick, Esq., president of Levick Strategic
Communications. He can be reached at [email protected]. Levick has
handled the media for more than 150 law firms and the highest
profile crisis matters from the Catholic Church to the Rosie
O'Donnell Rosie magazine litigation.