It's sure to be one of the most indelible images of the year-in-review packages that media outlets are starting to assemble: Martha Stewart walking into a federal courthouse -
- the creamy white perfectly coordinated between umbrella and coat -- to face securities fraud and obstruction of justice charges stemming from her sale of nearly 4,000 shares of
ImClone stock. The domestic doyenne barely said boo to the gaggle of reporters and cameras converging on her - and hasn't said much about the case since.
As she prepares to go to trial, Stewart's lawyers seem to be calling the shots while her PR team has taken a backseat. Aside from the marthatalks.com Web site launched right
after she was indicted, communications from the Martha camp have been nonexistent and her company - Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia -- has been paying the price, as advertisers
bolt Martha Stewart Living and the company's stock price plummets.
Despite the setbacks, however, who's to say the strategy might ultimately work? Stewart's trial starts in January and her lawyers plan a vigorous defense. Still, despite a
healthy dose of schadenfreude in the public about Stewart's plight, her PR has left a lot to be desired.
"The legal strategy may work in the short-term and she may be fully exonerated," says Richard Levick, president of Levick Strategic Communications, which has handled PR for
many high-profile cases, including the Florida election recount in 2000 and the Roman Catholic Church crisis. "The legal strategy could be very sound, but the PR strategy is
unfortunate. They've made a miscalculation that PR and legal do not appear to be coordinated, which is wrongheaded and could lead to the wrong direction."
"Perception trumps reality when [the story] is front-page news," Levick adds. "Months later, when the issues are being digested, it's the minutia of legal that rules."
The competing interests of legal counsel and communications executives -- and how to bridge what can sometimes be intractable differences -- were the focus of a recent virtual
seminar sponsored by PR NEWS titled, "Managing PR & Legal Concerns in a Post-Enron, Post-Martha Stewart Environment."
Levick, along with Dan Collins, VP-communications at Corning Inc, and Marsha Rabiteau, VP-assistant general counsel, The Hartford Financial Services Group, tackled a welter of
issues concerning the often push-you-pull-me relationships between PR and legal, such as determining PR's role and liability during crises, how PR pros can gain equal footing with
lawyers and how the attorney-client privilege affects PR's role. There are also major differences between the two disciplines that need to be maintained.
Part of the problem is that PR folks often feel squeezed by legal. For attorneys "stare decisis/precedence," or "what came before," dictates legal decisions. But the media maw
doesn't concern itself with legal precedence when a corporate crisis strikes; they just want the story and they want it now. Striking the right balance between the two sides - all
the while assuaging both the C-suite and media masters - was the centerpiece of the seminar.
At Corning, a peer-to-peer relationship exists between legal and PR. "We work in conjunction with them, not in competition, nor in any adversarial relationship. We are
essentially partners in protecting the company's corporate brand," Collins said. He conceded there sometimes is an uneasy relationship between lawyers and communicators,
particularly when dealing with sensitive issues. Still, both lawyers and PR pros want to do right by corporate, a factor that companies need to capitalize on in terms of planning
ahead, protecting the company's various stakeholders and crafting a consistent message.
Rabiteau, who shared some insights stemming from her role as counsel to public affairs at Dow Chemical during the silicone breast implant crisis in 1995, said: "It's absolutely
key that [both sides] are purveying the truth about our clients' issues and the perspective we need for the public, whether it's the general public or the public in a courtroom."
During that crisis, "legal and PR worked seamlessly, day and day out," she said.
While PR pros want to get information out to the media as accurately and as soon as possible, lawyers are prone to be more precise in the message they want to present. "Finding
the right balance is a real challenge," Rabiteau said. "Identify responsibilities for the people on the team: who is doing what, when, where and to whom, which is something that
can be done long before a crisis surfaces."
Given how litigious American culture is, "embracing a crisis is the reality," she added. "If you haven't faced it yet, you will. It's not a question of if, but when. No
industry or company is immune."
Contacts: Dan Collins, 607.974.4197, [email protected]; Richard Levick, 202.973.1302, [email protected]; Marsha Rabiteau, 860.547.6451, [email protected]
To purchase the taped proceedings of this virtual seminar, contact Amy Urban, PR NEWS, at [email protected] or visit http://www.PRandMarketing.com.
Determining A Crisis: Four Questions
1. Is there a chance if left unattended, the situation will escalate?
2. Is the situation attracting unwanted attention by outsiders, media or a regulatory agency?
3. Is the situation likely to interfere with normal business operations?
4. Could this situation make your organization look bad or cause a loss of confidence?
Source: Dan Collins, Corning, Inc.
Partnership Differences to Manage
Lawyer Attributes
- Precision with full explanations
- Subtleties of meaning important to avoid negative litigation impact and inconsistency with litigation positions.
- Weighing potential litigation fall-out is paramount to rapid response.
- Every activity must be examined for litigation impact
- Complexity dominated by an "eye" for simplicity.
- Limited audience in the courtroom.
PR Professional Attributes
- Sound bites
- General message-subtleties of meaning carried by general message--maybe. "So, what's the problem?"
- Rapid response-paramount and overriding objective.
- Creativity, i.e., effectiveness = unimpeded activity (legality presumed; inadvertent admissions or embarrassment)
- Simplicity dominated by an "eye" for complexity.
- Wide-ranging audience in the community, country and the world.
Source: Marsha Rabiteau, The Hartford Financial Services Group