A Lesson from Duncan Boothby
June 24th, 2010 by Michael ThomasToday McChrystal resigned – a PR disaster. What I don’t mean is Children’s and Infant’s Tylenol pulled from shelves, Lenovo computer batteries exploding on planes and Wal-Mart fake blog controversies – PR nightmares for the companies and their PR firms: Burson-Marstellar, Ogilvy and Edelman. What I do mean literally is that poor PR in this case has generated life altering consequences for McChrystal and his team of media-naïve cronies. The lesson here: even the worst PR people can teach us something. Or, at least serve as good reminders for best practices (based on what *not* to do).
From the beginning this plan had crisis written all over it. Ill-fated access to high level executives with no clear and strategic objective = a mess.
Then what have we learned?
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Have an idea of what you’d like to accomplish. Rolling Stone says we’d like to interview you – sexy no doubt. But if you can’t answer the question: what’s in it for me and for the U.S. Army, maybe you have no business pursuing the opportunity. What was the goal of this meeting if not suicide?
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Know your spokesperon. Perhaps better attention to McChrystal’s general tone and tenor could have helped. Someone loaded with personality problems may not be the best interviewee. Just sayin’.
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Don’t overwhelm an interview. The last thing anyone and in this case the U.S. Army needs is fraternizing and a load of testosterone to encourage foul play and take you off message. Jay-Z said it best people: “Stick 2 the Script!”
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Understand reporters have an agenda too. They aren’t your friends. They’re doing their job – and in this particular case, doing it well. Who’s a hero at Rolling Stone? Michael Hastings.
If Duncan Boothby’s (PR representative for McChrystal) objective of this fiasco was anything other than to help Rolling Stone sell millions of copies of its magazines… it is unclear.
