PR's Biggest Challenge
SCENE: The executive conference room of the public relations firm Smelt-DeFunk. The two founding partners are meeting with their star salesperson, Henry Rainmaker.
RAINMAKER: Gentlemen, I have a dramatic proposal, one that will make the name Smelt-DeFunk a legend in the PR business. We won’t just be on the map, we’ll be the flagpole everyone wants to run up, the gravy on the cake, the …”
DeFUNK: Hey, it’s us you’re talking to, not one of the corporate pocket-people. What’s the thought?
RAINMAKER: We take on … hold your breath … Michael Vick.
SMELT: Hold my nose, more like.
RAINMAKER: I know, I know. But if we turn his image around, we can turn anyone’s around. The rest of our careers, whenever someone asks about us, “Are they any good?” the response will be, “They handled Michael Vick,” and that’s all they will have to say.
SMELT: I like it.
DeFUNK: Not me. We’re setting ourselves up for failure. Come on, he’s a dog killer. And he confessed.
RAINMAKER: But that’s just why we want this assignment — it looks impossible. We’ll get an image pop just from the degree-of-difficulty score. Can I tell you what I’m thinking?
(The partners shrug.)
RAINMAKER: We start with jailhouse interviews. Let him get hammered by Mike Wallace or some other hard guy. He takes it. He admits he was horrible. Then he talks about how hard his life was growing up, and how the dogs are, in a sense, him. We teach him to cry on cue. And he cries twice.
SMELT: Twice? That seems wimpy. He’ll lose his macho football supporters.
DeFUNK: No, twice is good here. I can see where you’re going — once during the bad childhood story and once during the learned-my-lesson section.
RAINMAKER: Exactly. And that lesson learned is what caused him to start a foundation to help dogs. He’s asking everyone with fighting dogs to give up the sport and give the dogs to care centers that the foundation will fund, and the dogs will be retrained as guide dogs for the blind.
SMELT: Now you’ve gone too far — that can’t be possible.
RAINMAKER: OK, whatever. Maybe the dogs become companions for old ladies. We need only one cute mutt and one old lady, and then we have the photo op.
SMELT: For credibility, Vick turns the project over to the ASPCA, with a big donation, and they name him “dog’s best friend.”
DeFUNK: That’s going to be pricey. Maybe we go for some smaller group with a good name. Or maybe we create an organization with a kindly name, like Habitat for Dogmanity.
RAINMAKER: And meanwhile, we do a flanking maneuver, arguing that he has more than paid his debt to society. After all, the guy lost a career, got nearly two years in prison and took a hit of $142 million. We make a case that he has “overpaid his debt.” I did some quick research and found two athletes who killed people — people, not pooches — and got a fraction of the punishment.
SMELT: You have just pulled out my favorite board game: Who’s the Victim?
DeFUNK: But hold on. If he lost $142 million, how’s he going to sponsor a foundation and still pay us? I don’t want to be the victim.
RAINMAKER: We take a cut of his future salary. As for the foundation, we count on his fellow players to help fund the thing. All Vick puts up is the seed money. So what if the foundation peters out? By the time it does, we’re already certified PR geniuses.
SMELT: Legends of the business.
Dale Dauten is the founder of The Innovators’ Lab. His latest book is “(Great) Employees Only: How Gifted Bosses Hire and De-Hire Their Way to Success.”
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