Cancel Culture and Crisis Management
I’m personally not a fan of jokes that creep on the side of being borderline offensive; however, I think cancel culture and crisis management are fascinating concepts when thought of together. Cancel culture refers to the “cancelling” of a public figure who is deemed as problematic. Actually, it’s become a huge phenomenon on Twitter, where most scandals are usually spread like wildfire. Remember examples like Logan Paul, Kevin Hart, and definitely United Airlines. Canceled, canceled, and canceled. They’re written off and boycotted against. Yet, what about people who make stupid jokes without malicious intent? I thought about this when I saw Jon Ronson’s Ted Talk.
The Back Story
In Jon Ronson’s Ted Talk, he mentions that one individual sought out a reputation management agency to help push back the negative 1st page results of Google after posting a stupid photo on Facebook. The agency created social media pages to slowly flood the algorithm with nice and positive things about this person; however, this apparently worked only for a short time.
Despite feeling a bit sorry for this individual, this is the world we live in today. You have to be careful about what you post online; however, Jon Ronson has a point. When does it become too much? As public relations professionals, do we help people who have made tasteless jokes that we wouldn’t have made ourselves? I even struggle to answer this question because of ethics.
“Despite feeling a bit sorry for this individual, this is the world we live in today. You have to be careful about what you post online.”
As someone who wants to pursue a career in crisis management, I think a good client is someone who recognizes what they did wrong and is actively trying (or looking for guidance) on how to authentically change. I’ve mentioned this many times on this blog. A good crisis management strategy is one where the company or the individual has really made a change. When representing these clients, it’s important to highlight these things.
An important point that I extrapolated from Jon Ronson’s Ted Talk is that there are multiple people with the same name that can be affected by the negative results of someone else with that same name. Imagine someone named Jennifer Weston posted a picture on Facebook that was intended to be a joke with no malice, but others found offensive. A simple Google search shows multiple Jennifer Weston’s and that name can be flooded with negative news articles that affect other Jennifer Weston’s. In this context, I definitely think it could be ethical to represent this client to spin the negative into a positive.
So, how do we do this?
“It’s extremely important to reach the public and amplify key messages.”
Firstly, I would issue an apology as soon as possible. Many people lose their jobs over bad decisions like this, but I think if an employer would rather fire an employee after hearing that there was no malicious intent, that is their choice. Yet, an apology is needed regardless. Since the goal here is to somewhat “clear the client’s name”, over the next couple of months, I would work on creating positive sentiment around the name. It could be using social media pages to post positive content or it could even be a social media awareness campaign. It needs to be compelling and genuine as it’s extremely important to reach the public and amplify key messages.
The good news is that these things eventually go away and the public generally forgets. People continuously buy Dolce & Gabana and shop for Mario Badescu products. Yet, crisis management still has a place in cancel culture.
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Photo by Arnel Hasanovic on Unsplash