Crisis Insurance: The New Safety Net for Reputations

David Olajide (00:01):

It was a single crisis, but it cost one of the world's biggest companies, billions of dollars, and it changed the way you and I think about crisis communication and reputation forever. This is the story of BP's dip water, horizon oil disaster, and the real price of public trust. Take a listen.

Farzana Baduel (00:28):

In April of 2010, the Gulf of Mexico shimmered like glass, quiet, vast and blew, but 41 miles off the Louisiana coast on a rig called Deep Water Horizon. Something was about to go very wrong, A pressure surge, a blowout, and then fire. 11 men didn't come home that night. What followed was the largest marine oil spill in history, hundreds of millions of gallons poured into the sea, but the damage didn't stop at the waterline because what leaked wasn't just oil, it was trust. BP was one of the most recognizable companies on earth, but suddenly its logo became a bullseye. Protestors gathered, share prices plummeted, and a single tone, deaf comment from the CEO became a meme for corporate callousness.

Tony Hayward (01:24):

There's no one who wants this thing over more than I do. I'd like my life back

Farzana Baduel (01:29):

Overnight. BP wasn't just in the energy business, it wasn't the apology business. They spent more than half a billion dollars on PR alone. Full page ads, tearful commercials, new branding, and they kept spending year after year, 60 billion in total costs. Yes, they had insurance for the oil, but no one had ensured the reputation, which makes you wonder in a world where your next crisis could be just one click or quote away, what would it cost to clean up your name today on stories and strategies? We are talking crisis insurance because when the spill hits the fan, you might wish you'd been covered.

(02:28):

Hello, my name is Farzana Baduel.

Doug Downs (02:31):

And hello, my name is Doug Downs, our guest this week. Hello, is Mark Borkowski joining from Gloucestershire? Did I say that perfectly? Mark Gloucestershire, right?

Mark Borkowski (02:41):

Yeah. I live in the Depths of the swells. It's very quaint. My office is in London, but you're speaking to me today from my office in home near Stride. I was born of bread. I had the Sunday Times keeps on giving it as the best place to live in the country, which is a bad sign for us because we want to keep,

Doug Downs (03:05):

Everyone's going to start moving there.

Mark Borkowski (03:06):

We want to keep it a secret.

Doug Downs (03:08):

Yes, Mark, you're a leading UK publicist and the founder of Borkowski PR. You're known for high profile crisis management and media strategy spanning over four decades. It's changed a little bit in that time span. You recently launched a crisis insurance product or service, however you want to characterize it for individuals reshaping how reputational risk is handled in an age of public scrutiny and cancel culture.

Mark Borkowski (03:37):

Whoever wrote that did a wonderful job. Thank you. Yeah, that sounds,

Doug Downs (03:40):

I think it lifted right from your website. Did it?

Mark Borkowski (03:43):

Okay. I rarely look at my own website.

Farzana Baduel (03:46):

I'm going to dive in with the first question. Do you think, mark, that as humans we're sort of a little bit naive and optimistic in the sense that we tend to underestimate the likelihood of facing a reputational crisis? And if so, do you think we just inherently have a risk aversion, misplaced optimism or something a little bit more deeply psychological?

Mark Borkowski (04:10):

Yeah, I think we could go deeper into the optimism bias. I think we have deep inside of us, I think we want to shut out negativity. We don't like hearing bad news. I think it's very difficult to visualize that sort of chaos because to a certain extent, again, we're all human and we think that happens to somebody else. Every time somebody who is fairly young falls off the perch, we immediately inquire about his lifestyle and his health. Or was he a smoker? Was he a drinker? Did he take lots of drugs? We are looking immediately because we're responding to it to think, oh gosh, that's near my age, or I know that person, and that's when it becomes, it could be me in crisis. I think that people particularly who have not been thrust into the world of pr, have not been a focal point, have not had to lead a company, represent corporate results, perhaps don't think about it, but can get swallowed up by something very, very quickly now, because the biggest problem we face actually is we live in a post-truth post fact world, and there's a very clever thing that publications all over the world do.

(05:42):

Now, they nuance the facts or the stuff that's clearly hyper bowl on a social channel. They'll dig it out and they'll place it in a certain context that you find very difficult to deal with. I mean, if it's a factual untruth or it is a lie, you still have to work pretty hard to persuade the person across the table that that is in fact what it is because there seems to be more of emotional response to the news, and one could argue the current president of the United States has rewritten a lot of the rules of power to maintain power and to bring his own truth to the game. And I'm not here being political at the moment. I'm just fascinated by the way that's reshaping how people communicate. Because one fact that becomes something that leaves his mouth maybe two or three days later, there's a complete denial of the fact that that fact has left his mouth two days before.

(06:46):

So we are in a very different age where legacy media is diminishing in power, where AI is taking over, we're getting more and more half-truths being pedaled as truths. And I think that what you see is people looking at somebody in public life, whether it's the head of a company as celebrity or whoever, and they'll have a thought about that person and what they feel about him without even knowing or her or or him not knowing anything at all about them. But they made an opinion because of what they see in front of them, of how they communicate, how they go about their lifestyle. And that all affects the opinion rather than somebody looking at it through some cold hard truths. And many people that perhaps I've represented might have been considered to be one thing, but when you get deep inside understanding the human, the human, you might reach a different conclusion that in fact their public persona no longer represents who they really are. And that can be on the flip side as well. I have represented people who are on the outside, really cool people, incredibly engaging, but that sort of masks a harder truth about what really motivates them and the human that they really are when the sort of cameras stop rolling for want of a better expression.

Doug Downs (08:19):

See, everything you said convinces me, we actually should be wired to pay more attention to reputational risk. He said, it's because we're human and being human means we're hyper-focused on risk all the time, 24 7, distrust, mistrust, mistruths, malformation. Yeah. So we should be even more wired to be attentive to reputational risk, but we're not.

Mark Borkowski (08:47):

I think, look, I think it's becoming, look, I think more and more people are looking at it into a certain extent. The surprising thing is the curve ball, the unexpected situation, the human error. I think a lot of what I've dealt with over the years has come from a really stupid human mistake that catapults you into a place that you're not comfortable with. I think we are talking more about crisis. We are focusing more about the media are more fascinated by crisis. We are seeing public meltdowns. I think if anybody wants to see someone daily destroying what little credibility if there is any left, just have to go to Kanye's tweets to understand a man who had the world at his feet probably couldn't even collect a free coffee on the street. I mean, I think that it is incredible what people will do. So I think hubris is a big challenge, power, and I think the important thing is teams, teams of people around you. I think there's some pretty amazing smart people who can work their way around social channels, understand the algorithms and the sort of tone and inflection of memes and how to stop memes being created. That's all cool, but sooner or later when you've got somebody in power who's got there from a career, they want to know the person sitting next to 'em across the room has got scar tissue. And somebody with me with, as you said, four decades, and I'm covered in scar tissue. Doug,

Farzana Baduel (10:33):

Mark, you obviously have these incredible clients, very powerful, probably surrounded by a lot of yes people. And you talked just now about the importance of delivering bad news. And what advice would you give to some of our listeners on how to deliver those bad news to clients and people in positions of power that are surrounded by yes people, and you want to maintain your relational capital with this person. You don't want to get fired, but at the same time you have to deliver that sort of negative news. Is it that sort of age old give a compliment and then the criticism and sandwich it back with a compliment? What have you learned over the years on how to make bad news more palatable?

Mark Borkowski (11:14):

The first thing is to kill your own ego. If you're going in there swinging your ego as a blunt instrument, you're going to lose a room. I think it is emotional intelligence. First of all, reading a room, the first thing you need to know is who are the team and who has the loudest voice in that team? If you are joining the room and being brought in, that usually in my experience, generates internal enemies who do not want you to be in that room because it diminishes their, so the first thing is to understand what the conditions you work in and go about how you communicate in that room to get the people in that room to respect you first. And by coming in playing, I'm the most important person in the room card. You're going to defeat that.

(12:17):

Secondly, understand your client. Really understand your client, spend time with the client and make time with the client. The problem is that sometimes you might be hired for that person and that person has no simpatico with you at all. Someone in the organization has brought you in. He, she whatever, does not understand why. So therefore, you've got to earn your stripes. Even if you're coming with a reputation, every job is different and you have to be humble. Humility is absolutely key and you're doing a job. And I think that's the important thing. I think that people in our profession can have a tinge of arrogance, can lack a basic IQ about how they behave. And then once you've sort of understood the person, once you've understood the room, then you can actually find ways of actually getting that truth across. It's using your power. Well, you just use your experience.

(13:25):

I think you've got to take deep breaths. You've got to be very careful in the language you use. You've got to sense, check how you use certain expressions, where the client's boundaries are, because the other thing, you are not his friend you, you're not their friend, you're not his or her friend. And as you go in there thinking that it's going to be a very brutal moment when you are cast out because let's face it, guys, we all get fired sooner or later we get fired. And that's the other trick I think I've always learned is always, always be an elegant lever. Don't wander around being, I've got various sort of people part, oh, I know where all the bodies are buried and they're never going to, I'm what's the point? You are paid a fee. You did a job you were no longer wanted, walk away with elegance with your head held high and don't think it's all about you. So go back to my original point. Kill your own ego.

Farzana Baduel (14:37):

I love that. And just on the topic of playing nice and reading the room with crisis, you are often flung in the same room as lawyers and often lawyers are called in before prs. And so you sort of arrive at a later stage where the lawyers have already built the relationship with the client. And so tell us some ideas about how to maneuver when you've got a client and you've got a lawyer in place, and how can PRS work more effectively with legal counsel often when they're the ones brought into the room before at the PRS and they've got a head start?

Mark Borkowski (15:14):

Well look, I mean, look, a lot of my work comes from a panel of lawyers that we exchange work. There's some absolutely outstanding legal muscle in reputation in this city, and I know the best people for certain things, whether it's a medical issue as a court, whatever. And so usually I'm brought in fairly soon, but not always. And that's a problem if you come in far too late, the stage has been set because I think the most simplistic way of describing it is publicists and publicity people, PR man, crisis experts, whatever you want to call them, understand the court of public opinion. Lawyers understand the court room, court of law, and I think they's a difference. They're looking at the long tail of maybe a class action. They're looking at it from a pure legal sense. And I'm not saying that lawyers don't have eq, of course they do, but there's also a financial dynamic of why they're involved, whether or not lead council have brought you in.

(16:27):

But the same thing goes in there. I think that our aim is to do the same thing is to sort the mess out is to protect everybody and to communicate effectively. But again, lawyers are communicating in a way that maybe six months, 80 months be two years down the line, what the action has taken. The words are in public domain will be used in a court of law. So that's where the nervousness comes from and they are very nervy. And I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago about someone who defined my solution and the way I was moving forward and pulled it apart from their point of view of really not understanding the journalists, not understanding the dynamic of the person going for the story. And one had to engage because if they didn't, the journalist would go rogue and you'd be spending years taking action on the piece to clean up the facts. So I think it's the best relationship is when a legal mind and a PR mind are simpatico.

Doug Downs (17:44):

Okay, reputational risk insurance. I have car insurance. I live in an area where there's a lot of hail. If there's hail that damages the roof of my car, it gets fixed, damages the roof of my house, I have house insurance, the roof gets replaced or it gets fixed. Reputational risk insurance. Do you guarantee you? How does it work and do you guarantee you fix my reputation?

Mark Borkowski (18:12):

Look, there are insurance schemes that exist for big corporate fail, which sucks in PR help. So if you have to recall a product, if you've got a catalytic converter on a car that's gone wrong and you've got to call back thousands and thousands of cars, there is protection not only to pay for that, but also to manage the pr. So this is not about corporations. This comes from a number of occasions in the past where people have not paid attention to the importance of PR and come back to PR too late. Why? Because my learned friends in the legal profession are usually a little bit more expensive than pr. And so whether you're spending a lot of money on law, you want to deal with pr. And sometimes that deal going for the cheaper option can result in internal decline. So the insurance actually pays for pr.

(19:23):

It doesn't pay for losses, but it immediately, we have an American company called Merrill, her that does all the backend in a facilitation, there could be lots of things that draw you into a crisis, even a kidnapper and a family issue. So basically you have health insurance, you have your car insurance, you've got your art on the wall. You immediately think, I need to ensure that from loss. Well, I would argue personal reputation, I've taken years to build, can be lost in seconds. So you want to be able to sleep well at night knowing that if the worst comes to the worst, I can turn to it. The beauty of preempt is that it gets people thinking. So going back to original points, where isn't that going to happen to me? One, a lawyer said to me this week, well actually Mark what you're doing is selling umbrellas in a heat wave because no one's going to think they've got a problem.

(20:30):

And I thought that was quite right. But no, I think a lot of people who are looking at this are also thinking about what if I make a mistake? What do I do? Because I have seen, unfortunately in my career, key people in a business being thrown under the bus to protect the greater good of the business. And it's an incredibly lonely place because the very PRS internally and externally was supporting you evaporate. They're gone. Look, I've had this idea for many years, I guess I was representing a very major insurance business, and I put it to them and the reaction was, it's too niche. I tried a few more and really couldn't get anybody to buy into it. And it was one of those sort of moments where I bumped into a very high profile journalist who had a friend who was a expert in insurance, and he said, meet my mind man, Derek here, he's got a great idea.

(21:39):

And when he told me what it was, I said, you never do it, Derek. You'll never find someone to go for it. And he said, well, if I do, can we work together on it? I said, look, I'll be all over it. So that took about three years, two years, two years. We found an amazing insurer, samphire, who is Derek McLeod for Puit and built the program in terms of what it would cover, what it wouldn't, how it would match in, and it is being called in the insurance business, one of the most innovative insurance products of a generation. So, which you'll see, and I'm very excited by it. It's only about two or three months old at the moment. But we've had some remarkable conversations, some difficult conversations with people too because NDA, we have seen what is lurking around for certain people and it's quite shocking.

Farzana Baduel (22:41):

Right now we have a question from the lovely Jo Carr of Hope and Glory, and she's left a question for you.

Tony Hayward (22:48):

Did she know she's leaving it for me?

Doug Downs (22:50):

No,

Mark Borkowski (22:50):

I don't think so.

Jo Carr (22:51):

When things get tough because there are highs and their lows aren't there in this industry, what are the things that you won't let go in terms of self-care or resilience? What are the things you won't let go when things get tough?

Mark Borkowski (23:12):

I think actually that's quite an easy question to answer for me because it has been something that has been part of my life in very iterations of my growth as a PR man, whether I was in entertainment, into consumer, into corporate affairs, and that is distance. I choose not to live in London. When I stay in London, I stay out of the business. When I used to commute, when you could commute easily, now you can't since Brexit, it is more difficult and more expensive to commute. But I always actually use the commuting time as a way of preparing for my work and going home. I disconnected, which gave me a really quite a healthy attitude to actually not getting too close to the job. So I would never give up that line and length I get from my home for my family. So family has always come first, particularly my kids are long since gone now, but bringing up my kids, they came first in front of clients, in front of events, and I would always be deputized. It was big events and I was there and I always made sure I was a home to read my kids' story before they went to bed at the very least. And more so I saw too many of my peers who had kids younger than me regretting that they'd put their career first. So I think what I say for my sanity is home comes first, not work

Doug Downs (24:56):

Your turn Mark, what question would you like to leave behind for the next guest?

Mark Borkowski (25:01):

I think an extension of that. The question is how important does your work define you? And if it doesn't define you, how do you define yourself?

Doug Downs (25:17):

Wow. I do wrap myself into my work. I do think of myself as a podcast person, right?

Tony Hayward (25:23):

I say that because the greatest people who survive the turmoils that sometimes not of their making and get past it because they are them. They are who they are, they are not the personas. They project and they can actually park those personas and even lose those personas knowing that they haven't cut off the world. That made them what I mean by that, who they grew up with, their family, friends, they come first and therefore those people who know them and perhaps would question whether or not they are facing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are real. They'll always have people to go to because fair weather, friends are fair weather friends. You want foul weather friends to be in your life.

Doug Downs (26:19):

Wonderful. Thanks so much for your time today, Mark.

Farzana Baduel (26:21):

Thank you.

Tony Hayward (26:22):

It's been great to speak to you, Farzana and Doug, it's been a pleasure.

Farzana Baduel (26:27):

Here are the top three things we got today from Mark Borkowski. Number one, humans are wired to underestimate reputational risk and that's dangerous in a post-truth world. Mark explained that people have an optimism bias. They naturally believe bad things will happen to people, not themselves. Yet today, thanks to social media, cancel culture and emotional storytelling outweighing facts, reputational damage can strike quickly and without full regard for the truth. Number two, critical friends are vital but tough to be when delivering bad news. Mark shared that when helping powerful clients surrounded by yes people, you need emotional intelligence, humility, and inability to read the room. You cannot lead with ego. Instead, you must build trust. Carefully understand the dynamics around the client, including internal rivals and deliver hard truths backed by evidence. Number three, reputation insurance fills a real gap. It funds expert PR response when individuals are most vulnerable. So Mark, he introduced Preempt a reputational risk insurance product he helped develop. It doesn't fix your reputation directly, but it covers the cost of top tier PR teams. If a crisis hits the product grew from the realization that individuals like CEOs, academics or celebrities can suddenly find themselves abandoned by corporate support and legal teams alone in a media and social media hurricane. What

Doug Downs (27:59):

A unique idea,

Farzana Baduel (28:00):

Honestly, it's one of those ideas you think, why didn't it happen before?

Doug Downs (28:06):

Why not? Yes, agree.

Farzana Baduel (28:07):

Crisis is nothing new and insurance is nothing new. So why did it take Mark Borkowski to come up with it? Now, if you'd like to send a message to our guest, mark Borkowski, we've got his contact information in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of Curzon Public Relations, JGR Communications, and Stories and Strategies, podcasts. If you liked this episode, please leave a rating and possibly a review. Thank you to our producers, Emily Page and David Olajide. Lastly, do us a favour forward this episode to one friend and thank you so much for listening.