Name, Blame, and Damage Control

Emily Page (00:00):

Sometimes it only takes one video to bring a billion dollar brand to its knees. Not a documentary, not an expose, just a phone, a prank and a pizza box. And that's when Dominoes started to fall.

Doug Downs (00:22):

In April, 2009, a pair of Domino's employees in North Carolina decided to film themselves doing something stupid. One of them pretended to stick cheese up his nose before placing it on a sandwich. The other filmed it and narrated the act like a twisted cooking show. They laughed. They hit upload, and within a few hours the internet lit up. The video spread. Fast blogs picked it up. News stations followed within 48 hours. It had been viewed over a million times. The franchise was flooded with angry calls. Customers were disgusted and Domino's, one of the largest pizza chains in the world, had no idea it was happening. The company's first reaction, silence for 48 hours. Domino's corporate team said nothing publicly. They hoped the video would just go away, but in the age of YouTube and Twitter, silence doesn't settle things. It only stokes the fires. Eventually Dominoes responded.

(01:20):

They posted their own YouTube video with the company President apologizing, outlining steps that they were taking. They fired the employees, reassured the public, and launched an internal review of sanitation practices. The brand recovered but not before. Learning a hard truth. One video, one lapse, one failure to respond quickly can hit harder than any formal investigation. This crisis wasn't about food safety alone. It was about trust, reputation, and how quickly a brand can lose both when its systems, culture and communications aren't ready to meet the moment today on stories and strategies, reputation, how to protect it, how to lose it, and how to lead. When the spotlight is harsh and the stakes are high, it's not just pizza that needs good delivery, it message does too. Two. My name is Doug Downs

Farzana Baduel (02:25):

And my name is Farzana Baduel. And before I introduce our guest for this episode, I wanted to say a huge, huge, huge thank you to the most incredible listener community that we have out there. I want to say a thank you to am, amen. Deep Core, the founder of Dharma PR. She has just been sending lots of LinkedIn, love our way as well, as well as Mark Witt. Mark Witt is a old friend of mine who teaches at the University of Kentucky, and he has written a number of books and he also has been sharing our lovely podcast interviews with our incredible guests on LinkedIn. We also have a new friend, Christie, from Inter Switch Group. Thank you so much again for sharing on LinkedIn, and we really appreciate your comments.

Doug Downs (03:16):

I love the social media interaction. We got a comment on Spotify as well, the podcast app. Antonio Marquez left a comment about our episode on Zambia's pr. Remember we did that with Irene Lungu?

Farzana Baduel (03:27):

She was great. Irene's great.

Doug Downs (03:29):

Antonio says a very interesting interview.

Farzana Baduel (03:32):

Fantastic. Well thank you. Now our guest this week is Emma Woollcott joining today from London. Hi Emma. Hey, Ana. Hi Doug.

Emma Woollcott (03:40):

How are you?

Farzana Baduel (03:41):

Good. How are things in

Emma Woollcott (03:43):

Holburn? London's hot and we're not really built for this, so I've come into the office on a Friday just so I can use the aircon.

Farzana Baduel (03:52):

Now. Emma, you are one of the UK's leading legal voices in reputation protection, guiding high profile clients through defamation, privacy breaches and crisis management. You head the reputation protection team at Mishcon Dore where your work spans everything from online harassment to media litigation plus crisis preparedness and response. You help organizations and individuals safeguard their name. We try.

Doug Downs (04:21):

So Emma, reputation, I mean we've talked, first PR team I ever joined was called Reputation Management. So this concept of course has been around for eons, but I love codifications. How do you define reputation today and why do you think it's become one of the most important forms of capital for modern organizations?

Emma Woollcott (04:42):

So people often say that reputation is what people think of a brand or an organization, but I like to think it's more about what they feel when they think about that brand or organization.

Doug Downs (04:53):

I love that. Love that.

Emma Woollcott (04:54):

If you ask customers to describe a brand, they often use emotive language like bold or ambitious or disruptive, or even when they have more neutral or negative impression, they say stable or bland. And that makes sense because humans are essentially quite self-involved creatures. And we make decisions about what to buy and where to work and who to work for, depending on how those products and services make us feel or how we want them to make us feel, and also how they sit with our own values and priorities. So I think reputation is about how a brand makes people feel.

Farzana Baduel (05:33):

Do you know? I love that. I absolutely love it. The next question I had for you was about social media. The immediate nature of social media. Back in the day, if somebody said something nasty and mean about one of your clients and factually incorrect, you could go to them if it was a newspaper or a broadcast channel. And now with social media and also with anonymity on social media accounts, how do you go and get results for your, when you don't even know who the person is, who is making those comments because of the anonymity on social media for some accounts, and also the fact that it goes, the damage is already caused and people move on so much quicker than they used to. So how do you tackle this whole new age or social media and reputation protection?

Emma Woollcott (06:21):

I think it's really important to pick your battles and think about the impact of what's been said and to whom. We spend a lot of time encouraging clients to think about what messages they are being carried and what they want to have carried, and picking who they want to challenge. I think it's a bit of a misnomer that people think that you can be anonymous online because actually often it's quite difficult to be truly anonymous. And there are lots of agencies out there that help us to work out who people are, who they're speak on behalf of, if they're legitimate accounts, if they're bots. And actually, so the practice have become much more nuanced in working out who you're going to challenge, how you're going to do that and how you're going to engage. And often time spent researching the people behind campaigns and deciding who to lock horns with is just as valuable and done in advance and done in reaction to a crisis.

Doug Downs (07:27):

How many crises are actually avoidable? And that's kind of a deep question because so many come down to poor internal culture governance, ignored warning signs, bad habits, and yet when they happen, like the Titanic, right? It was unavoidable. Oh, the Titanic crisis was quite avoidable. How many of these can we actually avoid?

Emma Woollcott (07:54):

So unfortunately, or perhaps it's fortunate, many of the things come down to things that could be foreseen and were avoidable. Many of the issues that we deal with feel new or novel to leaders, but they stem from or are exacerbated by known and unaddressed vulnerabilities like patterns of employee grievances or cultures where employees feel that they're not being heard or processes not being fair. We talk very regularly around employees being an organization's biggest asset, for example, and the dangers of insider risk. But the really good news is that you can generally choose who you employ and how you treat them. And we know that employees are far less likely to weaponize confidential information against an organization if even if they disagree with the decision it makes, if they believe in leadership and if they understand the processes in place and they feel they're being treated fairly. So it seems simplistic, but it pays dividends to ensure that you've got sound policies in place to engage with and communicate with employees. So they feel that they understand the expectations that are set and that they're consistently applied.

Doug Downs (09:03):

So is that as simple as make the Kool-Aid drinkable?

Emma Woollcott (09:07):

Yeah, sweeten that just often people come and complain that they're being criticized and it's like, well, stop doing it then do it better, be better.

Farzana Baduel (09:16):

And is that where crisis preparedness comes in? So instead of just waiting to be called when there's a crisis, you're called in to sort of mitigate the damage. Is that where you really do advocate to your clients to come in earlier before a crisis so that you can actually identify the reputational vulnerabilities and point out what could become a crisis tomorrow?

Emma Woollcott (09:38):

Definitely. People react differently under pressure. Some can stay really calm and clear and confident, and many lose their heads. My experience is that it pays to as much of the thinking in advance as possible. So it pays dividends to get teams together, to run simulations and then talk about what went wrong and what held back decision making, what can be improved upon and what can be taken forward. So the planning can start today. You don't have to wait for a crisis situation to bubble up and boil over

Doug Downs (10:10):

What happens when they're under that pressure, what's happening inside of them, especially those CEOs, those board chairs, the people that I, as an employee, I put my complete faith in them and I trust them. What happens to them when a crisis is taking place? And I mean emotionally and physiologically,

Emma Woollcott (10:28):

We're all humans and often reputational scrutiny follows or is related to challenges about management's decisions and leadership. It often feels very personal. Often people haven't been challenged before about what they're doing, how they're doing it or who they are. So it can feel very personal, which is why I think it's really important to have quite balanced teams and to have talk through in advance when you might sub people in when people might need to be encouraged to take a break. Crisis situations rarely are done and dusted in a couple of hours. They take stamina, they take endurance. And we speak to clients quite often, particularly in the preparedness stage, about really thinking about what the decision trees need to look like, how you are going to give people adequate rest because people make bad decisions when they're tired and irritable and you don't want decisions to be made. Sorry, you don't want mistakes to be made under pressure

Farzana Baduel (11:32):

When crisis does happen. And then you are called in. Who else is normally called in? Are the PRS called in? Do you have situations where you have to deal with the in-house lawyer who doesn't, understands perhaps commercial contract law, but doesn't quite understand the domain of media? I mean, I've worked with some sort of crisis issues where I worked with lawyers that do not have a reputation specialism, and they came from a litigation background and were very mercurial and antagonistic with journalists that just got the journalists back. So how do you navigate all these sort of professional egos where you've got the in-house, you've got the prs, the

Doug Downs (12:20):

Accountants, the accountants talking

Farzana Baduel (12:22):

Money. Yeah, exactly. And then you've got the CEO EO. And then of course when you work with leadership, sometimes they're very much swayed by, I dunno, their friend who said, who just told them actually this is what you should do. So how would you cut through this cacophony of noise in the middle of a crisis? And you've got all these advisors, you've got in-house prs, external PR agencies, you've got in-house legal, you've got the sort of whispers around the CEO. How do you cut through so that you can lead?

Emma Woollcott (12:56):

We take clients as we find them and they come from different industries, different stages of their journey, different sizes and different levels of maturity. So often one of the first things we have to do is ask the question, who's making the decision? Who's going to find the information? Who's going to communicate, who's going to tell them what? So often when we're working with clients on resilience exercises, crisis preparedness, those conversations are central to how they might react. So who's going to be on which teams channel, which WhatsApp group, speaking through who needs to be informed, but who needs to be asked when those issues haven't been ironed out and advance? It can be really challenging. And often we start off with quite big calls that can be quite unmanageable and we have to say, we think it's going to be more efficient going forward if we cu this down to the people that actually need to be on the call to make the decision. And then there's a slightly wider circle of people who learn first and then go off to carry out different activities. It can be quite challenging to manage situations if there is no crisis plan in place at all. But we find that most organizations have at least an idea about how they might react. They may not have foreseen the exact issue that's popped up, but if they've done some crisis planning, they've at least thought about how they're going to communicate and who's going to be making decisions and who's going to be involved.

(14:26):

Often people say that they find the in-house lawyers difficult or the incumbent PR or whatever. My view is that if there's a crisis situation, everyone should be trying to roll up their sleeves and get on and convene the right team and work with our ego. And that's always one of our first priorities to work out who needs to be on a call to make the decision, who has information that's going to be relevant to that and how we can best work with everybody so that we can get the best of that team and it can work most efficiently.

Doug Downs (14:53):

Have you ever seen a crisis unfold for an organization or an individual and felt genuinely sorry for them because they were trying to hit the right notes and yet the narrative somehow spun out of control? The planned critics or just critics kind of overwhelm them in the narrative? Can you think of an example of that?

Emma Woollcott (15:17):

I can, but I can't tell you which it was. There are often situations where clients feel and objectively are hard done by, and that's perhaps one of the most difficult things about the job because we get behind our clients and we feel quite committed to helping them to have their voice in a dispute in a crisis situation. And haters are going to hate. Sometimes they feel drowned out. Sometimes there are unfair, even if not unlawful media reports, it can be really frustrating. But you try to pick your battles, you try to brush things off, and I think you have to keep your eye on the north star, which are the kind of key outcomes that are important to aim for. And it makes it easier, I think, to keep going when you suffer losses in battles along the way. But yeah, it can be very, very draining.

Farzana Baduel (16:18):

So without a doubt, mainstream media, when people consume mainstream media, they do understand that there is an element of verification of facts that have taken place as opposed to consuming information on social media. But all the patterns show that people are increasingly turning away from mainstream media and consuming from social media. And so what's going to happen when we live in a world where actually the recourse isn't to go to mainstream media and say, don't pick it up when actually the engagement with mainstream media is declining, and particularly for younger generations, what do we do there? Because there's also a news avoidance. There's people who are turning away from reading mainstream media also because they find it that it has a negative impact to their mental health. And yours beginning to see these generational shifts also occurring with the younger generation in particular sort of turning away from mainstream media and going towards what they call news influences. So social media influencers who have an opinion on the news. So how's that going to change the way that you work in the future?

Emma Woollcott (17:19):

It already is changing the way we're working, and I am privileged to lead a very diverse team, and it's diverse in lots of respects. And we speak to the younger generations and they mock me for saying influencer because they talk about journalists rather than influencers rather than influencers. But that fragmentation of the media and that erosion of the shared cultural reference points that you and I grew up with means that we do have to consider crisis situations in that system as it is now. And so we have to be alive to how brands react to polarizing issues. And that's not to say that they shouldn't take position or defend themselves, but they need to be aware of and prepared for the backlash. But in terms of how journalism is moving on, how news is consumed and understood, you just have to keep asking different generations where they consume, what they believe to understand how it goes.

(18:23):

We're actually running an event. They are, I hope, allowing some seats at the back for the oldies, but it's run by the younger members of my team about the future of news. And they've got panelists from pr, from news and from the influencer community to talk about credibility, influence the sorts of stories that they pick up on. And what's really interesting is it's not actually as different from traditional journalism as you might fear, some of the most successful news flus on social media in the UK are actually gigging journalists who were working for the mainstream titles, who then at the same time is creating a story, create the video content to go around the story, the making of the challenging of, so they're making more content because they know that they have viewers who want to absorb it in a different way. But my view is that many people really understand the important part, important role journalism pays in society and that role of holding power to account challenging. And that only works if they have verified sources and they've done their job properly. So I think even though the technology is changing and the way that we consume media is changing, the people who will have credibility and gain share of voice will be the people that use those old school techniques, what gives them the credibility.

Farzana Baduel (19:47):

So Emma, thank you so much for your time today. And I wanted to also just flag up that we have a question for you.

Emma Woollcott (19:56):

Oh,

Farzana Baduel (19:58):

And it's from our previous guest called Mark Burey.

Mark Burey (20:01):

My question is slightly playful, if you forgive me, it's something I kind of ponder in my mind sometimes. My question for your next guest would be, if they had to manage a PR account for a historical figure, who would that be and why would it be that person?

Emma Woollcott (20:23):

That's fun. If I could go back in history, I would go back to the year that I was born, which was also the year that Margaret Thatcher became the first female prime minister. And she had to deal with a lot of mischaracterization and abuse as the first female in that role. And I don't know what interaction she had with the media about her private life and her reputation, but it would've been quite interesting and amazing to defend her at that stage.

Doug Downs (20:55):

How would you coach her differently? I mean, she changed her voice, right? She changed her approach to even her speaking voice to speak more deeply.

Emma Woollcott (21:03):

She had to gain credibility by lowering her voice and objectively sounding more masculine. She dealt with things that female politicians now might not have to deal with, but perhaps there are more of them. But I bet there are still things that they're dealing with that she would've expected to have been eradicated 46 years

Doug Downs (21:25):

Later. Yeah, absolutely. Falin Islands, of course, big union crisis in northern uk.

Farzana Baduel (21:31):

That would've been great fun. And when you think of our prime ministers, I mean, she's the only one that I can think of that had, that has become iconic in terms of, there's a tagline associated with her, the Iron Lady, and I remember her hair. It was almost this sort of helmet, almost like she was going into battle. She had these handbags that were very structured, almost like a little weapon, and it was absolutely fascinating and how she dominated. And she also didn't come from a very influential family. She came from small town Grantham, so there was a class play as well as a gender. Play

Doug Downs (22:16):

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

Emma Woollcott (22:19):

Do I Know who my next guest is? Your next guest is?

Doug Downs (22:22):

Nope, not going to tell you. Nope.

Emma Woollcott (22:23):

Okay.

Doug Downs (22:24):

Could be anybody.

Emma Woollcott (22:25):

I'm a big fan of learning from failure. We're all works in progress, and as Fleabag said, pencils have rubbers on them because humans make mistakes. I'd like your next guest to say what their biggest communication failure was and what they learned from it.

Doug Downs (22:40):

Awesome. Farzana go ahead, chip in. What was your biggest failure?

Farzana Baduel (22:44):

Gosh, I mean, just one

Doug Downs (22:46):

From the litany. It

Farzana Baduel (22:47):

Literally on a daily basis, I'd say my first communication failure was, funnily enough, I spent most of my twenties having no idea who I was and just trying to sort of fit in. And I didn't really connect with myself. So in communications, it's like know your audience and if your life is about living your life according to your own inner purpose, I wasn't connected with myself. So I'd say that was my biggest communication failure, not knowing who I am and putting up messages about who I am in order to people please as opposed to living an authentic life. So I'd say that was my communication failure.

Emma Woollcott (23:23):

I think that that was a failure of the time

Farzana Baduel (23:25):

You were

Emma Woollcott (23:26):

Conditioned to be like that.

Farzana Baduel (23:29):

Thank you so much, Emma. It's been insightful as always. Great. Loved to see you both.

Doug Downs (23:35):

Cheers, Emma.

Farzana Baduel (23:38):

And here are the top three gems of insight that we have gleaned from our conversation with Emma Woollcott. Number one, reputation is emotional capital, not just perception. So Emma, she reframed reputation as less about what people think and more about how they feel when they interact with the brand. In a world where emotional resonance drives purchasing decisions, employment choices, and loyalty, she emphasized that reputations are built on emotional alignment with people's values, not just factual impressions. So brands that evoke trust, ambition, boldness, are often seen more favorably regardless of their technical superiority. Very, very important learning there. Now, number two, what do we learn from her as well? Crisis preparedness is a strategic advantage. What does that mean? So Emma emphasized that most crisises are avoidable. They often stem from ignored warning signs, particularly cultural or governance issues. She advocated for proactive crisis planning, such as running simulations, establishing clear decision making structures, and fostering employee trust.

(24:46):

Organizations that plan ahead, they can make better emotional responses, they can manage and avoid these fatigue driven errors. They can navigate internal chaos. When real pressure hits, they can make the Kool-Aid drinkable. That was Doug's line and Emma agreed. Now, the third piece of insight that we have gleaned from this incredible leading reputation lawyer, Emma, is that media fragmentation. It demands a new playbook. And what does that tell us? That tells us that the rise of anonymous social media counts, news flus, and declining trust in traditional journalism has changed the rules. Emma says that we as brands must now fight to prevent disinformation from jumping into the mainstream and not just react to trolls. She cautioned against chasing anonymous accounts and instead try and track online behavior patterns and educate credible journalists to avoid amplifying and repeating falsehoods. And that's quite interesting. It's really looking at the ecosystem of the disinformation and not trying to go for everybody who's spouting it, but trying to figure out who's the ringleader, who's the originator

Doug Downs (25:57):

Target stuff.

Farzana Baduel (25:57):

Yeah.

(25:58):

Yeah. Be really targeted because you're never going to have the resources to go after thousands and thousands of social media accounts. So really figuring out what is actually going on. And so whilst media is fragmenting, Emma still believes that the best communicators, whether you are an influencer or a journalist, or a news influencer, as they call them now, the best communicators, they rely on the fundamentals of verification, transparency, and relevance. And why is that? Because if you lose your audience's trust, it's just game over. So it makes sense to verify, be transparent, and produce relevant content.

Doug Downs (26:36):

And that first note about appealing to how people feel when you think about it. Our job as comms pros is to make people do something. What people do is based on how we feel, I'd say that's at least two thirds and what we know. And yet we keep getting trapped in this. We want to educate people so that they think differently. No differently, not enough, probably not enough by two thirds. If you'd like to send a message to our guest, Emma Woollcott, we've got her contact information in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of Zen Public Relations, JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor, leave a rating, possibly a review. And thank you to Gold Star producers, David Olajide and Emily Page. Lastly, do us a favor again forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.