"If one person calls you a donkey, ignore them. If two people call you a donkey, look behind you for hoof prints. If three people call you a donkey, buy a saddle."
If you are not concerned about your reputation, then you have already sealed your fate. And this rule doesn't just apply to public figures or people who make their living as artists or authors. Anyone in ANY field should be concerned about their reputation. And it should be the number one concern every publicist has for their clientele.
A reputation goes before you and follows you. It is what people judge you on even if they have never met you. It is difficult to keep shiny; like fine silver, it can tarnish if careful cleaning is not applied -- often.
In the course of representing other people for 22 years, I stumbled upon a surprising fact several years ago. My reputation is as important as theirs. If the media hates me, guess what? I'm no good to any client. So I began to do my diligent best to treat the media even better than I treated clients. I realized I couldn't (and shouldn't) have clients without cultivating my relationships with media outlets first.
So what does that involve? To me, serving the media means several things. First, know who they are and what they do. One of my best friends became my friend because she laughed out loud at the pitch I made to her magazine. Instead of taking offense, I laughed with her. (To this day, I still kid with her that it really was a good pitch for her magazine; she just didn't personally like the artist.) But it taught me a good lesson. Know the audience each media services, and then pitch things that matter to that audience. It annoys the media to get a pitch from a publicist who doesn't know (or care) what they do. I've learned to do my homework.
There have been many times when I have helped the media secure interviews or product from people or companies that I did not represent. Why would I do that? It all goes back to service, something especially important to me because I work with predominantly Christian media for Christian clients. Servanthood is a requirement of my faith, and I apply it to my job.
So how do you fix a tarnished reputation? That's the question that an army of public relations consultants are asking each other right now in a crowded room on Tiger Woods' behalf. It is a complicated process, and it doesn't always have the best outcome. Better to preserve your reputation in the first place.
Billy Graham once said that he made sure he was never seen in public alone with a woman. If he needed to have lunch with a business associate who was a woman, he brought a man with him. Why go to the trouble? Because he wanted to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Reverend Graham is over 90 years old now. And he never had to buy a saddle.
