INTRODUCTION

      You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

      —CHIEF BRODY, JAWS

      We knew we weren’t going to take the case within thirty seconds of walking into the boardroom. This prospective client—a large consumer health products concern under attack by the news media, government regulators, activist groups, trial lawyers, and shareholders—was going to get slaughtered, but not because its crisis was so bad. It wasn’t as if its best-selling product was alleged to be killing people.

      The prospective client—let’s call the company Socrates—called us in to meet its crisis management team. We had been under the impression that the objective of the meeting was to listen to Socrates tell us its side of the story—why its best-selling product was under attack. Then, presumably, we’d give Socrates our initial ideas on how to defuse the attack.

      One look at the dynamics of the room, however, and we knew we had landed smack dab in the middle of what we sarcastically call a “beauty contest.” Beauty contests are presentations that are held ostensibly to hear out the ideas and credentials of the potential consultants available for hire. Sounds legitimate, right? The real purpose, however, of a beauty contest in many high-stakes PR assignments is to identify the consultant who is least likely to get anyone sitting at the table fired.

      A company in crisis is often no longer a company at all: It’s a collection of individuals, each of whom is looking for personal cover. Truth be told, the company’s welfare was low on the priority list of the individuals in this room.

      This probably seems like a cynical assessment.

      Welcome to the blunt talk of contemporary damage control, which requires a sober appreciation of both human nature and the tides