Crisis PR Experts React to Lively-Baldoni Trial, Astroturfing Allegations

• Crisis PR is in the spotlight after Blake Lively filed a successful complaint against Justin Baldoni.
• Lively’s lawsuit alleges Baldoni defamed her in the press in retaliation for harassment complaints.
• Crisis management experts say tough tactics are part of the game, but cautioned against going too far.

What started as the story of a bomb process from a famous actor against her director and costar has since turned into a tale of two PR campaigns and a reckoning in the wider public relations industry.

After Blake Lively filed a lawsuit Friday accusing Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment on the set of their movie “It Ends with Us” and a retaliatory smear campaign in the media, publicists were in a frenzy ripping into how both camps responded to the news.

A key asset in Lively’s costume are the sums of included messages that describe a picture in which Baldoni, Jennifer Abel’s publicist and crisis management expert Melissa Nathan Details intends to steer the conversation away from Lively’s sexual harassment allegations, citing journalists and an online fixer for creating, publishing and amplifying negative stories about her.

The messages in the suit — and his accusations of astroturfing, a controversial PR practice that exists in a legal gray area — offers a peek behind the curtain of crisis PR, one that industry figures who spoke to BI say gives their profession a bad name.

“Who is the real victim behind the smear campaign?” Molly McPherson, a crisis communications manager, said in an Instagram post post spilling his thoughts on Lively and Baldoni’s ordeal. “It’s PR. It’s public relations.”

The trial introduced the general public to crisis PR and the practice of astroturfing

Hollywood is full of PR firms big and small. Most work with studios, distributors or directly with talent in the day-to-day business of promoting their work, building media relationships and INFLUENCE.

Crisis management is an entirely different animal. They are called in when a controversy or scandal hits the client that is too out of control for the publicist to handle alone.

“A crisis management person is being hired to ensure that all assets are protected,” a veteran crisis management ad told BI. Unlike ordinary publicists, who “don’t want to get their hands dirty”, crisis PR firms are trained for this very purpose. “I can walk and weave, jump and jump out,” the source added.

The proposed campaign to damage Lively’s reputation, as outlined in her complaint with quotes from Nathan’s messages to Abel and Baldoni, included “social manipulation” on platforms such as Reddit and the “complete takedown of social accounts.” In the messages, Nathan suggested there should be a full social crisis team on hand to “start threads of theory” about Baldoni’s lively and rumored feudand “creating social fan engagement to go back and forth with any negative accounts, helping change (sic) the narrative and stay on track.”

“All of these will be most importantly unidentifiable,” Nathan said of Lively’s costume.

Lively’s lawsuit alleges that these tactics in Abel and Nathan’s alleged smear campaign on Baldoni’s behalf went “well beyond standard crisis PR” by implementing the controversial practice of astroturfinga tactic that, when applied to public relations, involves publishing sentiments on the Internet or in the media to falsely create the illusion of public consensus or a “grassroots movement.”

“Millions of people (including many reporters and influencers) who saw these planted stories, social media posts and other online content had no idea they were unwitting consumers of a crisis PR campaign, astroturfing and digital revenge,” it said in Lively’s costume, adding. that the campaign “blurred the line between genuine and fabricated content and created viral public takedowns.”

Crisis management experts who spoke to BI saw nothing wrong with Baldoni’s team coming up with worst-case scenarios on how to change the narrative were Lively to go public with her harassment allegations. Several PR people say tough tactics are part of the game. But they were divided on the tactics of astroturfing.

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“He’s not discouraged, just amateurish,” said the veteran crisis management publicist. “It gives experts a bad name. It’s like they saw it work in a movie and thought it was a brilliant idea.”

Other Hollywood publicists were more severe in their assessment.

“I honestly thought it was used more in politics than in entertainment,” a longtime entertainment publicist told BI. “It’s just a dirty tactic.”

Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, called Lively’s claims against Baldoni “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious.”

In a later statement, he said Nathan’s company, The Agency Group (TAG PR), which was hired by Baldoni, “acted like any crisis management firm when engaged by a client facing threats from two extremely powerful people with unlimited resources”. a reference to Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds.

“The standard script planning developed by TAG PR proved futile as the public found Lively’s own actions, interviews and marketing during the promotional tour disastrous and responded organically to what the media themselves picked up,” the statement added.

BI reached out to Abel and Nathan and got no response about the PR tactics.

Experts say Baldoni’s camp also made a key mistake

For all the PR wizardry going on as both sides respond to the media story, there is one move Abel and Nathan made that the veteran crisis management publicist said was a big mistake.

“Never put anything in texts,” said the crisis management vet publicist. “It was a rookie move.”

The fallout is still unfolding. Tuesday, Stephanie Jones, the owner of the advertising firm that represented Baldoni before Abel broke out on her own, sued the actor, Abel, and Nathan accusing Abel and Nathan of orchestrating a smear campaign against both Lively and herself behind her back and accusing Abel of stealing Jones’ clients on his way out of the firm.

In an email on Tuesday, Abel gave BI another description of how she left Jones’ firm, including text messages showing she had submitted her resignation and was open about plans to start her own firm of public relations.

Now, even crisis managers need crisis managers to repair the image of the profession.

“It gives the industry a black eye and I think it should be a cautionary tale,” a prominent industry figure who runs a crisis management firm told BI.

“If you don’t know you can’t go that far,” the person said, if you don’t know you can’t “deceive the media, it’s disturbing.”