Your Reputation is not that Good

Imagine being the person that everyone thinks is an arsehole. Or a nightmare.  

Imagine not being invited to the party. Or being one of the gang. Or not being picked for the team.  

We’ve been throwing lots of names about our office recently, brainstorming potentially newsworthy choices for involvement in something we’re working on. Celebrity names. We’ve met quite a few. We have worked with many. A-Listers, B-Listers and the list that few talk about: Zed-Listers. The ones you are not inviting to the party, deliberately.  

You see, reputation management is sometimes seen as a communications activity. But it is really a behavioural problem and, in the case of bad behaviour, the comms is just papering over the cracks.  

Anyway, back to the office. Some of the objections to approaching these celebrities for this gig have been hilarious:  

They’re a nightmare.  

They’re an arsehole.  

They’re a diva.  

They’re difficult to work with.  

These are real people whose names you’d recognise (if I felt inclined to share them). But their behaviour is not so great behind the scenes, so they’ve earned themselves a special place on our “It’s really not worth the Coverage List”. We’ll not be the only PR agency with a list like this. The Zed-List. Subtitle: Avoid at all Costs.  

I recently took part in a call where a similar brainstorm was taking place amongst a group of freelancers and the groans were audible when certain names were mentioned.  

Some of the good ones stand out too:  

They were really great to work with.  

They’re really organised.  

They were really kind.  

I love them!  

Being a nice human and a celebrity is possible but there’s no escaping the fact that, behind closed doors, some of these people are utter horrors.  

It does make me wonder, though, do these celebs know their reputation is poor? If they do, do they not care? Or is it deliberate? Does being badly behaved work for them? And if so, how? 

I once worked with a very prominent politician on a job, and their personality on camera changed like someone had flicked a switch. It was astonishing to watch. Their behaviour off camera was, um, very challenging.  

I’m 100% certain they knew how their behaviour positioned them. They’d worked in the public eye for decades. How could they not? In fact, without naming names, it was their inner-most-thoughts uttered out loud that led to their very public downfall. And, yet, here they were again (after the downfall) behaving in exactly the same way.  

As someone who is in the business of helping people manage their reputations, this behavioural nuance and their lack of attempt to control it was extraordinary.  

I also once had to spell it out to a client that their owner’s behaviour was the biggest threat to their organisation’s reputation right at that moment in time. So what did they do? They decided not to tell them. Too scary.  

Then the owner went out that night, got blind drunk, punched someone, and got themselves arrested. For the second time that week. Their reputational issue just increased in size. Once is a mistake. Twice is a pattern.  

As I couldn’t advise both the company and the owner, I referred the latter to a fellow professional. They pretty much told them in no uncertain terms to stay in their house, live like a hermit, and pray for mercy. Did they? Nope. They did not.  

Then there was the so-called “influencer” who pulled out of a long-planned appearance at the eleventh hour, leaving a small business with an empty room to fill, a small restaurant with an empty table to fill, and the PR professional without anything to show to all their hard work. They, too, are on the Zed List, never to be approached again.  

The thing about the Zed-Listers is that, beyond their poor behaviour, they all have one other thing in common: they very rarely make it onto the A-List. It’s like the universe knows they are naughty (and haughty) and punishes them by keeping just out of reach the one thing they desire the most: Fame on a grand scale.  

Beyond anything else, behaviour is your reputational reality and you may think it’s managed, and the metrics make you look good, but behind the scenes, word spreads. Like we’ve all been seeing in the Epstein files, it’s pretty impossible to outrun bad behaviour. The truth will eventually surface. And, as they like to say in the States, you can’t put lipstick on a pig. 

There’s more where this came from. I share more of my thinking on Cunningly Good Marketer on Substack. Subscribe to get my opinions, experience and real-world lessons straight to your inbox.