So, you’re one of the most famous baseball players in the world. You are the highest paid player in the history of the sport, considered one of the greatest players who has ever laced up cleats. You play on the biggest stage, on the highest profile team, and even people who don’t follow the sport know who you are.
Then, you are outed for testing positive for using performance enhancing drugs. What do you do?
Alex Rodriguez has been haunted by an image problem for years – ever since he decided to take the money and play for a horrible team in Texas rather than stay with the Mariners. Since then, the growing consensus around baseball has become that he is a phony, preening, diva-like superstar who shrinks from big moments and cares about money and fame, not the love of the game. For baseball fans, this is a cardinal sin, and has soured the public’s taste for all things A-Rod.
In the past year and a half however, Alex Rodriguez’s reputation has gone from bad, to superbad.
- In late 2007 when Jose Canseco named A-Rod as a steroid user who was a "hypocrite" and "was not all he appeared to be."
- On July 7, 2008 when his wife Cynthia filed for divorce citing “emotional abandonment" and marital infidelity. This came after rumors circulated about Rodriguez having an affair with Madonna.
- 2009 - Joe Torre’s new book, The Yankee Years, labels the Yankee third baseman “A-Fraud” and details how jealous ARod was of Derek Jeter’s love from the fans of New York.
The snowball just kept getting bigger.
But the biggest hit came on the February 7th Sports Illustrated issue, which contained a report that A-Rod had tested positive for testosterone and Primobolan in 2003 (the year he captured his first MVP award).
Alex Rodriguez was now more than just a money grubbing diva - he was a cheater.
There is one golden rule of communication during a public relations crisis – if you don’t control the message, others will control it for you. This is especially true in the insane world of sports journalism.
So what could you have done, Mr. Rodriguez?
Use New Media For Spin Control
At this point, we all expect athletes, politicians, and other public figures who get in hot water to make the rounds on a few interviews, feed us a line of garbage attempting to explain things that they wish we didn’t know about them, and then fade into the darkness for a while.
Taking a page from Liz Mair’s piece - communicate. Communicate a lot. Communicate often. Part of that is to use every tool you have at your disposal to push back against the negative things floating around about you.
Consider the untapped resource that is A-Rod’s website. If you were to go there today, a flash intro would tout all of his baseball accomplishments – basically every aspect of ARod that his recent admission has now thrown into doubt. No mention is made of what just happened to him.
A much more appropriate approach would have been to create a new splash page for the site, which contained a heartfelt letter written to fans, acknowledging what had happened, and giving his specific take on the issue.
Beyond that, Rodriguez should go on a binge of personal appeals through new media. He can reach more people faster that way, and most importantly he can directly interact with them. Rather than people sitting at home watching an interview and shaking their head, through a blog, Twitter, or any one of the hundreds of tools available to them, they would be able to bring their questions to the source.
By doing this, Rodriguez could control the message to a degree he could not do in the reactive world of old media, and actually appear to address what he did honestly with conviction.
Don't Equivocate
When you are doing spin control – in new and old media – the audience naturally treats you with skepticism because they recognize you are doing damage control and trying to protect your reputation. This is actually highlighted in new media, where often what you write will be sitting there to be examined at any time, on demand. That sets an incredibly high bar for you – so the most important thing you must do is not insult the intelligence of the audience.
Don’t use ambiguous qualifiers in your statements – as Rodriguez did when he said in an interview with Peter Gammons that it would be “pretty accurate” if his use was described as 2001-2003. Leave no doubt about anything you are saying. Had he said, “you know what Peter, I started taking them in April of 2001, and in November of 2003, I decided I had enough of that stuff, and threw it all away.” – a great deal more of us would actually believe 2001 to 2003 was the actual time frame.
Don’t Dodge The Issue – Confront It
If your strategy resembles ARod’s, and you are going to “come clean” – then for the love of all that is holy, just come clean. If you are admitting to doing something that a majority of your audience will consider reprehensible, there is little point trying to save a shred of face here or there by dodging a question. One of the biggest irritations “come clean” confessions have with the public is that those who make them rarely actually do that.
As was the case with Rodriguez. “To be quite honest, I don’t know exactly… what… substance I was guilty of using.”
Raise your hand if you heard or read that and didn’t immediately roll your eyes into the back of your head and scoff. Right – I did too.
When a professional athlete tells us he doesn’t know what substances he put in his body, we don’t believe it. Nor should we. ARod should have known that statement wouldn’t be believed, even if in some bizarre universe it were actually true.
No matter what medium you are employing – be it a television interview, or a letter to fans on your website – bring us a message that is true and uncluttered with ambiguity, or we will end up answering all that ambiguity with theories of our own, making your problem worse.
And when you do bring us your message – do it everywhere. Especially in new media, which affords you your best chance of controlling it.