Public Relations and Celebrities

My group gave our presentation in class this past week, and it was about how public relations influence media coverage. One of the most highly visible, and most interesting, arenas that public relations impacts is the world of celebrity. Perhaps no group places a higher importance on public image than celebrities and athletes. Every aspect of their life takes place in the public eye, and they're expected to be role models for young people. So when they get into trouble with the law or have an otherwise unfortunate thing happen to their reputation, they call in public relations firms.

Celebrities emerging from what have come to be called "PR crises" can end up one of two ways – redeemed in the eyes of the general public, or permanently disgraced and stigmatized. Some of this is based on the nature of what they did to sully their reputation, but an equally important role is played by how aggressively their PR people try to rehabilitate their image. My group began our presentation by offering pictures of ten celebrities and asking people to say what the first thing that came to mind when they saw them was. Not surprisingly, no one answered with the reason the celebrity is famous. Instead, they attempted character judgments. For Taylor Swift, they regarded her as innocent, which her public image as presented by PR machinery pretty much has been. For Chris Brown, domestic abuse was the first thing that leapt to people's minds. Interestingly, Robert Downey, Jr., who had a very public bout with drug abuse and alcoholism in the 1990s and early 2000s, didn't receive any negative comments from our audience. It would seem that his has been one of the most successful PR rehabilitation campaigns. His starring role in the two wildly successful Iron Man films, as well as his apparently exponentially increasing handsomeness, have saved his reputation from being tainted by his earlier problems. Other celebrities, like the late, great Michael Jackson, will probably never have their former reputations restored to them. Again, some of that is the nature of the PR crisis, and some of it is the PR itself.

Unfortunately for celebrities, it seems that most Americans are onto their attempts at restoring their reputations. The concepts of positive spin and PR campaigns have become all too familiar to the public, and their cynicism has become so pervasive that many celebrities (and companies) trying to recover from affronts to their reputation are judged as being mere purveyors of PR and not truly "changed." This perceived awareness that so many people have of the PR industry puts both PR firms and their clients in a tough spot, but there's always genuine success stories, like Robert Downey, Jr.'s and Michael Vick's – whose dog-fighting past is easier to forget when he's volunteering for the Humane Society and throwing touchdown passes. PR firms are involved in plenty of other work, but some of the most fascinating is the work they do with celebrities.