As seen in PR Tactics, October, 2003...

Off Court:

Is Kobe Bryant Recieving the Right PR Counsel?

By Alan Pell Crawford

You know you're in trouble when you're getting advice on managing your reputation from Mike Tyson.

That's what it has come to for Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, arrested July 4 on allegations of felony sexual assault. The case has garnered worldwide attention, even prompting the likes of former heavyweight champ Tyson, a convicted felon who once threatened to eat an opponent's children, to offer his opinion on "Access Hollywood" in late August.

There's little disaggreement among PR practicioners who have counseled other high-profile clients through similar difficulties that Bryant is not getting the advice he needs. If he is, they say, he is doing a good job of hiding the fact. The defense team seems to be in charge of all communications — which lead attorney Pamela Mackey reportedly insisted on before taking the case — and the lawyers are making a mess of it.

For starters, Bryant made an appearance during ESPN's glitzy ESPY Awards program on July 16, less than two weeks after his arrest in Colorado. He was officially charged July 18 with a single count of felony sexual assault against a 19-year-old woman at an exclusive spa where he was staying when he came to Colorado for knee surgery. If convicted, he faces four years to life in prison.

The basketball superstar's high-profile appearance at the ESPY Awards was only the first of many PR goofs that Bryant has made, those interviewed for this article say.

"You knew things were not being handled properly when Kobe made his first court appearance Aug. 6," says Michael Paul, president of Manhattan-based MGP & Associates PR, who has represented Muhhammad Ali and troubled former New York Jets player Mark Gastineau. "The judge ordered him to fly back to Colorado to show that he was not going to be given any special treatment because he's Kobe Bryant. The point was to make Kobe show respect for the court, and what did he do? He shows up in this relaxed California look, with no necktie. That may sound like a little thing, but it says that Kobe assumes he can still call the shots and is going to do it his way no matter what anybody else thinks. It also sends the message that he is not taking the charge against him as the serious matter that it is."

Bryant may have every legal right to wear whatever he wants to court, but the choice he made was still a PR blunder. And this is a case in which, whether the lawyers know it or not, the effectiveness of PR efforts can have a significant impact in the courtroom as well as outside of it.

"This is the latest in a series of cases, starting with O.J. Simpson and continuing through Martha Stewart, that highlight the intersection of media and litigation," says James F. Haggerty, president of The PR Consulting Group, Inc., attorney and author of "In The Court of Public Opinion: Winning Your Case With Public Relations." He says that it was significant that the first thing the attorney said was that they weren't going 'to try this case in the press,' and that she said it at a July 18 press conference where Bryant came out with his wife and made a tearful confession of adultery.

"No matter whether the attorney knew it or not not, this was a tacit admission that the case was indeed going to be tried in the press, and lawyers no longer have any choice in the matter, Haggerty says. "The question isn't whether a case will be tried in the court of opinion, but how well."

PR practicioners say Bryant and his defense team seem almost obtuse about the realities of the situation.

"From the beginning, the lawyers seem to have had this knee-jerk reaction that this is not about public relations but about law, but you can no longer separate the two," Haggerty says. "I've even heard that if the lawyers had come out more aggressively in the beginning, and mounted their defense in a public way,. there may have been no case filed at all. Nothing emboldens a prosecutor like a fumbling response from the defense. Several weeks went by, while the prosecutors were moving forward, with silence from the defense."

The defense may have been quiet, but the defendant, unfortunately, was not. For instance, days after admitting in the July 18 press conference that he had cheated on his wife Vanessa, he bought her a $4 million eight-carat, purple diamond ring.

"It looked like a payoff for sticking by him," say Roland Lazenby, who teaches a communications course at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Va., and has written several books on the NBA and produced a syndicated television documentary, "Kobe Bryant — Destiny's Child." "But I know Kobe, and he keeps his own counsel. The press conference, the ring — that was Kobe speaking from the heart, not from the head."

Even Lazenby, who is sympathetic to Bryant, concedes that Bryant's appearance at the Teen Choice Awards in August did not go well.

After winning "Favorite Male Athlete" on the awards show, which was taped Aug. 2 to be aired Aug. 6, Bryant concluded his acceptance speech with a quote paraphrasing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere." (His speech was not aired in the final version of the show.)

"Kobe is the son of a millionaire who grew up in an Italian villa and went to prep school in Philadelphia. Playing the race card, even if he now does feel a sense of victimization, is not going to work for him," Lazenby says.

Even the public appearances with his wife may have backfired. "Showing up and putting on this lovey-dovey act and then making a public admission of adultery the very next day doesn't wash," says Jon Newman, partner in the Hodges Partnership in Richmond, Va. "It gave the impression of someone who had been assured that the charges were going to be dropped and that he was going to be exonerated. When, less than 24 hours later, the charges were filed and he held that press conference, he looked foolish."

Handle With Care

Looking foolish may be the least of Bryant's problems, but it is still a serious concern. "If every aspect of this case is not handled properly, Kobe can be exonerated of the criminal charges and still be ruined for life," says Paul, who teaches a course in reputation management for athletes in crisis at New York University. Paul cites the O.J. Simpson case as an example of this. While Johnny Cochran, Simpson's defense attorney, came out of the case well, Simpson's reputation suffered. "All the hard work that O.J. had done through the years — in football, in movies, as a pitchman — was destroyed," Paul explains. "Cochran came out with a better reputation than he had ever had. He's the one who had the good public relations working for him."

In the short term, Bryant's team has failed to take command of the aspects of their client's predicament that can be controlled, says Dean G. Bender, of Bender/Helper Impact (then Bender Goldman and Helper), the Los Angeles firm that represented children's TV star Paul (Pee Wee Herman) Reubens after his July 1999 arrest for lewd behavior in a Sarasota, Fla., adult theater.

"In the first few days of that situation, we took control, which meant getting our own security guys to get Reubens out of his parents' house, where he had been visiting when he was arrested, and to a remote house in the Connecticut countryside, where there was no easy access," Bender says. "Meanwhile we looked very carefully for just the right opportunity for him to make an appearance before an audience we knew would be on his side."

Bender's firm arranged for Reubens, as Pee Wee Herman, to appear onstage to introduce the 1991 MTV Music Video Awards. "We had the whole thing so tightly orchestrated that even the announcer didn't know Pee Wee was going to appear. We whisked him up to the stage door, rushed him into the theater and got him onstage, while the announcer said, 'And now, a longtime friend of MTV,' and Pee Wee came out, and said, 'Heard any good jokes lately?' And the place just erupted," Bender says. Within weeks, Herman was offered an appearance in "Batman Returns" which, Bender says, showed that Hollywood had already forgiven him.

"The severity of the situation may be different, but the lesson to draw is the same — you have to control these things carefully or they're not going to work. We made absolutely sure that during the three- or four-week period nothing went wrong," he adds.

Bender says he was fortunate because his firm recieved complete cooperation from Reubens' business team, including his lawyers. PR practitioners are lucky when they can command such respect. Pat Korten, who advised the family of JonBenet Ramsey after the Boulder, Colo., girl's 1996 murder, says gaining the attorney's confidence is critical.

Much of Korten's efforts went toward debunking rumors, which required a great deal of background work with reporters. "Just limiting the misinformation that flies around in cases like these is a hugely important job," says Korten, who worked for U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese. "But your ability to do that also depends on your ability to inspire trust, in this case not just from the lawyers, but from the press."

Worldwide Media Scrutiny

No matter how bright he may think he is, the ordinarily self-assured Bryant should know by now that it won't be enough — in the courts or before the general public — to follow his own instincts. He is, by all accounts, a capable interviewee but, from now on, his well-honed skill with basketball beat reporters is of limited value.

Bryant, who is used to dealing with sports writers, will face worldwide media when the Lakers open their training camp in Hawaii in October — right around the time of his Oct. 9. preliminary hearing in Colorado.

"He is going to have to learn quickly to be nimble with the other reporters, the tabloid guys," says Chip Tuttle of Conover Tuttlle in Lynfield, Mass., which last year represented the estate of Ted Williams and the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and Breeder's Cup in its Pick 6 betting scandal.

"The 'Hard Copy,'" daytime TV crowd — the reporters and the people who follow these kind of cases as entertainment — can be challenging, Tuttle says. "In today's media environment, you have Web sites thrown up for the sole purpose of reporting rumors and concocting theories about them," he says.

Over the long haul — and this case shows every sign of dragging on for months to come — Bryant's team must pursue a relentless campaign that does not allow itself to become distracted.

"In litgation, unlike conventional crisis communication, there will be thousands of pages of documents, and it is easy to get sidetracked into responding to the sordid specifics of the case," Haggerty says. "You cannot let that happen. You have got to assert your side of the case — that, whatever happened, it was consensual — over and over, day after day. And so far Kobe's people aren't doing that, and it will get far worse for them before it gets better."

Bryant's team runs serious risks with commonly used dirty tactics, such as attempting to sully the reputation of the accuser. Encouraging the circulation of rumors as a way to cast doubt on their client's guilt may also backfire.

"That would mean you're going to get Kobe news day after day, and even if some of that news may plant doubt in people's minds, it is still destroying whatever is left of his reputation," Paul says. "As time goes by, especially when no one from the defense is hammering away at the message you've agreed on, it is just going to get worse." —

Copyright 2003 PR Tactics.

Reprinted with permission from the Public Relations Society of America. www.prsa.org.