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The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson
The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson pulls back the curtain on the PR moves driving today's biggest stories. Join Molly each week as she decodes the strategy behind the headlines, revealing the hidden tactics at play. With her insider perspective, you’ll learn why these PR moves matter, who’s calling the shots, and whether they’re a success or a crash-and-burn moment. Expect sharp insights, straight talk, and an insider look at what’s really going on behind the scenes.
The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson
293: Year in Review: 2024's Disasters, Recoveries, and Lessons Learned
They’re back and ready to dissect the year’s biggest communications fiascos. I’m joined by Warren Weeks and John Perenack, my Candian colleagues in crisis behind the Reputation Town podcast, to break down 2024’s most cringe-worthy PR disasters. We’re talking about brand meltdowns, public figures who just couldn’t keep it together, and major corporations fumbling their way through social backlash. From outrageous missteps to the frantic damage control that followed, you’ll hear why these moments matter—and how they’ve changed the game for everyone trying to stay ahead of the chaos.
This isn’t your standard highlight reel. We’re peeling back the layers and diving into what sparked each scandal, what really set people off, and how organizations tried (or failed) to make it right. It’s all about shining a light on what worked, what flopped, and what we should keep in mind for the future. Grab your headphones and get ready for an honest, insightful, and refreshingly down-to-earth look at the year’s most unforgettable PR train wrecks.
And by the way, if you want to stay ready for any crisis, head to mollymcpherson.com/crisis-checklist and grab your free Crisis Response Checklist. Trust me, it’s a resource every communicator needs.
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© 2025 The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson
Hey there, welcome to the PR Breakdown, where I pull back the curtain on the biggest scandals, pr missteps and comebacks of the year. I'm your host, molly McPherson, here to help you understand what happened, why it happened and what you can learn from it. It is that time of year again the Crisis of the Year Review. Joining me today are my go-to colleagues in crisis, warren Weeks and John Paranac, my two Canadian colleagues in crisis, who are breaking down the year's most unforgettable PR disasters and how some managed to turn their chaos into control. Now, as you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking, jeez, I hope this doesn't happen to me or my company, I have a tool for you. You can head on over to my website, mollymcphersoncom slash crisis checklist and you can grab your free crisis response checklist. It's a 10-step cheat sheet to help you respond to a crisis. Trust me, it's a resource every communicator and business owner needs. Now let's dive in. Hey, warren and John, welcome back to the PR Breakdown for our year in review. Are you excited?
Speaker 1:I'm super excited, excited to talk about bad stuff.
Speaker 2:We always love to talk about the bad stuff and break it down. We are each going to give, ideally, maybe two or three. Whatever we'll do around Robin and discuss what we consider doesn't necessarily have to be the top PR crisis, but a notable PR crisis from 2024. Why we think that any nuance to the story, any learning, and then the other two will jump in with their context and their thoughts. Are you up for it?
Speaker 1:Sounds good, All right.
Speaker 2:Warren, give us one sentence who you are, what you do.
Speaker 1:I have been in the communications business 30 years, which I know is hard to believe. He looks so young, they say on audio um, a media training coach based in Canada, and uh love chatting about issues and crisis stuff.
Speaker 2:Me too, John. How about you?
Speaker 3:I'm a 25 plus year uh crisis communications um consultant, working from Toronto as well.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, anyone who listens to my podcast knows exactly who you two are, and let's jump in because everybody wants to hear. So let's start alphabetical order. Actually, I'm going to go with John.
Speaker 3:Let's start with you. What's on your list? So the one that topped my list. I went to look back at the year and everything that we've sort of seen happen in PR media, and I wanted to start with Boeing, because that actually kicked off in January of 2024. And, as people might remember, there was an Alaska Air flight where an unbolted part of the airplane flew off in mid-flight and, as a result, boeing had yet another crisis to manage. And, of course, this is the same plane that had been the source of two crashes, I think a couple of years prior.
Speaker 3:And I look back as I was preparing for this and just seeing what the company was saying. The thing that I wanted to drill down on was when this happened. There was a lot of statements from the company along the lines of Boeing is accountable for what happened. There was a lot of statements from the company along the lines of Boeing is accountable for what happened. Whatever the specific cause of this accident might turn out to be, this can't happen. We're going to turn this around. Our customers deserve better and for me, it was a great example of where you might be using all the right words, but when the actions of the company don't match the thing you're talking about, there's no credibility and obviously that company has a long way to go to rehabilitate itself. When I look back at the lessons that others can take from what we saw, this is a great example of showing that crisis and reputation repair has to start with the things you do and it can't be fixed by words, because the words aren't going to do it itself.
Speaker 2:Said Warren any chance Boeing was on your list.
Speaker 1:Boeing has, frankly, been on everyone's list in this business for five years when those two airplanes crashed and the thing that I remember most is that they took. I think it was eight months from the second crash until Dennis Mullenberg. I think it was eight months from the second crash until Dennis Mullenberg, who was the CEO at the time, gave that really half-assed apology. You know we got some things wrong and I thought, for all the families who have been devastated forever, that was just too late, too little, especially for such a well-funded, publicly traded company. Now you've got them stranding astronauts. There are people within the company who said that they would never fly on those planes. People who build them because they see the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. The Boeing whistleblowers seem to be a very clumsy bunch. Also, I don't want to get all tinfoil hat quite yet. I'm sure we'll get there, but I'm not surprised. John brought that up and it just shows you you can't great crisis management. It's not just writing a check.
Speaker 2:Well, this shows that my planning was poor. So it's feeding right into what Boeing does. Because Boeing was on my list here, I thought I was bringing in an outlier, because it happened a while ago, I mean beginning of the years when we heard of the blunder. And then, warren, you remembered the whole astronaut piece of it as well, and they're still, am I correct? They're still up there, they're not coming back until February, and Elon Musk has to come in and save the day. So maybe that's part of your crisis plan. If Elon Musk is saving you, then you are definitely going to remain in crisis.
Speaker 2:I think a bigger part of their problem as well is in the management from you mentioned, dennis Muhlenberg, warren, down to the CEO that followed him and I'm losing his name, and he had to leave as well is that Boeing is stuck in the status quo. They still consider themselves such a powerhouse and what they do is always the right thing, but their stock in the reputation game is so low and I don't know how they could ever regain that trust, because that's what it comes down to. Who trusts Boeing? Not many, including the whistleblowers. All right, warren. Next.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to go with one that's hot off the press and actually still unfolding here in Canada, and that's Justin Trudeau, ourudeau, our esteemed prime minister. This is a story that has made international headlines this week, so his finance minister and deputy prime minister resigned yesterday in a pretty scathing letter non-confidence. And I remember five or six years ago seeing these trucks with bumper stickers and flags saying you know F Trudeau, and I thought, well, that's kind of rude, that doesn't seem very nice. And you've only seen that sentiment grow and grow and grow, to the point where I would have to say that he has had one of the roughest stretches of 12, 24 months.
Speaker 1:You know, his marriage has collapsed, everyone seems to hate the guy, and here you have this political dynasty is maybe not the right word but his father, pierre Trudeau, classic Canadian politician. It was 40 years ago that Pierre Trudeau did his famous walk in the snow. After 15 years leading the country, he decided that he was not going to do it anymore and, for whatever reason, his son is not getting the message, and so not only is he tarnishing his own reputation, that of the country, he's also, I would say, tarnishing his family name, and you know, we'll see if that changes down the road, but right now he's one of the most despised people in the country.
Speaker 2:John, what do you think?
Speaker 3:fellow countrymen, I'm going to take not a contrarian view of Warren's, but I'm going to pile on to the former finance minister. So the day that she resigned, she was supposed to be giving what's in effect like a budget speech in parliament, and what apparently happened was on the Friday before the prime minister asked her to step down from her role and she refused to, and so he effectively fired her. But she decided to quit before he could follow through with that and it threw the country into turmoil. And that isn't what you do when you're acting in the best interest of your country. In the US we saw Joe Biden. Democrats thought it was in the best interest of his country to resign and let someone else run, and in this case this person decided you know, I'm going to throw a flaming bomb out into the political discourse and really disrupt everything. So from a reputation standpoint, doesn't look great on her, doesn't look great on the government, doesn't look great, justin trudeau.
Speaker 3:So all around it's a bit of a dumpster fire and I'll add that yeah you've probably seen this the president or president-elect trump, possibly referring to the prime minister as the governor now.
Speaker 2:Oh, is that true?
Speaker 3:Is that true?
Speaker 2:The governor of Canada.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a good jump off point for where I wanted to come in.
Speaker 2:When Trudeau was having, I saw a big problem was when I happened to be in Canada and I was in Calgary and I was watching the news and I was noting, wow, like Justin Boy is having his Biden moment and he seems like someone now a US citizen and I will admit I do not follow Canadian politics as much as I should as a northern neighbor here to your south, immediate south but he had a lot of confidence, a lot of people followed him, he had the looks, he had the lineage, he had the family and sometimes I think political families they tend to coast and ride on that longer than they should.
Speaker 2:And it's that again, that status quo, that I think he felt like he had more power behind him and more, you know, just more likability behind him. And then it bottomed out and it was interesting, the backlash and how the backlash in Canada from the conservative who's who's running, the conservative who is blasting, yeah, so got a lot of traction, just like Trump did in the US. And, and, john, you know how Warren shoved it down our throats about the election. That's correct, it was correct, but I felt it smacked of the same thing. So right now he is dealing with chaos and now with the tariffs, and with Trump looming now on that issue, he's leaving in a very vulnerable position.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well check this out. So justin trudeau literally just tweeted something, um, and the fact that he is that he allows um comments on his tweets, I'm like you gotta give it to the guy. So this is 43 minutes ago and this is on um, what? Uh? Tuesday afternoon. We're stepping up to keep our border strong and secure by deploying new helicopters, drones and surveillance tools, by adding new scanners and sniffer dog teams to stop and seize fentanyl, by cracking down on money laundering that's funding cross-border crime. Where the hell was that over the last? You know however many years he's been in power? For two terms, john's smiling. He's talking pretty tough now.
Speaker 2:That and that I would say, is a direct result of trump bullying him on twitter 100 yeah, oh, that's interesting, because what causes so many crises it's just ego or fear, it's the human reaction uh behind it. Uh, okay, so we had boeing, we had justin trudeau. I've already lost myself. Where are we? Is it on?
Speaker 3:me.
Speaker 2:Boeing. Justin Trudeau, now your turn. Oh, now it's my turn, okay, well, you know that this was somewhat of a given. I could go corporate, but I'll go with more of my mainstream culture. But it's not just for the celebrity of it all. I do think that there is a lesson in here, just a corporate one, and in here, just a corporate one, and that is a very recent riff from the headlines Jay-Z and the reason why I'm mentioning Jay-Z is he's not just a musician, he is like a corporation.
Speaker 2:This guy is worth $2 billion, he is huge and the significance of his crisis is how far one can fall, especially when they're affiliated with so many other brands. Now, last week, he came out with a fiery statement after he was included in an amended civil lawsuit with Sean Diddy Combs. And there is this pit bull lawyer down in Houston, texas, who wants to bring down Combs and Jay-Z. He promised there was going to be big names coming down and he delivered with Jay-Z. Now, what I found interesting on Sunday night, when I was trying to go to bed, I got a text from an Access Hollywood producer saying can you go on and talk about it tomorrow? You know about his statement. So, just like you two would do.
Speaker 2:I analyzed that statement within an inch and I was trying to get in the mindset of Jay-Z when he was writing Was this vetted by anyone else? Like what was the purpose behind it? So the rhetoric was so fiery, the tone was defensive, it was sharp and it made a mistake. That I see in all of the crises. Where there is guilt and that is blame, it's when they do not discuss anything about what the accusation is or take any accountability. It's just I'm going to point the finger elsewhere and I'm going to blame. And yes, you might get a lot of news chatter and you might get your fans following you, but that is a defensive tactic that never, ever, ever works.
Speaker 2:So I think he will be hit with this, but there's going to be collateral damage with his wife, beyonce there's a lot of scrutiny there. She's huge but also brands like the NFL. He's the guy running the halftime show. Now the NFL has to decide do we want to affiliate ourselves? Then there's Disney. I mean, 24 hours after this news, or 48 hours after the news, 24 hours after a statement, he's walking the red carpet with his wife and his daughter for Mufasa. She's the voice of Mufasa and Access Hollywood did ask me well, what do you think? What are they going to do? Are they going to show up? And I said, just based on that statement alone and the rhetoric and the anger and the blame and the distraction, oh, he'll show up, he'll 100%, and that's what he's doing. So that's mine.
Speaker 3:Don't you think that, especially in the past, since 2016, trump version 1.0, the whole, I guess, more proactive and aggressive public relations response to these types of things become much more the accepted way of dealing with things? Like in the past, I think there was a trend toward oh, we can't say that, we have to be more conservative, and now it's like we're just going to punch back, we're just going to be really aggressive, we're going to push back, and we've seen time and time again people able to muscle through these crises as a result, and that wasn't the case before, as I recall. But I don't know what's your thought on that.
Speaker 2:Well, quickly, John, you work with clients just like I do. I mean, Warren, you're a media trainer, so you're getting that feedback in the room and I get the feedback in the room. But, John, are you finding that your clients want you to fight back more and not to take accountability or own anything Like? Do you give into it or do you still counsel them to stay the course?
Speaker 3:You know what it varies depending on the situation. But I find, because I work with clients in the U? S and clients in Canada, that there is a definite difference between what American audiences are comfortable with and what Canadian audiences are comfortable with.
Speaker 2:So Canadians are?
Speaker 3:much more open and much more agreeable to taking a more proactive not proactive, but, you know, push back much more aggressively than Canadians typically tend to. I think it's changing, but I definitely see a difference.
Speaker 2:Interesting Warren. What about you?
Speaker 1:I saw the comedian Jimmy Carr the other day had a great line. I wish I would have thought of this. He goes. It would appear now that Jay-Z has 100 problems.
Speaker 1:This is one where, if you kind of zoom out and look at all because the whole the Diddy and the Jeffrey Epstein and all of the celebrities who've been kind of implicated in the rumors it's interesting. You know, ellen leaving the country. You got to read Hoffman linked with Epstein talking about leaving the country. I'm not saying it, I'm just like it's very interesting to see and you see a lot of people scrambling and a lot of positioning and a lot of jockeying and I think this is going to be one of the biggest stories of this year. And who's that guy?
Speaker 1:Kat Williams, the comedian who was on some podcast like six, seven months ago, predicted all of this, like he dropped names, said it's gonna happen in a very kind of interesting way and so, uh, there are many shoes still to drop his statement. I thought why. I read that online and it wasn't his name at the top, it was his production company or whatever. I read and it sounded a little unhinged to me. It sounded like a really rich, pissed off big ego person blasted it out and just hit sand on the couch. That's what.
Speaker 2:Well close, and the Access Hollywood producer told me this that he originally posted it to his ex account, took it down and then put it to Roc Nation, where it stayed. And I'm just looking at it that maybe the lawyer got involved and said let's keep your account clean and let's just keep this and keep it on your business.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, warren, how about?
Speaker 1:you, oh, this is my next one now, yep, okay, so we've got a couple to go here because I knew we'd have some duplicates, so I've got a little. I got some, some spares here. I'm going to go with Sam Altman, the guy who is the creator of OpenAI, because this is a story. This is really interesting to me because this is a you know, chatgpt is a tool that probably all of us are using on a daily basis. Fascinating, I think it's almost like magic the way that it works. So it's a really cool platform. We'll probably take all our jobs someday, but for the time being, really cool.
Speaker 1:And what I find interesting about this guy is, if you look at all the things that have been happening around the company and we're talking about corporate reputations and personal reputations, that kind of thing almost every significant employee at that company co-founder, chief scientist, researchers, chief technology officer have all left the real heavy lifters, the real pillars of this company, including one of the co-founders. And also Elon Musk was the guy who started the company. So they're all gone and he's the only one who's really left and I have to ask myself why. So he was being questioned by the government at some point I don't know what month it was earlier this year and they made a big. They were trying to say, like follow the money, like how much money? What's your interest? How much equity do you have?
Speaker 1:And the clip is really funny and from a media training standpoint, I took a look at it today and he says this line he's like I have no equity in open AI, I'm doing it because I love it, which on the surface sounds kind of cheese ball. And it turns out now that they're taking open AI, turning it private, and he stands to, I think, profit by about $10 or $11 billion right out of the gate. He's got a $4 million sports car that someone took a picture of him driving in. So there's a little bit of hypocrisy here. And if you look at that clip where he says I have no equity in open AI, I'm doing this because I love it.
Speaker 1:What's interesting to me as a media trainer is he's shaking his head the whole time.
Speaker 1:He's saying one thing but his body language is saying another and so I really believe, as cool as chat GPT is and all the tools that they have and Sora and Dolly and all those, I think we're dealing with the Lego and Nerf versions of this and they've got access to the stuff that you would just blow the top of your head right off. And I think those people my read is the people that were in that company and Ilya and all those other folks who were there have a bit of a better moral compass and something scared the bejesus out of them and that's why they left the company. So this dude kind of gives me the creeps. On a personal level. I don't like what I'm seeing from him on a professional level and he's kind of saying one thing and doing another, another, and when you combine that with some of the most powerful technology in the universe, I think that's a really bad combo all that okay, so that's a good one, and you brought up a lot of good points about the background as well.
Speaker 2:So, john, what do you think?
Speaker 3:so I'm going to build on what warren's saying, because that congressional testimony that warren was just talking about, where he talked about how he has no equity you know, one thing we also do is we prepare people for this kind of testimony to parliamentary committees or, in the case of the US, congressional committees, and credibility and reputation is huge there too, because you can't go in front of them, as he did, and say I've got no stake in it and then all of a sudden a year later say, oh, actually, it happened, that this deal got done.
Speaker 3:Now I have $10 billion of equity in the company. That makes you very, very unbelievable. So the next time they go and next time they have to advocate for things and because the regulatory structure around artificial intelligence is still being developed, there's going to be lots of room for him to do that. And having a great reputation in order to show that we're the good guys, we want it done right, the right way and get the regulation to go the way you want, is directly impacted by these kinds of needless. Frankly, I don't want to say he's lying, because he probably was true at the time, but it was incredible to think that that was never going to be the case and he would never have some sort of stake in the company. Like, nobody works for free effectively because they love it, unless they're already like a billionaire.
Speaker 2:Yes, if there was another reason and whenever I'm looking at a statement or a direct quote, I always want to look at the intention behind the quote why would he specifically say I'm not gaining from this, or equity, whatever the specific words that he used? Well, it's because he was gaining something. That wasn't equity, but it was something else. You know, it's threading a needle with their words and they wordsmith it in a way where they can't get called out for lying or especially if it's testimony. I mean, they certainly can't lie. But, sam Altman, what that started is you know.
Speaker 2:Going back to Warren, the reputation part came with the board, with the resignations and the board asking him to leave on firing him based on how he treated people, that he was secretive, that he was abusive, that he just wasn't a good change agent, but possibly for bad. So it's safe to assume that he knew something and he was going to gain from something. Maybe it was just the intelligence that he knew would pay off down the road. Warren, you said it it's scary the amount of power, and when that power is given to just a few guys like a Sam Altman and an Elon Musk, it does get frightening. It's not even just the money, it's the power and the amount of intel that they now have together. It's frightening, agreed, okay, all right, john. What do you have next?
Speaker 3:Okay, so this is also a recent one and it's still a developing story, but I want to go to New Jersey and drones. So people I'm sure have been following on TikTok and other platforms all these videos of drones flying around at night. Some of them are probably airplanes, but there are so many things in the air, it seems, at night over New Jersey that it's kind of incredulous as to what's going on. And the government's message track on this has been consistently don't worry, it's not a foreign adversary, it's not a threat. However, if one crashes, make sure you call the fire department and we'll bring in the hazmat crews. And when they're asked questions like well, how do you know it's not a threat if you don't know what it is, there's no good answer.
Speaker 3:So clearly, this is one of the situations where there is a story that is not being fully explained or fully told, and so what is happening is the pressure is amping up and up and up almost on a daily basis, it seems, and it seems reminiscent of back earlier this year and I don't want to spoil it if we end up going there but another international story where it wasn't really clear about what was happening, with a very famous individual and all of a sudden, before you know it, it was weeks and weeks of speculation and videos and crazy stuff happening. I kind of feel like the same thing is happening here and I have no idea where this is going to end, but it's clear that the communications strategy that's being implemented is not going to solve or tamp this down. It's actually only making it worse. I don't know what. I'm sure you guys have been following it as well.
Speaker 2:Um, in the us especially, that's yeah, oh, I see, okay, um, okay, but yeah, so the drones. Now let's, let's, let's hone in on the drones. Who, in your opinion, would be the official spokesperson? Well we like who owns it?
Speaker 3:no one owns it, because we've seen the the pentagon speak about it, we've seen governors speak about it, we've seen congressional, state level-level and federal-level congressional spokespeople speak about it, and it is just a confusing, swirling mass of mystery. At this point, Literally and figuratively.
Speaker 2:Warren, what do you think of the drone issue?
Speaker 1:I think it's interesting. Who has not talked about it? And the first person that comes to mind is Elon Musk. If someone has the wherewithal to tell you what these things even if it was a guess he would probably be you know the things, the chopsticks and the rockets he would be the best guy. He's tweeting 92 hours a day memes out the yin yang and nothing about this. I find that curious. So I feel like it is the government. There's been. I don't know if you saw the video. There's a guy on the weekend said you know, he says that they're sniffing for a nuclear radiation and there's some kind of warhead that's been smuggled. Now I don't know if that's true. Hopefully that's not the case. Um, that story is getting a lot of traction. I don't know, but I think it's the government.
Speaker 1:The lack of transparency is you know, say what you will about Donald Trump. He has said that once he gets in there he's going to release everything. Release the hounds, kennedy, elvis, aliens. You're going to get, you're going to get all of it the Epstein list. And this is one of those things where you know, I think people kind of forget who kind of runs the show the taxpayers, the government's supposed to work for the people. And when there's spaceships flying around your cities and not disclosing that to people when there could be potential harm, I think is not very cool. So hopefully we find out what they are. If they're aliens, we're going to find out sooner or later, but I don't think that.
Speaker 3:I don't think it's that, but drones aside when you think about trying to craft a communication strategy to deal with something like this. Like the enemy is always those opaque areas that are just going to draw more questions in, and everything they say just leaves huge areas of of you know.
Speaker 1:So there's only two options. There's huge areas of, you know, speculation. There's only two options. There's only two options. Then Either they don't know what they're doing or it's very, very bad, like those are the only two things. Either these people are completely incompetent or this is so bad we can't tell you. Those are the only two options.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we have to go back to the beginning Now. The first time we heard about the drone story was last Thursday evening. Whenever there's an event happening, I always look at the time of it. When is it happening in the news cycle? Time of day? Are we getting close to the weekend, and so this was a Thursday night event, and so we're heading into Friday holiday weekend? I don't know, but sometimes the drone story to me is a story where you don't want to. It's the Oz. It is Oz and the green curtain Pay no attention to what's happening here. So I think you're both onto something I mean.
Speaker 2:Personally, I do think it's also a messy, sloppy government project. And it's now you know. It started in New Jersey because, hey, let's go to a state where they're too busy doing their own thing. No one's going to pay attention to the chaos in Jersey, but then it bleeds out into the entire Northeast. But you have to Boston. It's even in upstate New York, but you know, when I ask that question, who's the spokesperson? It's like they can fall in between the cracks.
Speaker 2:The Department of Defense announces that they're drones. They confirm the presence of them, but they don't have to say why. They just have to confirm it. Everybody says just a little, but nobody knows who owns it. And then, warren, when you mentioned President Trump said how he's going to release the hounds. To me that's like another distraction technique. I'm going to put everything out there so everybody talks about it and they're not paying attention to me anymore. So I think that we're looking at like those are two political strategies at play and neither one might work. I think they're both messy and risky, but to me they seem like obvious PR plays Like what do you think, what do you guys think?
Speaker 1:Well, there were. If you look at 1952, there were sightings of drones that apparently looked exactly like the ones we're seeing now over the White House or the Capitol in Washington DC in 1952. So, you know, you can go down that rabbit hole. I had a guy on my podcast last year who is Canada's preeminent UFO researcher and he's not one of the people who kind of thinks they're all aliens, he's a professional skeptic. But he has like 4,700 sightings from Canada that he has looked into and we talked a little bit about that one. So it's, you know, it's, I don't know, it's quite mysterious. It's one of those stories like Bigfoot, it's just it's really interesting to look at the sheer numbers of them and the fact that no one has given a clear explanation, like why are they all glowing? If you wanted to hide it, they could be dark, you know. So it's like people want these to be seen and they're only from like sundown to midnight. It's kind of weird.
Speaker 2:It is. There's something at play, right, Sean?
Speaker 3:Definitely, and I think you're right. You know, obviously the government knows what it is, but they're just not saying what it is for what reason.
Speaker 2:So this will be interesting. Why don't we just draw attention to it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it'll be an interesting case study when it's all said and done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we'll draw attention to it, but we don't want to have to speak about it, so we're going to have these drones fly at night and over the weekend and during the holiday. So my last one. So we each had a top three. This is one ripped from the headlines lately big story, but I think it's going to reverberate into 2025 in terms of response, and that is UnitedHealth Group and UnitedHealthcare, with the CEO, unitedhealthcare, being gunned down Midtown Manhattan and we all know the story, you know. But what I found interesting is one the news cycle element of it that a CEO walking into an investor conference gets gunned down. But that really wasn't the top story. It suddenly became the manhunt was a huge story and the fact that you know Luigi now, as everyone knows, you know, was able to keep that story. He was running on the, you know for a couple days.
Speaker 2:But I paid attention to the story of the negative social media commentary. The story of the negative social media commentary how this is a tragedy, that you know a dad of two boys, you know Minnesota guy yes, ceo of a huge company, but just like typical guy, iowa farm boy does good and then gets gunned down and then the story becomes about the negative sentiment and it was interesting to see how even that negative sentiment, how that split. And we had two categories there One people who took glee in the fact that this man was killed. Others that said, oh, it's horrible that he's killed, but let's just focus on how broken the US healthcare system is. So now we have this heightened attention paid to healthcare, it wasn't a story about a guy being gunned down. It became about the broken healthcare system. Now the interesting aspect of it, now that Luigi has been caught, is over the weekend when I wrote an article for Forbes about it.
Speaker 2:I finished the article, I was ready to hit send and then I saw on X that someone leaked a video from the CEO, andrew Witte, from UnitedHealth Group talking. It was an all-hands call to the staff telling them all the good things, the legacy of Brian Thompson, the CEO, what they're doing now, what they're doing moving forward, all the things that a CEO should say on a call like that, but then dismiss the media as vitriolic, all the coverage and urged employees not to listen to the noise that internet noise. Now that's what I pay attention to, because that noise buried underneath that noise is very rich and fertile feedback that a company like that, one of the top health care insurers, should be listening to that. And how easy would it have been to fold care and concern and empathy yes, not just for the CEO, but all the other people who had been challenged, if not even died from the either improper health care or poor insurance or denials from insurance. So the story got away from him.
Speaker 2:Now here's the last piece of it that I find so interesting. That hasn't really been reported, but I read an article in the Washington Post I think it was yesterday where UnitedHealthcare employees are now doing a PR campaign a posthumous one for the CEO, brian Thompson, saying this is the guy who was raising the red flags on how they were treating their customers, the consumers, and that we have to do a better job reaching out to them. So it turns out, according to them, that he's the guy who is defending this and trying to make a change. And then the other piece of it. So now it's like a PR campaign, like a literal don't shoot the messenger type of campaign, like that was not your guy and also talked about it's because of the government, it's because of the doctors, it's because of the hospitals. So they blamed other people, but it is interesting that the CEO who was killed was the bootstrap farm kid who brought himself up to be a CEO, but the one who gunned him down was a money prep school kid from Maryland whose family owned long term care facilities, who was part of the system.
Speaker 2:So I think for 2025, it's like yes, the story is about the murder, but it's dismissing what people and what public opinion is telling you. Public opinion is fluid, but they're giving you a gift of letting you know. And how easy it could have been for Andrew Witte to come out and say you know what? It is broken, we want to fix it. And then, sure enough, what happens on Thursday or Friday morning? A guest essay in the New York Times, andrew Witte saying just it happened to be something I happened to write in Forbes about what he should have said. But he said what he should have said it's broken, we need to fix it. And how are we going to do that? So UnitedHealthcare, I think, is that story is going to have reverberations in 2025.
Speaker 3:Well said, and the thing that strikes me is when you just talked there about how that CEO talked about the noise that people should ignore. Well, that noise is really. They're the voices of people who feel like they've been taken advantage of by the insurance company. They've had their families hurt by the insurance company because something wasn't covered, or they're maybe now financially challenged because of the healthcare costs that the insurance company didn't cover, and that really just shows you an example of where the organization is disconnected with the people it's supposed to be serving. And, to your point, they could be listening for that and using that to build a stronger bond, despite the fact that their business is insurance and, yeah, they're not going to cover everyone all the time. But the fact that they're ignoring it and treating it like it's something that should be ignored just is a very unhealthy thing. That stuck out for me when I saw that leaked video well said, john warren.
Speaker 2:What do you think?
Speaker 1:luigi. Um, this is such an interesting story. The the angle of it that that has really kind of captivated me has been the uh, the media, and one of, I have to say, one of my um, I'm kind of like going into my next category here, but I was going to talk about the mainstream media's decline and I think it's taken a really sharp decline in terms of credibility, believability, reputation, everything else in the last year. And I know that Taylor Lawrence, friend of yours, had her on the pod, I know, but Was she?
Speaker 2:was she on your podcast? No?
Speaker 1:no, no, she was on yours, but you know, yeah, okay yeah. I'm a fan, I watch your show, so she and you know very polarizing journalist. But she basically tweeted something out like and people wonder why we want these CEOs dead? And she had a photo of a female CEO of another company. And then she was on Piers Morgan. I saw some clip with a bunch of talking heads and she was talking about the joy she felt when the CEO got whacked. That to me.
Speaker 2:Tell me, I cannot wait. Tell me what you think. So you saw the clip. Was she taken out of context or was it?
Speaker 1:She was back, she, she felt joy, she thought this was great, and then she, as she was sensing in the room, oh this is not really going very well, she was trying to backtrack. But yeah, she said it, she tweeted it, she said it, it's and it seems to be kind of in sync with her, her MO, and that's fine, that's her, that's her prerogative. But to me, the, the checks and balances of the, the media, have been just blown right off over the past 30 years and you've seen it little by little. I don't think you'd see the difference from one year to the next. But if you skip five years and you skip decades, the producers, the editors, the people, the grizzled newsroom people who would have stopped shit like that from making it out into the paper are not there anymore. And you're seeing a lot. You know there's a story today and I don't you know I was trying to fact check this but the Biden administration, through 11 agencies, had funneled $300 million of contracts into Reuters and you know, maybe that's shaping media narratives. So to me, that reaction from her and she was, she was not the only one, she's probably the most famous one and the one that I kind of heard first.
Speaker 1:But I saw today there were people who are getting tattoos of this guy shooting him on their leg and with the little, the little motto that he carved into the bullet. So I think you're going to see copycat incidents of this in 2025. Absolutely, and I think that's a really slippery slope If we want to fix things and I'm going a little outside my wheelhouse here but if the restaurant burns your chicken, do you kill the cook? If the bank shuts down your business because you're unprofitable, do you go and kill the branch manager? I think it's a really, really dangerous precedent. Of course, the system is really screwed up.
Speaker 1:There was a situation in Canada I don't know if you saw it on Twitter. There was a guy from Montreal had chest pains, went to the hospital, to ER. They told him you're not having a heart attack. He waited for six hours, went home, he just left and he ended up dying of an aortic aneurysm a couple days later. Guy was like 35 years old. So, yeah, the healthcare system is in chaos, but I'm not sure that shooting the CEO of a given company's the response, and then the media reaction on top of it, has been, I thought, kind of sickening.
Speaker 2:Okay, All right, John. What is your next one?
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm going to have as my last one a positive one. I mentioned, as we were talking, at a time I had one that I think was a really great example. Warren and I talked about it a few weeks ago, but earlier in October. People might remember that McDonald's had to stop selling I think it was quarter pounders because there was a E coli outbreak and the outbreak was traced back to, I think, onions from an onion supplier and then, in short order, working with this for disease control, the restaurant was able to get back on track and I would hazard a guess to say if you were to stop people on the street today, they would have a hard time remembering. This happened even just six weeks ago. Because the company did such an effective job, I thought of getting control of the situation, taking decisive action to resolve the problem, and not only that and again this is something I talked about before but putting the CEO out front and center, making him visible, having him speak right away, and he didn't want to get shot.
Speaker 3:Pardon me, he didn't want to get shot, but they weren't afraid to. Even in the face of a crisis like this and health crises are obviously something that restaurants, you know it's one of the last things they want but putting him out there having a really clear message, they were able to resolve this very quickly and they've continued to communicate about it, even though at the end of November or in mid-November, the CDC had sort of said we think everything's fine. Even into December, they still have the CEO talking about the sort of safety measures that the restaurant is continuing to adhere to to make sure that it's a safe place to eat. So I think it was a great example of how to manage a crisis and making sure that you're taking that more proactive approach and managing it down. I don't know, we talked about it before, but what did you guys think of that one?
Speaker 2:Warren, I'm going to jump in because I need to play off of one thing that John said. So I agree with everything that you're saying, but it was more of a reaction. Now I remember the McDonald's event because it's when I was in Canada and I was traveling and I went to before I spoke at my conference. I went to a crisis conference and the big mouth had to ask questions, you know, to this crisis expert Well, what do you think of McDonald's and the look? I haven't read any stories about that yet and I thought, oh, that was bad. I put them on the spot like that.
Speaker 2:But what slipped by when I was flying there, on the seat in front of me, was CNBC and someone who I work with kind of in the biz.
Speaker 2:Whenever something comes up, he tends to chirp me and he sent me a link to what was what their initial statement and I forgive me for not having it, it's yours, it's not mine, I don't have it at the ready, but it was someone within the McDonald's hierarchy and the line that they used. He was trying to couch it as not that big a deal. He was trying to minimize and he said it was. You know, it was just a few QPs from a distributor, like and we all know this, in our business you never use the jargon and you know calling it the QP and tried to minimize it. And that was the first mistake. And so McDonald's jumped on that because and then I was watching the CNBC coverage from my seat and they immediately started shifting it. And then, john, that's where they picked up and it was good, solid, calm straight from that point, but right out the gate they tried to dismiss it Interesting, so I missed that.
Speaker 3:And it is interesting, though, because when you find being in these price situations, there's always somebody around the table who is taking that approach. There's always somebody around the table who thinks that, well, we can just sort of low bridge this. If we just don't even talk about it or we minimize it, like you said, we'll be okay, and that is a recipe for not good outcomes.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and a bad quarter pounder too, a bad QP, but what it is, it's they don't want to take the hit. They take it personally, like no, no, no, we're not going to take the hit for this. It was just one QP, warren, what do you think?
Speaker 1:We tend to glamorize some of these reactions, like the best one and you've probably heard of Maple Leaf Foods, molly. If you go to communications PR school here in Canada, that's one of the canon things you have to take Maple Leaf Foods 2008, gigantic food retailer here in Canada, $5 billion a year revenues. They had a listeria crisis, 23 people died and that's our Tylenol moment here in Canada. They handled it perfectly, took everything off the shelves YouTube videos, press conferences fixed the problem. But if you look back to the first 24 hours, it was a similar sort of response. The people, the executives, they're all in fight or flight mode. They're freaking out. I remember the video of one of them going down some stairs and they didn't really grasp of it yet. They got it together within that first 24 hours.
Speaker 1:But we kind of forget the first bit in history. I think we're a little kinder to them and I think one of the reasons is transparency. Timeliness, truthfulness are kind of a rarity in the world of crisis management. So when someone does it really well, like McDonald's eventually was transparent, they told us all that they have the website, and so I think people gave them some credit for that, but I think it's very, very rare for a person or an organization to handle it perfectly right out of the gate. Usually there's a little bit of a stutter, a little bit of a false start, and then they get it together the ones that do anyway. So that's uh, and I haven't had a quarter pounder since then.
Speaker 2:I don't know Since then. Oh okay, all right. Okay, warren, how about you? Which one's your last one?
Speaker 1:So the one that I wanted to highlight is Paul Bissonnette, the hockey player. Are you familiar with this? He was in Arizona at a restaurant. This is a guy who was a Paranac Would you say. He was kind of like a goon in hockey that's not the right word, but he's kind of he's like a fire type of guy. He um let's take a look at his, his career stats here. So he's like a ex-nhler. He played a little bit for pittsburgh and then for phoenix. He played from 2008 to 2014 and I think his total points that he had, uh, accumulated was like 22 points a lot of penalty minutes.
Speaker 2:Can I point in, though, every time we do these roundups, you all you or John will always bring a hockey example. I just need to put that on. You have to stay true to the stereotype.
Speaker 1:I have to stay true to the Canadian brand. So November 24th, this gentleman is having dinner at Houston's in Scottsdale, arizona, and there's a couple of drunken kind of buffoons who are making a ruckus and they're kind of poking their hands. They're getting a little bit violent with some of the staff and it's really uncomfortable. It's family restaurant, there's all kinds of people there and anyone who wants to look at the story up it's really really fascinating. They have the 911 calls, they have the video of the fight and everything else. So, anyway, um, there's like six guys who are all kind of inebriated and they're getting in the face of some of these workers and it's really uncool. So this paul bisenet guy's looking around, he's by himself and he gets up and he goes and he grabs one of the guy's arms and says hey, buddy, if you don't get that hand down, we're gonna have some problems here. And then all these guys jump on him and start just beating the hell out of him. They brought him outside, kicking him in the head, like they're trying to do real damage to this guy. His shirt's ripped off, they end up in a CVS, they're just like a tumbleweed flying down. But he's fighting literally against six guys. And so you hear the 911 call where he was very Canadian, very polite, very complimentary to the kitchen. I found it funny he's on the 911 call talking about what great service the restaurant has and how nice these people are. But the reason I bring the story up, first of all I find it fascinating If you take a look at the mugshots of the six guys. It's so funny that one person did all this damage to them because they're all like messed up and heads.
Speaker 1:But the reason I bring this up is because Paul Beeson, to me, is a great example of the opposite of the typical arc of a hockey player's career. So usually you have that moment in the NHL and I think the average tenure in the NHL is like four years for the average player. They're not all the Wayne Gretzky's. They end up owning a tim hortons or a mcdonald's, they end up owning a car dealership and a lot of them, you know, go to the bottle and they kind of just glory days and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Here's a guy who I think his reputation is at its peak today. He is a commentator on tnt, he is a commentator on hockey night in canada and he's becoming more of a regular there. He's really actually pretty clever and funny and you know you'll see him on a panel with Wayne Gretzky. So he's literally sitting beside Wayne Gretzky and they're trading barbs and the biggest thing for me is, just as a human being, that you know if that's my daughter working in that restaurant and this guy got up to defend that person.
Speaker 1:To me this is a great example of people stepping up, doing the right thing and watching the video. It's really interesting to me that there's all kinds of other men there, not to be sexist, but like why did no one else get up and help this guy out, jump in on this fight? So there's a whole bunch of stuff going on there, but to me it's the opposite of the typical arc of a hockey player's career, and to me here's a guy who, when it came right down to it, could have stuck his head in his plate and minded his own business, but he got into it, got mixed up, and to me I think he's one of my best stories of the year.
Speaker 2:That is a great story and I love in the article where it says he vowed revenge on the six drunk golfers, as he called them, which is so Scottsdale. What do you think of your hockey player there, John?
Speaker 3:Well, the take I want to bring on him is he's a great example of someone who's used social media to reinvent himself. He was an early adopter on Twitter, now X, and he just sort of springboarded from that into the career that Warren just went through. So it's a great example of almost like an early content creator, someone using these platforms to lever themselves up to something bigger and better in their career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it has all the markings of a great story. It's an altercation and it's crazy behaviors, it's drunkenness, but it's also on video. It's perfect for social media and for coverage. And that's crazy behaviors, it's drunkenness, but it's also on video. It's perfect for social media and for coverage and that's why it gets lots of coverage. So that is a good story.
Speaker 2:So my last story I'll make it a quick one and it's really a throwback story, but it fast forwards into this week in the Los Angeles Times and it was one of the people who was swept up in the varsity blues scandal from a few years ago and I happened to listen to this story through Apple News. I get Apple News now because it busts the paywall on a lot of different media outlets that you wouldn't normally get. So I was listening to this article from the Los Angeles Times and this was from one of the admissions people from USC. So it was the woman who was involved, her name. She was the athletic administrator, donna Heinel, and she is now doing a recovery campaign. You know she wants to get her reputation back and the article is a profile. She worked with the LA Times on this and she starts the piece about how she gave her life and her family. They were all USC. They were USC all the way. When her father was buried, he was buried in his USC cap and she was so happy to work there.
Speaker 2:Then the narrative sweeps into how she got caught up in the culture of USC. So throughout the piece, as I was listening, I thought, oh, I can predict exactly where this is going. This is not going to be an accountability profile. This is going to be correcting the record and repairing the reputation. Now why I find this interesting?
Speaker 2:Heading into 2025, one of the quotes she said I did my job description and nowhere in time did I think this was nefarious. And she goes out and lays the story about how it was always done this way at USC and how this person told her to do this and she was only doing her job, and how unfair that this happened to her, that she got swept up and she ended up going to prison. And then she tells the story how the FBI came into her house and they came in with their guns out and then they had the laser and one landed on my daughter's pink pajamas and I'll never forget the vision of that, with my daughter with that gun. But the line that stood out to me when I was listening to it, because I wasn't reading it is when she said I'll have to paraphrase it because I won't be able to find it here. But she said college buildings don't get built by FAFSA students and FAFSA being federal aid you know any student who receives federal aid. So where I look at this story and heading into 2025 is speaking to what you two both said and John, you too how people feel more emboldened when it comes to defending themselves and not towing the line anymore in statements and pushing back. People have courage to do this Back in 2021, nobody did this during Me, too, and Black Lives Matter.
Speaker 2:But here's an example where someone is trying to justify why they did what they did and they should not have been charged with it simply because everyone else did it. That is such a bold and brash type of a response. When I work with clients, I say there's really kind of two laws, there's like legal law, but then there's morality, there's ethics. Just because something might be illegal, like what are you making your choice on? And that's what stuck out on me about this story was how bold, how this woman was going to go all the way, this was the mountain she was going to die on. I didn't do anything wrong because this is what they told me to do, yet completely dismissing the fact that everything she did was unethical and illegal, and it makes me wonder where we're going in 2025 with people, which speaks to what both of you said earlier. What do you think?
Speaker 1:That story has not made it up to my part of Canada yet.
Speaker 2:Came out in the la times. It is interesting.
Speaker 3:If you read it it's behind the paywall, but it's interesting there we go, but I think it ties up what you know where are we going. It ties into some of the themes we've been talking about be defined by in january, when trump takes office, like a whole wave of the same kind of bravado when it comes to communications. I think that will be the defining tone we see, and where that takes us I'm not really sure, but that is definitely going to be the sort of wave that we're going to surf on.
Speaker 2:So now let's wrap it up with. What are our takeaways? Is there an outlier story or is there some theme that we've noticed, like are we moving into a new phase of communication as we leave 2024 and head into 2025? So, john, you were the last one to speak. What do you think? Do you have a story or an idea or a theme or an ethos for 2025?
Speaker 3:I think it's. I would say two things that are closely related. One is that idea of being more open and forward in delivering a message, and also tied to that is people are much more interested and open to choosing alternative platforms for delivering those messages. I think that is going to be a huge theme. I'm already starting to see people say oh, what about podcasts? Have you looked into that? And it's like, yeah, we've been telling you that for three years, but now I think, in the aftermath of what we saw in the US election, is definitely going to be more and more mainstream.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great point, Warren. What about you?
Speaker 1:I think this is not going to be super original, but I think you're going to see more of the independent media, the substacks, the podcasts, the fragmentation of the world. You know, when we were all kids, there were, you know, abc, nbc, cbs and, in Canada, cbc. That was the news. There were four people you got your news from and that was pretty much it. And today, you know, most recently, we've seen that whole cohort leaving Twitter or X and going over to blue sky. That's a whole different political paradigm there. So you're talking about these little bubbles that are kind of breaking off and so it's easier for people to be in your own little, your own little world.
Speaker 1:I won't call it an echo chamber, but you don't have to just listen to Walter Cronkite reading the news to you anymore. People can go into these little areas. You combine that with what's going on with the media which we've talked about. You know journalists getting laid off, people not there, fewer people doing more work, and to actually call it mainstream media I don't think is actually appropriate anymore. People are calling it, like you know, conventional media or legacy or corporate media. I heard last month that MSNBC and CNN's numbers were actually beaten by the Hallmark Channel. The Hallmark Channel had more views.
Speaker 2:It doesn't surprise me. I guess, Well, this time of year, the guy's truck breaks down.
Speaker 1:It's Christmas, you know that is compelling.
Speaker 2:And then Rachel Maddow walks out and she says where am I? If I could only find a guy or a woman who could come in from the town and help me. I could only find a guy or a woman who could come in from the town and help me. I'm definitely not going to trounce you on this one, warren, because you were 100 percent correct. I still thought and I think John and I were saying that we just thought that the Dems might pull it out, but I agreed with you 100 percent it was. I think it was you know three things. One, the Democrats lost the election. I don't think Trump won the election as much as the Democrats lost it. But also, you were absolutely correct in what you're saying.
Speaker 2:I don't call it mainstream media anymore, I'll call it legacy media. Everyone is going into their own. As you call it pods. All the information is decentralized and it also has just this. It's kind of burnished with someone else's opinion and commentary and it's almost as if we're on our own.
Speaker 2:Now TikTok is likely going to be banned. It will still be in Canada. Of course people say, oh, get VPNs. You know, do that. But there's no dismissing that that very, very powerful social media platform is going to be gone, and I think there's a reason behind it.
Speaker 2:Just like you're saying, everybody wants it to be decentralized and it can happen because, yes, all the journalists we are losing long-term journalists who work for and were taught in ethical journalistic practices, Even though these young journalists coming in, they're taught the same way but they don't pay them well. They expect them to do a lot more stories, but without the time to report, and a lot of the reporting now is just coming from hyperlinks to other news stories, not first-hand sources. So, into that election piece, I agree with you, warren. Part of the reason why I think it wasn't MAGA that got Trump winning, that made him win. I think it was the middle reasonable people that listened to him someplace else without. We don't like him, but right now maybe this is the type of administration we need. So that's my thought, john. What about you?
Speaker 3:Well, I've already eaten many plates of pro with Warren over that prediction.
Speaker 2:Oh, have you.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, I didn't. I wouldn't even say my crystal ball is. I think I've lost it entirely, but I think I would agree that people want things that they feel like represent them more, because they feel like what they're seeing is not representative of what they think and what they feel, and I think this kind of reversion back to the mean or to the norm is probably where things are going to go, and the disruption that Trump will bring will help. The theory is it'll help do that, but we'll have to wait and see. It'll be a very interesting 2025.
Speaker 2:It will, so I look forward to talking to both of you again in 2025. Well, we'll have to do this again next year. We'll have to do this every year, if we can. Warren Weeks and John Paranac, thank you so much for bringing your research and your thoughts and your insight into our end of the year in review podcast of highlighting the PR crises of the year. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the PR Breakdown.
Speaker 2:I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Warren and John on the PR crises that shaped 2024 and all the lessons we can take away from them. If you want to ensure you're prepared for any crisis that comes your way, download my free crisis response checklist at mollymcphersoncom slash crisis checklist. You can find the link in the show notes as well. It's the ultimate cheat sheet to help you take control when the unexpected strikes. So you don't end up on our list next year. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast so you never miss an episode.
Speaker 2:This is my last episode of 2024. I'm taking the next two weeks off to enjoy the holiday with loved ones, friends and heading down to a wedding to a nice, warm place. I want to thank all of you for your support down to a wedding, to a nice, warm place. I want to thank all of you for your support, not just for listening to the podcast, but supporting all my work, my weekly newsletter, my social media posts. Until next time next year, keep calm, stay prepared and let's turn all that nasty backlash into trust. Bye for now.
