Masterclass in disaster PR by MasterChef facing sexual misconduct charges
If you were ever in doubt as to how quickly a reputation can be damaged, just take a look at today’s front pages.
MasterChef host since 2005, Gregg Wallace, stepped back from his role on the cookery programme last week when allegations of sexual misconduct were published by The Telegraph.
The paper had conducted a four-month investigation into the presenter’s conduct following a string of complaints that included lewd comments, jokes, and inappropriate behaviour towards women dating back to 2012.
What happened next is a masterclass on how to ruin a reputation in a heartbeat.
Timeline
On Thursday last week, MasterChef’s TV production company, Banijay UK issued a statement confirming that Wallace will be stepping back from the show whilst the allegations were being investigated. The company said that Wallace is “committed to fully co-operating throughout the process.”
The following day, Friday, Banijay appointed law firm Lewis Silkin who it described as a “highly experienced specialist investigations team which has overseen a broad range of high-profile workplace investigations.”
Yet, despite the right measures in place to deal with this matter, something went wrong: Wallace went rogue.
Cooking up a storm
Over the weekend, Wallace recorded a piece to camera video that he shared on his Instagram account. That was his first mistake.
Upon appointment, law firms don’t mess around. This is especially the situation in high-profile cases such as this. I know Lewis Silkin and can say with confidence that they most probably advised Wallace from the get-go to keep quiet and avoid implicating himself any further. He appears to have ignored that likely advice.
Ignore your comms advisor at your peril
He also appears to have ignored the advice that his publicist would have given too i.e. “Do not go public until we have drafted a formal statement on your behalf.”
I say this because no crisis communications specialist with any merit would have agreed to their client recording an unscripted piece to camera. Remiss of an actual statement from Wallace, such an idea must be dismissed as reputation suicide. That was Wallace’s second mistake.
Think like a cynic and you’ll survive another day
When supporting clients with their crisis communications, you need a statement. This, however, is not as simple as dictating a few short lines which you hope will keep the media wolves from the door. Far from it.
The process that crisis communications specialists like us undertake involves rolling out the ‘white board of thought.’
We then put all the ‘knowns’ (the information we have available to hand at that precise moment) on one side and the ‘unknowns’ (consideration is given to facts we’re not yet privy to because the story has just broken and it can take time to collate all the information we need due to multiple stakeholder involvement) on the other.
With all of this in front of us, we look at every possible outcome from the statement we put out on behalf of the client and ensure we anticipate all likely comebacks on what is being said. This means thinking like the most cynical bastard you’ve ever met.
It involves:
- Thinking and re-thinking what you’ve written down.
- Considering every reaction to what you say and all the ways that someone (who is most likely gunning for you) might interpret or deliberately misinterpret what you say to serve their own agenda.
- Picking holes in your own story and addressing the “So, what’s.”
- Determining the right amount of information to convey. Saying too much risks tripping yourself up but saying too little creates the impression that you’re not taking the matter seriously.
It’s hard. It’s actually bloody hard, but you know something – it works. Do not, whatever you do, try to wing it, become defensive, or go all gung-ho on the attack like Wallace clearly did.
“Effective crisis communications statements demand you to think like the most cynical bastard to have ever met.”
Paul MacKenzie-Cummins
Look along the line to see who else’s necks are on the line too
In the heat of the moment, people forget that a crisis can have a profound effect on organisations, their people, their customers, their investors, and the charities they support. Get your crisis communications wrong and the ripple effect can be extraordinary. This leads us to the final error of judgement made by Wallace.
In the video, he is donning a t-shirt for the Matt Hampson Foundation. The charity was, unfortunately, compelled to issue a response, saying: “[W]e do not condone the kind of behaviour and comments contained in these allegations.”
It is regrettable that the Matt Hampson Foundation were placed in this situation, and they will more than likely be doubling down on their communications and PR in the coming weeks to further distance themselves from Wallace.
All of which brings us to here
Whilst drafting this article, Wallace has since issued a statement. But as well as needing to address the allegations at hand, he has also been forced to apologise for the reckless comments he made in his social media video; a double apology for a needlessly amplified crisis.
By ditching crisis comms protocol, Gregg Wallace has both written the tune and conducted the orchestra playing out what seems to be his last hurrah. He may return from this in the not-too-distant future. We’ve seen this happen twice in the last 12 months alone:
- In 2024, Phillip Schofield returned to our screens less than two years after it was revealed he’d been having an affair with a younger colleague and had lied to bosses and colleagues at ITV for several years.
- In 2023, a court ruled that Piers Morgan knew of the illegal hacking of Prince Harry’s and other high-profile individuals’ phone during his tenure as Editor of the Daily Mirror. He continues to appear on our screens today.
There are two scenarios when organisations or high profile figures engage a crisis communications specialist:
First, when a ‘potential’ crisis is foreseen or has just happened and the organisation/individual needs a strategy to manage the situation as effectively as possible.
And second, when the issue is ‘out there’ and the organisation/individual “thinks” they know best and tries to navigate their way out of it but in doing so only make matters a lot worse before realising “Bugger, we need someone skilled and experienced in these situations who can give us hope of coming out of this with some semblance of a reputation in tact.”
Wonder if Gregg Wallace is beginning to rethink his crisis communications approach to date?
