RE: Media and Miley

Coming from a background in marketing and PR, it becomes very difficult to look at any person’s explanations/excuses in the media without a critical eye.  Adding that in with a background in celebrity PR makes it even harder to stomach some of these excuses.  “Yeah, right,” comes to mind.

All too often, people in the public eye try to be too much to too many.  We hopefully learn early on that you will never make everybody happy – you just have to figure out who you want to be and stick to it.  Do not take one path and try to back-peddle and blame others. 

Successful people work with teams of individuals to craft their messaging and create their persona/brand.  Carefully, strategically and constantly.  Somewhere along the path there will be a mistake or detour, and that’s okay.  We learn from it and grow.

We are at a place now where so many individuals have become their own brand.

So, maybe now is a time when an entertainer wants to take chances with her “brand” and pose for Vanity Fair with famed, respected and highly-sought after photographer, Annie Leibovitz.  The backlash is messing with your brand so what do you do?  Blaming the photographer and playing dumb just doesn’t work.  This multi-million dollar branding machine knew exactly what it was doing. 

Again, yeah, right. So many of us just don’t buy the excuses. 

I think it would be more beneficial to own up to the mistake and downplay this fiasco.  That could be the more valuable lesson. 

Learn, grow, re-evaluate your strategy and move on.