Damage Control: How to Get the Upper Hand When Your Business Is Under Attack

by Eric Dezenhall, John Weber

Much of the usual advice about damage control and crisis PR is self-serving, self-congratulatory, self-deceiving—and flat-out wrong.

If you’re facing a lawsuit, a sex scandal, a defective product, or allegations of insider trading, most PR experts will tell you to stay positive, show some remorse, and everything will be just fine. But that approach reflects a naïve understanding of conflict, and it won’t help you much during a real crisis.

No one knows this better than Eric Dezenhall and John Weber, who help companies, politicians, and celebrities get out of various kinds of trouble. In this brutally honest and eye-opening guide, they take you behind the scenes of some of the biggest public relations successes—and debacles—of modern business, politics, and entertainment.
You’ll
• Why the 1982 Tylenol cyanide-poisoning case is always cited as the best model for damage control, when in fact it has no relevance to the typical corporate crisis.
• Why Audi never fully recovered from driver accusations of “sudden acceleration”—despite evidence that nothing was wrong with their cars.
• What the crises faced by George W. Bush, Jim McGreevey, Sammy Sosa, Lance Armstrong, Martha Stewart, Coca-Cola, and the Catholic Church have in common . . . and what they don’t.

240 pages, Paperback

Published March 25, 2008

About the author

Eric Dezenhall is a journalist and author of twelve books, including three non-fiction texts on crisis communications. Other areas of expertise include organized crime and the intelligence community. He is the Chairman and co-founder of Dezenhall Resources, One of the country's first crisis communications firms. He lectures in academic and business circles and appears in international media including NPR, CNN, FOX, CNBC, MSNBC and the History Channel. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today.

Eric’s work is widely cited in business, media, and academic circles. His book, Best of Enemies with Gus Russo, is being made into a feature film. He is also the author of seven novels, including The Devil Himself, based on the true story of the U.S. Navy’s collaboration with organized crime in WWII. His latest non-fiction book, Wiseguys and the White House, documents when mobsters and presidents traded favors -- and double crossed each other. Eric graduated from Dartmouth College and lives near Washington, D.C., with his family.