Hasta La Vista, Baby! Arnold’s Next Act Gives PR Lessons for Scandal

“I’ll be back.” Given the disgust and anger (yet no one seems surprised) spewing across the Twitosphere, there are plenty of people who would prefer that Arnold Schwarzenegger said “hasta la vista, baby,” says Ashley McCown, President Solomon McCown & Co.

But, he is walking in the well-worn steps of other cheating pols and celebrities who have made it back on the main stage. Cheating on your wife and even fathering an illegitimate child is no death sentence for our public figures. Just ask Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich who is now married to the woman he had an affair with or Eliot Spitzer. CNN gave him his own show just two years after his scandal went public and he left his office in shame.

Like it or not, Arnold will be back.

What matters, from a crisis communications perspective, is what he does in the immediate days and weeks to come. So let me offer up a three-act script …

TRUE LIES

Everyone is marveling at how Arnold managed to keep this under wraps for 10 years, but now that it is out, the odds of other allegations surfacing just went up. Way up. There have been rumors of affairs and groping for years, which he always dismissed. He won’t be able to do that any more. One of the principles of crisis communications is to put the bad news out before others do it for you and take responsibility. Looks like Arnold did that or was forced to do that over the weekend.

The media will be on a search and destroy mission. If there are other skeletons in the closet, they will find them. Or other women who kept silent all these years will feel emboldened or will be enticed to come forward. Remember all the other women Tiger Woods slept with? Arnold needs to get out of the media cycle as soon as he can, so if there is more, he should: Put the bad news out there himself.

By doing so, he would avoid a slow drip of more salacious allegations that will keep “Arnold” at the top of Google searches for weeks to come.

John Edwards can hardly be considered the poster boy for good behavior, but he has managed to stay out of the limelight since Elizabeth’s death and focused on his family. Out of respect for his wife and family, who he has deeply hurt, the newest member of the Bad Boys’ Club should: Keep a low profile.

That’s not easy in Hollywood, but he is an actor after all. Every public outing he makes will be scrutinized. If he smiles, he will be criticized for being callous while his family suffers. If he looks serious, inferences will be drawn about how he is coping.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

The reality is there are plenty of people and organizations that may want to keep their distance. Top of the list: the Republican Party. Fathering a love child with the housekeeper is not exactly in keeping with the party’s family values so he won’t be headlining fundraisers any time soon.

Arnold should weigh each public appearance carefully before stepping out, first and foremost for how it impacts his family. Secondarily, he needs to consider the impact his presence may have on charities and other organizations that in happier times thought he would be a draw. Now, he is more likely to draw a media scrum. As a result, he should: Bow out of public appearances for charities and others.

And what about the Hollywood movie machine? Arnold is starring in two upcoming films and producers have been quick to say the scandal will have no impact on filming or release dates (even though Arnold apparently queried his agency, CAA, about the possibility of putting these projects on hold late Thursday). For the long term, “Cry Macho” producer Albert Ruddy put it this way: “This is not gonna be a black eye for a guy with an astounding career.” He’s probably right.

ERASER

The Arnold scandal may lead the news for now, but barring any further revelations, the story will recede. There will be the obligatory “bare all” interviews with the housekeeper and at some point Arnold will do his own mea culpa interview. While we may not forgive or entirely forget, at some point, we won’t care anymore. And sadly, there will be another celebrity scandal to take its place.

Brand Oprah Has Some Marketing Lessons For You

Susan Berfield reports for Bloomberg Businessweek that in 1988 Oprah Winfrey made a decision that would change her life—and eventually the future of television. Her talk show was already getting better ratings than kingpin Phil Donahue and aired in 198 markets. When she renegotiated her contract with King World Productions, which syndicated her show, and with ABC, which produced it, Winfrey demanded control and got it. Winfrey's Harpo Productions assumed the show's production costs, but it also collected licensing fees from local stations, estimated at $100 million in 1988. Plus, Harpo earned money from a few lucrative moments of advertising each day. "I never wanted to be in a position again in life where I was meant to do something but couldn't do it because somebody was telling me I couldn't," Winfrey later told writers of a Harvard Business School case study.

The impulse to take control of her life—and then enjoy it—resonated with her viewers over a 25-year span that will end on May 25, when she airs her finale on broadcast television and turns her attention to her new cable channel. Over that time, Oprah became a singular brand born of her own personal history. Winfrey's story of childhood poverty and sexual abuse, her struggle with her weight, and her striving and charisma made her the near-perfect peddler of a relentless optimism. She was more than a celebrity: She stood for self-improvement, doing good, and controlling your own destiny. Her motto, "Live your best life," was invoked on her show, in her magazine, and on her website.

It all added up to a brand radically different but no less powerful than Coca-Cola or the Marlboro Man. It propelled her show, which drew about 12 million viewers in the U.S. at its peak, through more than 4,500 episodes and some 30,000 guests. She stayed on message as she launched her magazine and produced movies and developed a raft of syndicated television shows including those of Dr. Phil McGraw and Rachael Ray. The brand ultimately made the meticulously manicured entrepreneur very rich, with an estimated fortune of $2.7 billion, according to Forbes

Winfrey's other great talent was to combine her message with a rousing consumerism absent even a hint of irony: Treat yourself! You deserve it! Her viewers and readers bought in and bought big. The brand's marketing fairy dust was sprinkled on an array of products she endorsed without compensation, somehow adding to her already robust credibility. One day she might talk about age-defying makeovers, the next about the faces of autism; she went to Ethiopia; she went green; she went vegan. And then she went shopping. "For her, transformation is about self-esteem and about buying stuff," says Susan Mackey-Kallis, a communications professor at Villanova University. "It's consumerism, but it's not crass."

Winfrey has helped turn her favorite books into bestsellers and her favorite things into instant successes. After she recommended Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth in January 2008, it topped the bestseller list on Amazon.com. Within a month, Penguin Group had shipped 3.5 million copies. Her "Oprah's Book Club" plugged 65 books and was credited by some with saving the publishing industry.

Winfrey regularly announced her "favorite things" in shows that were tantamount to infomercials, though far more effective. When DreamTime's Foot Cozys, aromatherapy slippers, were featured on an episode in 2002, the company was selling 3,000 pairs a month. The following month, it sold 20,000. The slippers became DreamTime's best-selling product that year. When Winfrey presented such goodies to her audience, it was the companies (from Williams-Sonoma to Apple) that donated them. The big shows—in which audiences received cars and trips—inspired the fervor of revival meetings. Product placement is a fair way to describe her 'favorite things, but she is the one who is brokering those deals for her audience. It's product placement in a funny kind of way because the companies are giving the product away. Her brand could sell everything from croissants to refrigerators.

Like any great marketer, Winfrey has sought to extend her brand's reach. She has launched the TV careers of other live-your-best-life gurus, such as Dr. Oz and the designer Nate Berkus—whose shows Harpo developed. She even made her personal trainer, Bob Greene, a celebrity. He now sells his own fitness and diet books. She creates this army of celebrities who are all part of the same campaign. That's an economy of scale and lets her have an exponential impact.

Winfrey's empire also includes a monthly magazine published by Hearst, O, The Oprah Magazine, that combines her do-good and enjoy-good-things ethos and has a circulation of about 2.5 million. (She's been on the cover of every issue.) Even most of Harpo's feature films and television movies—including The Great Debaters and Tuesdays with Morrie—have been emotionally rich dramas about reinvention.

Winfrey has stoked some controversy along the way. She gave credence to Suzanne Somers's questionable anti-aging hormone and vitamin regimen and Jenny McCarthy's book linking vaccines and autism. Her school for girls in South Africa was hit with allegations of sexual abuse. Yet these embarrassments barely affected Winfrey's standing because her moral character hasn't been questioned -there haven't been any personal transgressions. The resilience of her brand didn't surprise the experts. "All strong brands are authentic, relevant, and different," says Josh Feldmeth, chief executive officer of consultancy Interbrand's New York office. "Oprah performs as well as anything in the market today."

Still, as Winfrey prepares to move to cable, there are signs she's preparing her brand for a shift. In October she appeared via satellite on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and announced she was giving everyone in the audience a free trip to Washington to attend the rally that Stewart and Stephen Colbert were organizing. "She was going on Jon Stewart's show to cash in on his cultural power," says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. "She wanted to start courting younger viewers for her cable network. It was the first time we saw Oprah trying to suck the cultural mojo from someone else."

Janice Peck, author of The Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era, points out that Winfrey is a baby boomer, and that "her historical moment is passing." Even Feldmeth says the big trends are no longer in Winfrey's favor. "If credibility and expertise come more from our social networks, are we still going to be sitting at the feet of a master like Oprah?" he asks.

After 25 years, Oprah's influence remains unparalleled. As she moves to cable, there are signs she's preparing to shift her brand as well.