Lipstick on a Pig – Why do PR Firms Represent Tyrants?

 

In 2006, Vladimir Putin hired Atlanta-based Ketchum, Inc. to bolster his image in Western nations… Yes, that Vladimir Putin. Ketchum would go on to earn tens of millions in revenues until just this past week, when Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced Putin had fired them. Ketchum, meanwhile, told PR Week that they fired Putin.

Regardless of whom you believe, this raises the question of why an American PR firm would choose to represent one of the world’s most flagrant human rights abusers, or for that matter, how it managed, just a year later, to get Time magazine to name him their “Man of the Year.

The “Man of the Year,” as Time explains, "is not and never has been an honor... It is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world--for better or for worse." Time, after all, named Adolph Hitler in 1938.

Despite this, Putin didn’t pay Ketchum to represent him “for better or worse.” That’s not what PR firms do. Instead, they manipulate the media into portraying their clients in the best possible light, thus enhancing the client’s public image. To Putin, the Time distinction did just that.

Putin’s “public,” in this case, was not the Russian people, among whom he is immensely popular, no matter how many atrocities he commits. His target were countries, such as the United States, where most people are less approving of his thuggery. Clearly, such influence was what he had in mind as he sought to influence the 2016 and 2020 American presidential elections.

All of this begs the question of why Ketchum continue to serve Putin for so long. As it turns out, there is nothing in the Public Relations Society of America’s Code of Ethics prohibiting, or even discouraging, this. Instead, it advocates such virtues as advocacy on behalf of clients, something Ketchum clearly provided during its tenure as Putin’s U.S. mouthpiece.