PR pros call fallout of Lively-Baldoni saga a 'black eye' for the industry

• Crisis PR is in the spotlight after Blake Lively filed a blockbuster complaint against Justin Baldoni.
• Lively's suit alleges Baldoni smeared her in the press in retaliation for harassment complaints.
• Crisis management experts say tough tactics are part of the game but warned against going too far.

What started as the story of a bombshell lawsuit from a famous actor against her director and costar has since turned into a tale of two PR campaigns and a reckoning in the broader public relations industry.

After Blake Lively filed a complaint Friday accusing Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment on the set of their film "It Ends with Us" and a retaliatory smear campaign in the press, publicists were abuzz picking apart how both camps responded to the news.

A key asset in Lively's suit is the reams of messages included that paint a picture in which Baldoni, his publicist Jennifer Abel, and crisis management expert Melissa Nathan detail plans to direct the conversation away from Lively's sexual harassment allegations by enlisting journalists and an online fixer to create, publish, and amplify negative stories about her.

The messages in the suit — and its allegations of astroturfing, a controversial practice in public relations that exists in a legal grey area — offer a peek behind the curtain of crisis PR, one that industry figures who spoke with BI say is giving their profession a bad name.

"Who is the real victim behind the smear campaign?" Molly McPherson, a crisis communications manager, said in an Instagram post breaking down her thoughts on Lively and Baldoni's ordeal. "It's PR. It's public relations."

The lawsuit introduced crisis PR and the practice of astroturfing to the general public

Hollywood is full of public relations firms big and small. Most work with studios, distributors, or directly with talent in the day-to-day grind of promoting their work, building relationships with the media and influencers.

Crisis management is an entirely different animal. They're called in when a controversy or scandal hits the client that's too out of hand for the publicist to deal with on their own.

"A crisis management person is hired to make sure all the assets are protected," a veteran crisis management publicist told BI. Unlike regular publicists, who "don't want to get their hands dirty," crisis PR firms are trained for this very purpose. "I know how to bob and weave, jump in and jump out," the source added.

The proposed campaign to damage Lively's reputation, as outlined in her complaint via quotes from Nathan's messages to Abel and Baldoni, included "social manipulation" on platforms like Reddit and "full social account take downs." In the messages, Nathan suggested having a full social crisis team on hand to "start threads of theories" about Lively and Baldoni's rumored feud, and the "creation of social fan engagement to go back and forth with any negative accounts, helping to change [sic] narrative and stay on track."

"All of this will be most importantly untraceable," Lively's suit quotes Nathan as saying.

Lively's lawsuit argues that these tactics in Abel and Nathan's alleged smear campaign on behalf of Baldoni went "well beyond standard crisis PR" by deploying the controversial practice of astroturfing, a tactic that, when applied to public relations, involves publishing sentiments on the internet or in the media to falsely create the illusion of public consensus or a "grassroots movement."

"Millions of people (including many reporters and influencers) who saw these planted stories, social media posts, and other online content had no idea they were unwitting consumers of a crisis PR, astroturfing, and digital retaliation campaign," Lively's suit reads, adding that the campaign blurred "the line between authentic and manufactured content, and creating viral public takedowns."

The crisis management experts who spoke to BI didn't see anything wrong with Baldoni's team coming up with worst-case scenarios for how to change the narrative were Lively to take her harassment allegations public. Several PR people say tough tactics are part of the game. But they were split on the tactic of astroturfing.

"It's not frowned upon, just amateurish," the veteran crisis management publicist said. "It gives experts a bad name. Like they saw it work in a movie and thought it was a brilliant idea."

Other Hollywood publicists were more stern in their assessment.

"I honestly thought it was used more in politics than entertainment," one longtime entertainment publicist told BI. "That's just a dirty tactic."

Baldoni's lawyer Bryan Freedman called Lively's claims against Baldoni "completely false, outrageous, and intentionally salacious."

In a follow-up statement, he said Nathan's company The Agency Group (TAG PR), which was hired by Baldoni, "operated as any crisis management firm would when hired by a client experiencing threats by two extremely powerful people with unlimited resources," a reference to Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds.

"The standard scenario planning TAG PR drafted proved unnecessary as audiences found Lively's own actions, interviews and marketing during the promotional tour distasteful, and responded organically to that which the media themselves picked up on," the statement added.

BI contacted Abel and Nathan and didn't receive a response about PR tactics.

Experts say Baldoni's camp also made one key mistake

For all the PR wizardry happening as both sides respond to the story in the press, there's one move Abel and Nathan made that the veteran crisis management publicist said was a huge mistake.

"Never put anything in texts," the vet crisis management publicist said. "That was a rookie move."

The consequences are still unfolding. On Tuesday, Stephanie Jones, the owner of the publicity firm that represented Baldoni before Abel broke out on her own, sued the actor, Abel, and Nathan accusing Abel and Nathan of orchestrating a smear campaign against both Lively and herself behind her back and accusing Abel of covertly stealing Jones' clients when exiting the firm.

In an email Tuesday, Abel provided BI with a different account of how she left Jones' firm, including text messages showing she submitted her resignation and was open with plans to start her own public relations firm.

Now, even crisis managers need crisis managers to repair the profession's image.

"It does give the industry a black eye, and I think it should be a cautionary tale," a prominent industry figure who runs a crisis management firm told BI.

"If you don't know that you can't go that far," the person said, if you don't know that you can't "dupe media, that's troublesome."