Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Investigating the gun industry, Muslim extremists, and high-stakes litigation, I’ve grown accustomed to deadline intimidation from corporate legal departments or an executive’s personal PR squad, but only this week am I getting a feel for what it’s like to be the target when a sovereign nation goes into crisis-communication mode.

Worried about revelations in Law of the Jungle, my soon-to-be-released book about the epic Chevron (CVX) oil pollution case, the Republic of Ecuador’s U.S. public relations advisers, New York-based Ketchum, has sent a six-page, single-spaced memo to Ecuador’s ambassador to the U.S., Nathalie Cely. Marked “reservado y confidencial,” the memo, prepared in Spanish throughout, outlines “difficult questions” the book raises “that negatively affect Ecuador,” and includes an ad hominem swipe. “It remains unclear when and how many times Barrett visited Ecuador or if he interviewed anyone from the Government,” the memo states. “This can be converted into a point that we can raise, but only in suitable settings and among appropriate journalists.”

I obtained a copy of the memo from a helpful noncombatant who works for neither Ketchum nor the ambassador and who requested anonymity for all the obvious and usual reasons. The damage-control document is a peculiar combination of advice on how to discredit the messenger—“this can be converted into a point …”—and admissions that the book raises issues that do not reflect well on Ecuador’s government....

Ketchum’s staff members who provide public relations advice to Russia must avoid being seen as defending acts contrary to American interests while still providing some luster for a lucrative client.

In 2006, executives from the public relations firm Ketchum flew to Moscow to secure an account that has since been worth tens of millions of dollars.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had hired Ketchum to provide advice on public relations before the nation hosted the Group of 8 meeting in St. Petersburg. At the time, Mr. Putin “cared a great deal about what other leaders, especially presidents, thought about him,” said Michael A. McFaul, a former United States ambassador to Russia who now teaches at Stanford.

Times have changed. The escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine has turned relations with the United States as frosty as they have been in years. Last week, President Obama said that as a result of the economic sanctions imposed on Russia, the country “is already more isolated than at any time since the Cold War.” And the United States ambassador to the United Nations called Russia’s actions in Ukraine a “threat to all of our peace and security.”

A GIANT public relations agency that has been under fire for a couple of gaffes in the last couple of weeks says it is taking steps to try to make sure such blunders do not recur — the kinds of steps it would recommend to clients in the same predicaments.

“What the leadership team decided,” Ben Boyd, president for practices, sectors and offerings at Edelman in New York, said in an interview on Friday, is that “we will treat ourselves like we treat a client.”

“Lesson learned,” he added.

“Just because you advise clients on the complexities of today’s world, that doesn’t mean they’re easier to manage,” Mr. Boyd said, adding that “it would have been smart” to have had in place at Edelman some of the internal protocols and processes that the agency’s 5,000 employees suggest that clients adopt....