Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

As the press secretary for a president who's obsessed with how things play on cable TV, Sean Spicer’s real audience during his daily televised press briefings has always been an audience of one.

And the devastating “Saturday Night Live” caricature of Spicer that aired over the weekend — in which a belligerent Spicer was spoofed by a gum-chomping, super soaker-wielding Melissa McCarthy in drag — did not go over well internally at a White House in which looks matter.

More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts, it was Spicer’s portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president’s eyes, according to sources close to him. And the unflattering send-up by a female comedian was not considered helpful for Spicer’s longevity in the grueling, high-profile job in which he has struggled to strike the right balance between representing an administration that considers the media the "opposition party," and developing a functional relationship with the press....

Marketers may find themselves faced with a timely dilemma: What to do when the leader of the free world calls out your brand—or even your CEO—by name in a tweet? A year ago, the mere suggestion of that would be preposterous. Today, that’s not something outside of the realm of possibility.

The question is: How political do brands need to get in 2017? While the retail world may be the current battleground between the White House and the private sector, consumer packaged goods, tech and business-to-business leaders could be next. This is a new day in American politics, and we are just one month into the Trump presidency. Brands must ask themselves, where do we take a stand, why and to what end? And if I do take a stand, what risk do I take on with angering possibly half of my consumers?

While there are perhaps no easy answers, and the rule book has yet to be written, there are a few suggestions:

This drives journalists nuts. They feel a duty to rebut lies, and in the age of “John Oliver Destroys Something” headlines, there’s an appetite among liberal viewers for plucky correspondents eviscerating right-wing ideologues on-air. We’ve now seen one host after another—Todd, Cuomo, Anderson Cooper—lose his cool or waste a long interview trying to make Conway acknowledge elementary facts.

Of course, presidential flacks have always tried to stretch or shade the truth during on-air interviews. In his first briefings as press secretary to President George W. Bush, Ari Fleischer juggled contrary rationales for tax cuts, that the government could afford them or that a weak economy needed them, using whichever argument seemed to fit the evidence presented. In his first briefings as press secretary to President Obama,

Robert Gibbs used the term “financial stability package” to mask the stench of corporate bailouts. Reporters understood that no matter what they asked, Fleischer would defend tax cuts and Gibbs would defend bailouts. But the president’s spokesman would generally try to reconcile the president’s agenda with the facts. And if he couldn’t, he would at least clarify the agenda.

Conway brings none of that. She alters unwelcome questions, disregards the facts presented to her, and clarifies nothing. In part, that’s because Trump has no organized agenda. All he has is ego. So that’s what she fights for. She’s not there to persuade a skittish Republican senator to repeal the Affordable Care Act. She’s there to defend and avenge one man’s wounded pride....