The Fixer: Secrets for Saving Your Reputation in the Age of Viral Media

＂The Wizard of Spin.＂--Los Angeles Times

＂The spin doctor’s spin doctor.＂ --Financial Times

＂The Winston Wolf of Public Relations....Wolf, if you recall, was the fixer in Pulp Fiction. Played by Harvey Keitel, he washed away assassins’ splatter and gore. Sitrick, 65, cleans up the messes of companies, celebrities, and others, and he’s a strategist who isn’t averse to treating PR as combat. Over the years, clients of Sitrick & Co. have included the late HP chairman Patricia Dunn, Roy Disney, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Vick, Alex Rodriguez, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and the Church of Scientology.＂--Fortune Magazine

＂Everyone understands the importance of shaping a story, but few are as shrewdly proficient at manipulating the media as L.A. crisis manager Mike Sitrick＂--Fast Company

What do you do when the reputation you’ve built over decades is destroyed in a day?

In the court of public opinion, you’re rarely innocent until proved guilty, and your enemies don’t have to play by the rules.

Any misstep can blow up into a worldwide embarrassment on Facebook and Twitter, land on the front page of the New York Times, and bring down a CEO, a business, or a celebrity. You need a smart strategic response. You need Mike Sitrick.

In this book, Sitrick reveals the secrets that have made him America’s preeminent crisis communications expert.

You’ll see how the PR legend and his team guided clients like the estate of Michael Jackson and Papa John’s Pizza through the media-fueled fires of scandal, while helping others, like Roy Disney and the filmmakers who exposed the Russian Olympic doping scandal, achieve justice. You’ll learn Sitrick’s Ten Rules of Engagement and his thoughts on ＂no comment,＂ social media, public apologies, and more.

The question isn’t whether you’ll face a crisis one day, especially if you are at the top of your game. The question is what will you do when crisis comes? Don’t let a lie get repeated until it’s ＂fact,＂ festering forever on Google. Don’t let a damaging truth, stripped of nuance and context, damage your reputation forever. Follow the Fixer.

Michael Sitrick is an internationally renowned crisis manager. Fortune magazine called him ＂one of the most accomplished practitioners of the dark arts of public relations＂ and compared him to Winston Wolf, the fictional fixer played by Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction. Sitrick’s firm (Sitrick & Co.) has guided several high-profile celebrities through national scandals, including NFL quarterback Michael Vick, heiress Paris Hilton, and the estate of Michael Jackson. Sitrick is the author of the 1998 book Spin: How to Turn the Power of the Press to Your Advantage. He lives in Los Angeles.