THE BRIEFING Reputation
THREE OF THE BEST REPUTATION MANAGERS
Arlo Brady
freuds Hired by Matthew Freud in 2014 to advise clients including the Mars family, Arlo Brady was appointed CEO just three years later. Brady, who holds a PhD from Cambridge Judge Business School, is also chairman of the Blue Marine Foundation, an ocean charity.
Such information may seem innocuous, but in the rarefied world of UHNWs, knowing where someone is can be like gold dust. Academics have managed to track corporate mergers and acquisitions using the movements of corporate aircraft; traders now look at flight movements to get tip-offs about where the next big trading windfall could come from. Those who spotted the Gulfstream jet owned by oil company Occidental Petroleum landing at a little- used airport in Omaha, Nebraska in April 2019 could well have put two and two together to conclude that Occidental executives were there to meet Warren Buffett, who lives nearby. Had they done so and put their money into Occidental stock, they could have benefited two days later, when Buffett said he’d be investing $10 billion in Occidental.
Phil Hall
The PHA Group Former News of the World editor Phil Hall founded Phil Hall Associates (now known as the PHA Group) in 2005. Today, his team of around 50 puts together pre-emptive plans to defuse bubbling media crises. He prizes in-depth strategies over ‘talking a good game’.
Stuart Leach
Montfort Communications A former adman and barrister, Stuart Leach is an elusive breed in PR: his coveted insights on crisis comms and geopolitics are relied upon by celebrities, UHNWs and governments. He says he operates from a ‘media-agnostic viewpoint’, curating messages for the right audience.
EVEN THE WIVES of despots and dictators aren’t immune from being tracked through big data: Dictator Alert, a project that tracks when planes operated by the rulers of authoritarian regimes land at major airports in Paris, London, Geneva or Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg, keeps its beady eye on the skies. The tool uses an aircraft’s Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) pings, which are used to help air traffic controllers route flights, to see where the world’s ultra-wealthy are travelling. Getting your plane’s ADS-B information delisted from official databases is difficult, and doing so would cut you off from a large part of the world. The United States, for instance, requires any aircraft in its airspace to broadcast their pings. But you can make it more difficult for would-be sleuths to track you. Publicly available sites like FlightRadar rely on data from the Federal Aviation Administration and other national and international bodies like it. It is possible to lodge a request to be taken off these lists – but it’ll only get you so far. To avoid prying eyes, there’s only one solution. ‘Fly on normal commercial aircraft,’ advises Colquhoun, with a chuckle. All this information can be used as kompromat, designed and deployed to catch you in a trap, or to learn more about you to prepare for a future attack. But even HNWs taking all the proper precautions can face digital dangers if a bad actor chooses to launch a whisper campaign through social or digital media, with the aim of damaging someone’s reputation. Anonymous accounts, aided by the use of bots, can seed negative
perceptions of a person on social media. It’s a claim that may seem far-fetched at first, but lawyers acting for Hollywood actor Amber Heard alleged in her counterclaim to a lawsuit filed by Johnny Depp against her that authentic and inauthentic social media accounts, alongside bots, had targeted Heard’s Twitter account. Given that what’s posted on Twitter can be quickly echoed and amplified, this type of material can serve as kindling for a much larger fire. The solution, as it always has been, is to
take the high road. But, just as with the philanthropic couple who felt compelled to boast about their charity to fill the void, sometimes you need to engage. ‘Whenever you can stay under the radar, it’s a better position,’ says Eymond-Laritaz. ‘But when you know criticism has been voiced, and it’s only the beginning, you have no choice. You can’t become a collateral victim of a political fight. You have to take action.’ In the drive to take action to protect their reputation, some people unwittingly fall victim to another issue: not every company operating in this space is legitimate. Many firms that claim to be able to launder a digital reputation are more interested in gaming Google’s algorithms to end up near the top of search results for key terms that might be used by victims of blackmail and digital dark arts campaigns. Sometimes these companies are simply a front for hackers that hunt people whose private information could be exploited through ransomware attacks and other scams. One terrifyingly common strain, called REvil, reportedly seized the data of Hollywood clients of law firm Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks in 2020. The hackers are thought to have asked for $21 million in exchange for not taking the data public. As the digital economy continues to swell, the industry set up to manage reputations and protect against threats also continues to grow. Globally, it’s expanding at 14 per cent a year, according to one estimate. ‘I think there is a greater appreciation of the information that people put out there and more effort has been spent on security, and being a bit more savvy,’ says Woollcott. ‘But humans make mistakes. And often, the adversaries are quite opportunistic. Sometimes they will have a go and see where they can get with things. So I think it is a problem that will continue to crop up.’ The solution, then, is to be proactive. Take control of your digital life. And for goodness’ sake, think twice before you post. S
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