Killer PR: The Literary World of Eric Dezenhall

an interview by Sheldon Rampton

Eric Dezenhall heads Dezenhall Resources (formerly known as Nichols/Dezenhall, until the recent retirement of his partner, Nick Nichols). The firm has a reputation for using aggressive tactics to counter activist groups. Dezenhall has described the people who say negative things about his clients - including environmentalists, animal rights groups and other activists - as "cyberterrorists," and he has advised clients to respond with lawsuits, threats of lawsuits and public counterattacks.

Eric Dezenhall also has another side. He gives frequent media interviews, and one of the things he likes to talk about is organized crime. He grew up in a New Jersey neighorhood frequented by Mafia types, has written articles about the late mobster Meyer Lansky, and was involved in 2001 in producing a documentary about the mob for the Discovery Channel. In some of his interviews he has suggested that the business world might learn a few lessons from the straighforward way that gangsters deals with their problems.

I felt some concern, therefore, when a FedEx package arrived in our office a few weeks ago, addressed to me from Dezenhall. The package was empty: just an envelope with nothing inside. Was this some veiled threat, a PR equivalent of the black hand?

I phoned Dezenhall's office. A pleasant receptionist said that he was in a meeting, but he called back within a half hour. "I've just gotten an envelope from you with nothing in it," I said.

"Oh!" he replied breezily. "There must have been a mixup. I meant to send you a review copy of my latest book. It must have gotten left out of the package."

"Your book?"

"It's titled Shakedown Beach. It's a novel about the dark side of public relations. I think you'd appreciate it."

A couple of days later, another package arrived. This time Shakedown Beach was actually inside, accompanied by a nice note and copies of Dezenhall's two previous novels, Money Wanders and Jackie Disaster. I've read and enjoyed a couple of them now - Money Wanders in particular. Dezenhall likes to satirize his own profession, often with dark humor. I suspect that he has read a lot of Elmore Leonard. Hollywood has optioned a couple of his books, and if they ever get produced, the result might look something like "Get Shorty" or "Prizzi's Honor."

In Money Wanders, Dezenhall's protagonist is Jonah Eastman, a disgraced Republican pollster who gets drawn into working for Mario Vanni, a mob boss who needs to clean up his public image so he can get a casino license. Eastman uses focus groups to figure out that the public actually has some latent affection for old-style mobsters, whom they associate with Frank Sinatra and traditional values. Using the internet to spread false rumors, he invents a fictional gangster designed to seem more sinister than his own client - a scary black man named "Automatic Bart" who sells drugs to children. Vanni's goons bump off a few drug dealers, and Eastman sets up a front group called the "Delaware Valley Anti-Crime Coalition" that praises Vanni's role in fighting off the Automatic Barts of the world.

Shakedown Beach also features Eastman as the protagonist. This time his client is "Rebound" Rothman, a Republican politician who cheats on his wife with young interns while moralizing publicly about family values. Eastman begins the book by declaring, "I am the pollster who got Gardner 'Rebound' Rothman elected governor of New Jersey by blaming a hurricane on his opponent." In the course of helping Rothman advance to the U.S. Senate, Eastman sets up more front groups, covers up a murder, and commits one himself.

Intrigued, I called Dezenhall again and asked for an interview. Here's what he had to say:

I should start by asking why you thought to send me your books, since it's certainly no secret to you that PR Watch has written critically in the past about Nichols/Dezenhall.

I'm a dissident at heart. I wanted to be a writer before I wanted to be in business. I think PR Watch is onto something important, namely the role that deception increasingly plays in our culture. Criticism stings, but not all critics are sworn enemies. I reached out to you because we share a passion for an issue that concerns me enough to have published four books about it (and a few more on the way).

People who are critical of business sometimes think those who are pro-business are part of one big conspiracy. We're not. As with anything, there are splinters. I am not a beloved figure in the PR industry and have been engaged in below-the-radar battles to alter certain conventions. This is one reason our firm remains an independent boutique largely detached from PR institutions.

Your novels seem depict PR even more harshly than we do. Your protagonist is a pollster who routinely deceives the public and whose clients are corrupt politicians and mobsters. Journalists are also portrayed in a harsh light, as easily-manipulated patsies and poseurs. Is this an accurate characterization of your books, and it is an accurate characterization of the way the world really works?

I think your characterization was pretty close, but keep in mind the gonzo, satirical component. A novelist makes points by exaggerating, sharpening. I'm more convinced of the folly of PR people and journalists than I am convinced of their wickedness. You can only spin a public that wants to be spun, and there is a certain symboisis between flacks and reporters to this end. I don't believe most PR people and journalists are competent enough to be evil, but, hey, it's something to shoot for.

What motivates you to write your books?

My literary hero is Budd Schulberg, who is a friend. He wrote What Makes Sammy Run? about Hollywood, in the 1940s. When the book was published, Louis B. Mayer wanted to kill him. He didn't, and Budd went on to win an Oscar for the screenplay of "On the Waterfront." Budd's modus operandi is writing as an insider about institutions that he believes in — film, boxing, unions — that have become corrupt. That's my mindset.

To me, crisis management, my focus, should be about redemption. If you're guilty, repent; if you're innocent, defend. I have a gut-level bias in favor of anyone who is under attack especially if they are unlovable regardless of whether it's a big pharmaceutical company paying me a lot of money or a small-town reporter paying me nothing. In a perfect world, I'd only work with clients who were undeniably, wrongly accused, but in real life, I have to struggle with the tension between making a living and wanting to do what I love, which is defusing witch hunts. Writing helps me manage this tension.

I was struck by the obvious parallels between you and Jonah Eastman, the fictional protagonist in two of your novels. You both work in public relations. You're both from New Jersey. You're both former press aides for the Reagan White House. Your physical description of Eastman looks fairly close to the picture of you that appears on the book jacket. Of course, you haven't actually killed anyone as far as I know, whereas Eastman has. What parts of Eastman are drawn from yourself, and what parts are drawn from other sources?

Every novelist is writing his life story even if he's making a lot of it up. There is a lot of Jonah Eastman in me. My novels take hard kernels of truth from my own life and fabricate layers around them to make it more interesting. Jonah struggles between trying to make a living and doing what he loves, which is starting a new life. So do I. It's more than a business conflict for Jonah, it's personal. He is haunted by the ghost of his grandfather, an Atlantic City mobster, and the central question that plagues him is: How far did you really get from the roughnecks of the Atlantic City boardwalk?

My novels take plenty of creative license. I was not raised in a casino, I was raised near a casino. I was a young aide in Reagan's White House, but not an important strategist like Jonah. A major difference is that Jonah actually engages in criminal activity on behalf of clients. I try to keep gangland slayings to a bare minimum.

What are the things about the public relations industry and the workings of the modern mass media that bother you?

Most corporations are paper tigers, which is why some hide behind spin. There is a belief system that ties my fiction together with what's happening in the culture, the notion that the answer to serious problems is a well-crafted diversion. I believe that some in the PR industry actively market the swindle that they can put the "fix" in on a client's behalf, that they can spin something bad to look good, make a call to "a friend" at CNN. It's often conveyed in a wink or, even worse, cloaked in progressive rhetoric - an ad for an industrial concern featuring a little girl holding flowers with a voiceover blathering about "sharing," "caring," "exchanging dialogue" and being a "good corporate citizen." What enrages me is when powerful institutions roll serious money behind puffy delusions rather than fixing the problem or challenging their adversaries.

In your novels, Jonah sets up deceptive front groups that flack for his clients while pretending to be independent. This PR tactic has been frequently criticized as unethical by PR Watch and by others. Have you participated yourself in creating front groups?

There are different types of techniques employed that fall up and down the ethical scale. I draw a distinction between mobilizing natural allies and groups that are fabricated for the sole purpose of deception. In my novels, Jonah uses out-and-out front groups, utter fabrications to conceal its true sponsors. I understand the criticism that PR Watch makes of front groups and have, in fact, been involved with exposing shills that have been deployed against my clients.

When an anti-corporate activist group is funded by a powerful foundation, it's called coalition-building. When a company under attack teams with a free-enterprise think tank, it's called a front group. I've been involved with assembling coalitions of like-minded players in support of clients under attack. I believe alliances are a part of political life in America. Sometimes clients, especially corporations, form an external, issue-driven group to prosecute an agenda because they're afraid to take too high a profile on a certain matter for fear of coming under attack. Corporations are notoriously timid in issue-driven battles and often resort to playing cute when they fear attack. It drives me nuts because it ultimately breeds a culture of cuteness. My first choice is a pretty direct approach, but I am willing to locate and work with natural allies.

You and I have been interviewed together on a couple of radio programs, and on both occasions I thought you spoke candidly. You acknowledged, for example, that some of your clients are people who are perceived by the public as bad guys. In your novels, the clients are not just perceived as bad guys, they really are bad. To what extent are the clients in your novels modeled after people in the real world?

Jonah's clients in my novels are archetypes, usually powerful sociopaths. While I've never had clients in real life who are this awful, I do draw from the ugliest personality quirks I've seen: The self-delusion, the sense of personal exemption, and most of all, the genuine belief that a good trick is "the answer."

In Money Wanders, Eastman agrees to work for the mob in part because he is afraid that they might actually kill him if he refuses. In Shakedown Beach, by contrast, Eastman could walk away from the client and even considers doing so. It wouldn't even cost him much money, since on top of being a despicable person, Rebound Rothman is also a deadbeat client. So why doesn't Eastman just quit and blow the whistle on his boss?

Given Jonah's disgrace in a prior scandal, he needs the money. While I'm not scandalized in real-life, I'm trying to bring out the tension between the need to make a living and his frustration with his clients' expectations. In Shakedown Beach, he is also plagued by loyalty to Governor Rothman for hiring him when no one else would. It's important to me to have a character who only partly redeems himself because that's what happens in real life.

I've been asked why I don't quit my job to just write. The answers are, first, I don't want to, and second, my books are successful in the niche sense (I have a contract for two more), but I haven't made an offer on one of John Grisham's jets yet.

Although the younger gangsters in your novels are portrayed as thugs with no redeeming virtues, the older-generation gangsters come off as more likable. They at least seem intelligent, and they have a sincere concern for Eastman's welfare. You've talked about how you grew up in a neighborhood where you knew mobsters, and your firm cultivates a reputation for engaging in what the National Journal once described as a "brass-knuckled, Machiavellian approach" to public relations. How has your fascination with the mob shaped your view of the world?

The old time mobsters of my boyhood wanted to be Americans, not criminals. They were capable of doing bad things, but these things were tied largely to circumstances like immigration. Crime wasn't an end game. Some were gamblers and bootlegers who despised the generation of hoods coming up. One of my uncles referred to them as "the vilda chayas," which is Yiddish for wild animal. My affection for the old-timers is tied to a shared sense of romance about America, but for many years I was ashamed that my relatives and neighbors weren't fancier. A few in my family didn't speak to me after I got my job in the White House, a Republican White House no less. It took me years to realize what was bothering them: Their own sense of inadequacy of having remained on the fringes.

Do you feel any ethical qualms about engaging in brass-knuckled PR?

That was a term a reporter used, not me, but I brought some of it on myself because of my firm's position in the marketplace as being very aggressive. I don't back away from this positioning one bit. Unlovable targets like corporations and celebrities are especially vulnerable to attack because they are easy to dehumanize, which is all the more reason to defend them vigorously.

The morality of tactics is prejudiced by ideology. When an extremist group set fire to one of my client's houses - with a twelve year-old child inside, no less - they hailed it as a brave "direct action" against a corporation. When my client beefed up their investigative resouces and teamed with law enforcement, which I encouraged, they were called fascist thugs.

I view mobsters as predators, and have a visceral reaction to bullies regardless of whether they come from the left or the right, whether they use physical force or emotional blackmail. I am especially wary of those who wrap their agendas in fighting for the little people, when I suspect I'm up against an extortionist. My feistiness is more Rudy Giuliani than John Gotti.

On another topic, we've just finished a rather brutal, brass-knuckled presidential campaign. What lessons do you think can be drawn from it?

My greatest concern about the political climate is the dehumanization of one's ideological adversaries. It's common to believe your opponents are uniquely immoral, but it's not healthy. Democrats would be well-served to abandon the cliché that Bush is stupid and that everyone who is concerned about values is a religious nut. Republicans would be well-served to chill out on the whoop-ass rhetoric and not view all questioning about the war as leftist insanity.

My 2003 New Years' resolution was to befriend people I disagreed with, including a journalist who inaccurately reported that I played a role in attacking President Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal. My name has been used as a proxy for clever hardball tactics. Some of those wounds have been self-inflicted, but not all of them. My objective is not to convert, but to convey humanity and try to better understand alternative positions. I used to be much more knee-jerk, but came to see this as fruitless. Like Jonah, I'm trying.

When the staff at PR Watch heard I'd be interviewing you, one person joked that I should ask, "How you sleep at night?" It occurred to me that maybe you'd be interested in actually answering the question. Here's a somewhat less sarcastic way of asking it: What things about you and your work do you think are probably unrecognized or misunderstood by PR Watch and its readers?

Actually, my detractors will be pleased to know that I don't sleep very well at night, but that's probably because I get up and write.

In the same spirit that the first instinct of some PR types is to jive, I believe that anti-business activists' first instinct is to attack, assuming that the destruction of a powerful enterprise is always a good thing. Because I get the roughest cases, I've seen the damage this does, and it's not a victimless endeavor. I cut my teeth nearly twenty years ago on the Audi 5000 crisis involving sudden acceleration. Sure, the company did a lot of things wrong in the handling of the case, but they were roundly attacked as baby killers only to be quietly vindicated after the company was nearly destroyed by activists and plaintiffs lawyers who raised the whole thing.

Your readers should be more wary of warm and fuzzy PR campaigns than those who will tell you bluntly where there are differences. PR types often beg for approval based upon happy rhetoric rather than improved behavior. But activists can be as averse to basic truths as businesses, which is one of the things that forces the PR world to resort to subterfuge.

Another challenge is to be more skeptical of the hype that some in the PR world softly whisper into the ears of their own clients, the biggest one being that everything is spinnable. The emperor often has no clothes. Sure, flacks are out there spinning the health benefits of toxic sludge, but the irony is the massive failure of most grand PR stunts. This richly deserves exposure.