Stanford Dean Hires World's Biggest PR Firm

Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business professor Paul Argenti

The lawsuit also revealed a rebellion by dozens of current and former GSB staff against Saloner. What’s become known as the “Group of 46” letter to Stanford Provost John Etchemendy was filed in the Phills suit, and accuses the dean of presiding over “reprimands, censures, curtailing of responsibilities, demotions, retribution for expressing concerns or raising issues, offensive behavior and decisions that have led directly to tangible employment actions such as dismissals, undesirable reassignments, forced resignations, and inequitable access to promotion opportunities.” The signatories alleged numerous violations of Stanford’s Code of Conduct and HR policies occurred under Saloner’s leadership. In the letter, sent in April 2014 to Etchemendy, the group demanded Saloner not be rehired for another five-year contract. Etchemendy later told representatives of the group that the decision to reappoint Saloner had already been made by the time he received the letter.

It’s unclear when, exactly, Saloner contracted with Edelman in the wake of his resignation announcement. Spokespeople for Stanford and the GSB confirmed that neither the university nor the school had a role in the hiring. Tuck’s Argenti notes that Saloner would be unlikely to receive many job offers in the near future if he were to end up looking for a new position, such as a deanship at another business school.

TUCK PROF WOULD GIVE SAME ADVICE TO SALONER, VW

Saloner’s crisis requires a PR response that’s general to many such eruptions: communicate what happened and why – “as much as you can tell us without getting yourself in further trouble,” Argenti says. “That’s exactly the same advice I’d give VW or anyone who’s going through a crisis,” Argenti says.

But the GSB dean has a particular problem. “Maybe the truth is not something that is going to help him out here,” Argenti says. In any case, from a PR perspective, whether there’s foundation to the claims against Saloner is far less relevant than the crisis situation itself, Argenti suggests. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. His reputation is in a state of incredible disrepair.”

Sometimes, Argenti would want a client to speak out publicly, including to the press, he says. This is not one of those times. “I don’t know what he could possibly say that would help his case at this point. Sometimes the best advice is, ‘Please never say anything again.’ He may fit into that category.”

Hiring a major PR company sends a message that may weaken the appearance of transparency, Argenti says. “There’s a certain lack of authenticity that comes along with the hiring of a large PR firm, that you kind of need help in shaping your message or spinning what you have to say,” Argenti says.

SALONER SCANDAL GOES WORLD-WIDE

Certainly, Saloner is in an exposed position. The Poets&Quants expose was covered around the world, from the San Jose Mercury News in Silicon Valley, to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Forbes magazine, the New York Daily News, Business Insider, and even the feminist website Jezebel and the Daily Mail in the U.K. The Wall Street Journal and Daily Beast have covered Saloner’s resignation announcement and the lawsuit, the Daily Beast framing the scandal as a love triangle that brought down the dean.

Saloner’s PR representative is Kathryn Kranhold, executive VP of Edelman’s Los Angeles office. A former Wall Street Journal business reporter, Kranhold had been a senior VP at Disney for a year before arriving at Edelman in 2013. Kranhold confirmed Edelman was representing Saloner. Her response to a request for an interview with her client was consistent with what Argenti suggested might be the proper course of action for a PR representative in Saloner’s case. Saloner, she said Oct. 5, was “unavailable for an interview at this point.” Kranhold did not respond by press time to a request for an interview about what services the firm was performing for Saloner and what their strategy might be.

Although Argenti foresees a hard road to any rehabilitation of Saloner’s reputation, he believes a PR firm of Edelman’s caliber could be very helpful in positioning Saloner with regard to any court cases.

THE WAR OF THE PR FIRMS

Saloner is not the only party to the GSB disputes to have resorted to hiring outside image-management help. Legal costs from the lawsuit by Phills against Saloner and Stanford, and from the intervention of Saloner and Stanford in the divorce case between Phills and Gruenfeld, surely exceed $2 million by now, and neither case shows any signs of wrapping up soon (in fact, Stanford and Saloner have launched a lawsuit-within-a-lawsuit against Phills over Phills’ accessing of his wife’s communications with Saloner.). But the situation is getting more costly for Saloner, with his hiring of Edelman, and for Phills, who has also brought on a PR firm, albeit a much smaller one.

Phills’ law firm Pierce & Shearer contracted a year and a half ago with Barbary Coast Consulting in San Francisco, a company focused on the San Francisco Bay Area, to handle PR for Phills. So far, Barbary Coast has not been making their client available for interviews, either. Argenti says that given an absence of serious media interest in Phills, there’s no obvious reason for him to have hired a PR firm, other than out of caution. However, Barbary Coast may be working more behind the scenes than publicly, Argenti says. “The best work that gets done is the stuff you never ever hear anything about.”

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