I received an email congratulating me on being named the Most Iconic Voice in Corporate Reputation Defense 2026.<\/p>\n
For about four seconds, I sat up a little straighter.<\/p>\n
Then I noticed that McKenzie and Chad were also CC’d. Word for word. Same award. Same publication \u2014 Enterprise World Magazine, which I’d never heard of until 9:07 that morning. Same $2,000 price tag for a 10-page cover story going to 350,000 ‘C-Suite Executives.’<\/p>\n
We were all the most iconic voice. That’s quite a crowded podium.<\/p>\n
This is a textbook vanity play, and it works constantly on smart, successful people. The formula is simple: flattery so thick you could spread it on toast, impressive-sounding reach numbers nobody can verify, a price tag just low enough to feel like ‘why not,’ and just enough urgency to prevent you from thinking too hard about any of it.<\/p>\n
I had a client who would have jumped on this immediately, then complained about two thousand dollars out the door and a day wasted. Don’t make that mistake.<\/p>\n
Here’s what’s actually interesting about this scam from a crisis communications perspective: the mechanism it exploits is identical to the mechanism that destroys leaders in real crises. Both work on the same vulnerability \u2014 the instinct to react to flattery.<\/p>\n
When a crowd is angry at you, the temptation is to react to the fear. When someone offers you praise, the temptation is to react to the ego boost. In both cases, the right move is to pause, assess reality, and respond deliberately rather than instinctively.<\/p>\n
Don’t let ego write your checks. That’s advice for vanity awards, and it’s advice for every crisis you’ll ever face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I received an email congratulating me on being named the Most Iconic Voice in Corporate Reputation Defense 2026. For about four seconds, I sat up a little straighter. Then I noticed that McKenzie and Chad were also CC’d. Word for word. Same award. Same publication \u2014 Enterprise World Magazine, which I’d never heard of until […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/checkmatepublicaffairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/checkmatepublicaffairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/checkmatepublicaffairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/checkmatepublicaffairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/checkmatepublicaffairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/checkmatepublicaffairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99,"href":"https:\/\/checkmatepublicaffairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/99"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/checkmatepublicaffairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/checkmatepublicaffairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/checkmatepublicaffairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}