CASE STUDY: NAVIGATING AN INTERNATIONAL MEDIA STORM IGNITED BY THE UNLIKELY ANGEL

Client:

Atlanta hostage hero Ashley Smith, who gained instant fame after talking alleged courtroom killer Brian Nichols into a safe surrender. (2005-2006)

Assignment:

Originally hired by Ashley’s attorneys to bring order to the media frenzy following her emergence as a hostage survivor. Later hired by her family and publisher to manage her story, book launch and celebrity status.

Strategy/Implementation:

Immediately following the incident, our goal was to control media interest and the crush of offers from publishers, agents, movie producers and well-wishers. We organized a news conference just hours after we were hired, despite protests from law enforcement who did not want Ashley on camera. We knew if she led the news event, it would buy her time to recover in private. The next phase of our work was to keep Ashley out of the public eye so that we could build anticipation for her life story. Unlike many instant celebrities, Ashley was not motivated by money or fame. She insisted that her story was one of hope and redemption that had to be told from a Christian perspective. This led us to select an all-Christian team composed of her agent, co-author, publisher, movie producer, legal counselor, speaker’s bureau and investment advisor. Our work was complicated by the fact that Ashley was a drug addict with a previous arrest record and a secret that she hadn’t told police, but wanted to reveal in her book. This was compounded by her position as a single mother whose husband’s murder was still unsolved. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes work to keep her story from leaking and imploding in the six months prior to the book launch, even while her husband’s murder investigation was re-opened and ultimately solved.

Results:

Her book appeared for two weeks on the NY Times “Bestseller List”; coverage included People Magazine, Time, Newsweek, CNN, “The Oprah Winfrey Show”, “Good Morning America”, Fox News and more. This launched her career as an inspirational speaker and led to her testimony before Congress at a national Town Hall meeting on methamphetamine addiction.