“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
Every PR professional has heard it.
Usually from somebody who has just appeared in the tabloids for all the wrong reasons.
Or after a CEO has accidentally hit “send” on the email that should definitely have stayed in Drafts.
The phrase has been around for decades, and on the surface it almost sounds believable. After all, plenty of people have become famous after doing something outrageous.
But here’s the problem.
Fame and reputation are not the same thing.
And while publicity can make you visible overnight, it doesn’t necessarily make people want to do business with you.
Exhibit A: KFC – The Day They Ran Out of Chicken
Let’s start with one of the greatest PR recovery stories of modern times.
In 2018, KFC changed its logistics provider. The result? Hundreds of restaurants across the UK ran out of… chicken.
For a fried chicken restaurant, that’s a bit like an estate agent running out of houses.
Social media had a field day. Memes flew around the internet and the headlines practically wrote themselves.
KFC had two choices: hide behind corporate jargon or own the mistake.
They chose the latter.
They took out a full-page newspaper advert featuring an empty KFC bucket with the letters rearranged to spell “FCK.”
No excuses.
No finger-pointing.
Just an apology, a little humour and a promise to put things right.
The advert became almost as famous as the crisis itself.
People didn’t remember that KFC ran out of chicken.
They remembered how brilliantly they handled it.
Exhibit B: Gerald Ratner – One Joke That Cost Millions
Now for the other side of the argument.
Back in 1991, jewellery retailer Ratners was one of Britain’s biggest retail success stories.
During a speech, CEO Gerald Ratner joked that some of the company’s jewellery was “total crap.”
The audience laughed.
The newspapers loved it.
Customers didn’t.
Almost overnight, confidence evaporated. The business reportedly lost around £500 million in value, and Ratner eventually left the company.
More than 30 years later, business schools are still talking about it.
It remains one of the clearest examples that words matter—especially when they come from the person at the top.
Welcome to the World’s Biggest Focus Group
Twenty years ago, a PR disaster might have made tomorrow’s newspaper.
Today, it’s on social media before the CEO has finished their morning coffee.
Everyone has a camera.
Everyone has an opinion.
Everyone has a platform.
One unhappy customer can post a video before you’ve even realised there’s a problem.
The good news?
The opposite is also true.
One thoughtful response can travel just as quickly.
People don’t expect businesses to be perfect.
They do expect them to be human.
Silence Speaks Volumes
One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is saying nothing.
“We’ll wait until it blows over.”
Spoiler alert: it rarely does.
Silence allows other people to write your story for you.
And once the narrative has taken hold, it’s much harder to change.
That doesn’t mean rushing out a statement before you know the facts.
It means communicating.
Acknowledging.
Updating.
Showing people you’re taking the issue seriously.
Sometimes the words “We’re investigating and we’ll update you as soon as we know more” are far more powerful than a page of corporate jargon.
What This Means for Property Businesses
The property industry is built on trust.
You’re asking people to trust you with one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives.
That trust takes years to earn and minutes to lose.
A negative review.
A sale that falls through.
A frustrated vendor.
An unhappy landlord posting on LinkedIn.
None of these automatically become a reputation crisis.
What matters is what happens next.
Did you respond quickly?
Did you explain what happened?
Did you put things right?
Did you show empathy?
Ironically, we’ve seen businesses strengthen their reputation because of how they handled a difficult situation. Clients saw honesty instead of excuses, action instead of avoidance and accountability instead of blame.
The Verdict
So… is there really no such thing as bad publicity?
The evidence says otherwise.
Exhibit A: KFC turned a potentially embarrassing national story into one of the most admired PR campaigns of the decade by responding with honesty, humour and humility.
Exhibit B: Gerald Ratner proved that one ill-judged comment can undo years of brand-building when it destroys trust.
The publicity wasn’t the deciding factor.
The response was.
The businesses that emerge strongest aren’t always the ones that avoid mistakes.
They’re the ones that deal with them openly, quickly and authentically.
Because in today’s world, reputation isn’t built by being flawless.
It’s built by being credible.
And that’s something no headline can fake.