Don't Fan the Flames: Lessons from The Carta CEO Disaster

Any communications professional worth their salt will tell you that the goal in any given crisis is to minimize damage. 

The how is secondary given the particulars of the situation, but the outcome is absolutely the same.

One of my favorite country songs by Rodney Atkins has this verse:

"If you're going through Hell

Keep on going, don't slow down

If you're scared, don't show it

You might get out

Before the devil even knows you're there."

Pretty good advice if you are ever facing a PR crisis.

What’s the opposite? Well, in this case, that is exactly what Carta’s CEO and Co-Founder, Henry Ward, did after Fortune magazine published an article around allegations of gender discrimination and sexual abuse at the company. 

At this point, most folks hadn’t heard of Carta, and rightly so. It’s a b2b SAAS company focused on equity management.

Until, and unfortunately, the CEO started pointing it out.

First, in an email to customers…

Hi [customer name],

First, thank you for being a Carta customer. You may or may not have been following some of the negative press about Carta. If you haven't, or have but don't care, please delete this. I'm sorry to bother you.

If you do follow it and are concerned, I want to share with you what I shared with Carta employees last week. You can read my letter here. I hope it is helpful in providing context. And if you are still concerned please reach out and I'd be happy to share more.

Thank you again for being a Carta customer. It is a privilege to serve you.

Most customers hadn’t heard anything. But, now, they were grabbing the popcorn.

Then, the CEO went further and posted an internal memo in order to “help other CEOs.”

In a now-infamous Medium post, he outlined the following - 

1. "Press is a consequence of legal strategy
2. Press incentives are perversely distorted
3. Most negative press is sensationalized noise (media)
4. Employees matter most"

Every PR professional right now:

I want to be clear here. I am not a fan of cancel culture, so this isn’t a piece to beat up on the CEO. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that his heart may have been in the right place. After all, isn’t authenticity and transparency what we keep preaching?

But the message matters. And “this is fake news” just isn’t cutting it. Instead, if he approached this through his own lens without making the media the bad guy, this may have gone over better. 

What’s missing is empathy for anyone but himself or fellow CEOs who might find themselves in similar situations….which is frankly not the audience. 

I can’t help but think of another CEO, Rand Fishkin of SparkToro, who also recently wrote a very personal post around his departure at Moz. I highly recommend it because it's a masterpiece in storytelling. It’s honest, raw, and doesn’t play the victim. It even shares what might be the perspective of others in this given narrative.

Rand doesn’t want you to feel bad for him. He wants you to understand that sometimes, things only make sense in retrospect.

In the end, you are cheering for him to succeed because of it. 

Back to Mr. CEO at Carta. 

According to Axios, “Since the email was sent, the number of news articles written about Carta and Ward spiked by 800%. 

So, what can we learn from this, boys and girls? Three things.

Content moves at the speed of your feed. 

Just recently, at a keynote for TIAA, I shared that while we may POUR over every article or every post, for most of our audience, it’s a blip in their day. 

Think about how fast you are scrolling through this very article.

Clearly, the Co-Founder and CEO of Carta was much more impacted by the article than most customers or even investors. That’s not to say it should have been ignored, but the response was not thoughtful. It was reactive.

If anything, a VP of Comms should have responded. Having the CEO take on the media at large is the definition of making a mountain out of a molehill. (To be clear, I am not suggesting the allegations themselves are minor, just that there’s a time and place to respond to them appropriately.)

Hating or loving the media is rather pointless. 

Railing at the fourth estate or influencers or “social media” is all a moot point. This is the world we live in. You must learn to play the game and get good at it. Is the media perfect? Far from it. But, when you cry foul, all that says, “I have no idea how to deal with the press, so I am going to angrily lash out and say I wish it didn’t exist in this form.”  

Listen, you need media training. This isn't a nice to have anymore. Week after week, I see execs completely caught off guard, from panels to their own conferences to dealing with the media. Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X (formerly Twitter), recently was a mess at Code 2023. She looked nervous; she couldn’t answer questions and was completely thrown. Clearly, no one prepped her - and it showed!

When we media train clients at Zen Media, we bring in seasoned reporters to play the part. We dig in hard with prep, and it pays off! The bar is simply higher today than ever before. 

Don’t leave it to chance.

Media is a credibility platform, not a distribution channel. 

This is the root cause of so much misunderstanding and misalignment when it comes to PR and media at large. Historically, media platforms provided both third-party credibility AND distribution.

Most people got their news straight from the publications.

You opened your daily newspaper with your cup of coffee.

You watched the evening news at dinner with your family.

Media = news and reach.

Today, this is no longer true. Media channels provide LIMITED distribution. If it were true, every time a company made the WSJ, their website would crash.

Today, earned media provides credibility in a world where faith in advertising is at an all-time low. What it doesn’t provide is distribution. You have to amplify that content. 

It’s not bragging to say that more people will probably read this article here on LinkedIn rather than the original piece in Fortune. 

Don’t amplify news of a crisis. DO have a distribution plan for positive press.

After all, 25% of a company's market value is based on reputation. 

Let’s be wise.

Shama Hyder is the Founder & CEO of Zen Media, a b2b PR and marketing consultancy, an international keynote speaker, and a bestselling author. 

Fast Company calls her a "millennial master of the universe" and a "zen master of marketing." 

She's a Forbes and Inc. 30 under 30 alum, and LinkedIn has called her a Top Voice in Marketing four years in a row.