Eric Dezenhall

Eric Dezenhall is the founder and President of Dezenhall Resources which prides itself on designing aggressive public relations campaigns to counter activist groups.

History

The promotional material for one of his fictional books, Jackie Disaster, states that "as an investigative writer, Eric won acclaim when he uncovered the diaries of the late mobster, Meyer Lansky, which were featured in an article he wrote for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and the Baltimore Sun. A documentary he co-produced on organized crime air on the Discovery Channel in Fall 2001".

According to his brief biographical statement on the company website, Dezenhall "served in the White House Office of Communications and the Office of Presidential Personnel during the Reagan Presidency".

He subsequently worked as an account executive at Doremus Porter Novelli (DPN) from 1984 to 1987 before founding Nichols-Dezenhall.

According to a biographical note on the Nichols-Dezenhall website in 2001, Dezenhall's "areas of focus include hard news media relations, crises, and marketplace assaults. Eric manages issues for clients in a wide range of industries, including consumer products, cosmetics, environmental services, food and beverage, law enforcement, medical devices, petroleum and pharmaceuticals."

In an interview with the Washington Times Dezenhall explained that the first challenge of a crisis manager is to set realistic goals. "You have to look at the origins of the term 'damage control," he said. "In the Navy, when your ship got hit by a torpedo, your objective was to live, not to get the ship back to where it was pre-torpedo. That's the great myth of crisis management."

"The American public is far more offended by inconsistency than by naughty behavior," he said.

The success of environmental groups with campaigns that bypass government and directly lobby corporations instead bemuses Dezenhall."The desire of corporations to be accepted by the marketplace and to be personally liked has spawned an entire industry of activism and corporate capitulation that I've never seen before - it's unprecedented ... I've seen situations where companies are simply being harassed so badly that it pays to get out of a certain endeavor just to make the harassment stop," he said.

In July 2006, Dezenhall "spoke to employees from Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society at a meeting arranged last July [2006] by the Association of American Publishers," reported Jim Giles. The publishers were seeking to counter perceived economic threats from open-access journals and public databases. In an email leaked to Nature, Dezenhall suggested that the publishers "focus on simple messages, such as 'Public access equals government censorship.' He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review, and 'paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles.'" These strategies appear to have been adopted by the AAP front group, the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine.

Personal activities

Dezenhall is also a director of the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition (NOCC). In email correspondence with Sheldon Rampton, he explained that his ovarian cancer efforts are "a totally personal thing" and not related to work for a client: "My mother died of ovarian cancer at a young age and it’s in my family. My wife and I were in fact married at my mother’s deathbed. She was 47. Very scary, but so much has been accomplished with treatment during the past 20 years whereas in the 1980s it was a death sentence. I was on NOCC's original board and do pro bono media outreach for them."

Books by Dezenhall

Non-fiction

• Eric Dezenhall, Nail 'Em! Confronting High-Profile Attacks On Celebrities & Businesses, Prometheus Books, 1999. ISBN 10: 1591020476 and ISBN 13 978-1591020479 This book gained endorsements from Peter Barton Hull at Covington & Burling, Frank Luntz of Luntz Research, Richard Wirthlin at Wirthlin Worldwide, Michael Fumento from the Hudson Institute, Michael Cherkasky the President of Kroll and former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
• Eric Dezenhall and John Weber, Damage Control: Why Everything You Know About Crisis Management Is Wrong, Portfolio Hardcover, April 2007. ISBN 10 1591841542 ISBN 13 978-1591841548.

Fiction

• Money Wanders, St. Martin's Press (Hardcover edition, January 2002; Paperback edition, February 2003) is described in the promotional material as taking readers "on a gonzo tour through the alleys of damage control at the millennium".

• Jackie Disaster, Thomas Dunne Books, (1st edition June 2003) is about Jackie De Sesto who runs a crisis management PR company Allegation Sciences.

• Shakedown Beach : A Mystery, St. Martin's Minotaur, (June 1, 2004) ISBN: 0312307721.

Articles and Resources

Related SourceWatch Articles

• Dezenhall Resources
• Nick Nichols

External links

Biographical Note

• Dezenhall Resources, "Executives: Partners", accessed October 2004.
• Biography, accessed October 2004.

Articles by Dezenhall

• Eric Dezenhall, "It Is Not Immoral to Defend Yourself:A Brief Manifesto on Crisis Management", undated, accessed October 2004.
• Eric Dezenhall, "Wishful Thinking vs. Real-World Effectiveness in High-Stakes Communications", Legal Backgrounder, Volume 19 Number 25, Washington Legal Foundation, August 20, 2004.

Documents Prepared by Dezenhall for Clients

• Eric Dezenhall, "Proposed Coalition Strategies and Tactics", undated but 2007. (This document was drafted for the Association of American Publishers but leaked to New Scientist contributor Jim Giles. It was originally published at here.

General Articles

• "Damage Control Consultant on CBS' Situation", Special Report With Brit Hume, Fox News, September 16, 2004.
• Scott Galupo, "Reputation repairmen", Washington Times, March 25, 2005.
• Joan Lowy, "Environmentalists bypass Washington to pressure corporations", Scripps Howard News Service, May 25, 2005.
• Jim Giles, "PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access: Journal publishers lock horns with free-information movement", Nature, 24 January 2007.
• "Turning Crisis World Upside Down", O'Dwyers PR Daily, March 22, 2007. (This is a review of Dezenhall's book).