Eric Dezenhall

Eric Dezenhall is the founder and President of Dezenhall Resources which designs aggressive public relations campaigns to attack or "counter" progressive groups. Among his prior jobs, Dezenhall previously "served in the White House Office of Communications and the Office of Presidential Personnel during the Reagan Presidency". He also worked as an account executive at Doremus Porter Novelli (DPN) from 1984 to 1987 before founding Nichols-Dezenhall.

Dezenhall's Approach to PR

In a 2001 column published in the New York Post, Dezenhall argued that "corporations guarantee their defeat when they let attackers scare them into not fighting back. Without exception, corporations must obey the law and never engage in the illegal tactics of some of their attackers. But there is no reason for corporations to fear a good counterattack if they tell the truth and use legal means. In fact, corporations perform a public service when they make people aware that attackers are advocating costly, unrealistic and harmful positions."

"History teaches us that you don't win by surrendering. You win by winning. Instead of trying to turn their enemies into friends, corporations should find genuine friends and form strategic alliances. Appeasement and surrender today will only bring more appeasement and surrender tomorrow," he wrote.

In an interview with the Washington Times Dezenhall suggested "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 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 in 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.

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 B. 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". ISBN 0312311346 ISBN 978-0312311346
• Jackie Disaster, St. Martin's Minotaur, June 2004. ISBN 0312307713 ISBN 978-0312307714 is about Jackie De Sesto who runs a crisis management PR company Allegation Sciences.
• Shakedown Beach: A Mystery, St. Martin's Minotaur, June 2004. ISBN 0312307721.
• Turnpike Flameout, St. Martin's Minotaur, December 2005. ISBN 0312340613 ISBN 978-0312340612
• Spinning Dixie, Thomas Dunne Books, December 2006. ISBN 031234063X ISBN 978-0312340636

Contact details

Blog: http://www.dezenhall.com/news_blog.htm

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, "Siege Formula", Washington Times, January 16, 2001.
• Eric Dezenhall, "Appeasing Extremists Brings No Peace", New York Post, March 30, 2001.
• 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.
• Eric Dezenhall, "The Talent and The Optics", Washington Times, November 19, 2008.
• Eric Dezenhall (January 7, 2009). "I Sold My Stocks Before the Recession Because of Frozen Yogurt", The Daily Beast. 

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

• Michael Krauss, "Marketers should never forget the Internet's dark, ugly downside", Marketing News, December 4, 2000.
• "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).