Peter Attia’s Statement: Power move or problem?
Peter Attia is in full, textbook public-relations-crisis mode.
He issued a statement, and we analyze it here for public relations crisis principles, best practices and what is next for Attia. Here’s my take, on my YouTube Channel. Below the video is transcribed:
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Peter Attia, the Stanford-educated doctor and longevity influencer, who is now associated with Jeffrey Epstein in the latest release of Epstein files, has posted on X an email that he sent to his team about his relationship with Epstein. Three notable things about the statement:
- It was very long. Why did he make it so long? Because he had to provide context for the damaging things that were revealed. Without any context, nothing could be forgivable. Context was designed to at least help people understand why he did what he did.
- He took responsibility and apologized. That’s a no brainer — had to be done. He did it fairly unequivocally, although the explanations — the context — about why he did what he did, do present a little like, I’m sorry, BUT. I take responsibility, BUT.
- He has locked himself into facts and a narrative. Because he went into a lot of detail explaining certain things, he has now locked himself into a narrative. As additional things become revealed — he’s stuck. That’s the danger of coming out with such a long statement and the timing of that statement.
Was there a better strategy? I’m not sure there was. Typically, the shorter the statement the better — there’s a lot of reasons for that, that’s a different post for the future. Attia’s situation really does require significant context because of how unfavorable his actions and what he said in some of the emails were. The problem is, does context matter from a PR perspective, here?
For Attia, while important him, it may not, at all, in the court of public opinion.
Attia’s next move? I expect he will lay low for a period of time. He may try to go back to business as usual — we’ll see if that works. Eventually he will need to undertake significant reputation rehabilitation. That’s a long road for Attia, but the only way he can ever come back from this. He’s got to find a way to leverage this to help others.