Welcome to When Legal Meets PR (Part 1)! Today every legal move has potential for PR ramifications and vice versa and that’s why it’s critical that your legal and PR work in tandem to produce the best possible product for the situation.

In the first installment of this new blog series we’ll look at two “outside the box” cease and desist letters that not only avoided making the issuing organization look bad, but actually resulted in positive PR for everyone involved. First up, and oldie-but-goodie from Jack Daniels:

Small businesses unintentionally or unknowingly infringe on intellectual property fairly regularly, especially if that IP is part of a particularly hot piece of entertainment. Our next example comes from Netflix in defense of their extremely popular Stranger Things brand:

You may be thinking, “I don’t have time to fully customize a letter for every incident of ______!”. Well, I’d bet these folks don’t either. Create a letter with the wording and feel you want, leave space to fill in the blanks, and *voila!* an arsenal of impressive templates to address predictable communications.

Ask yourself what communications you may have to send out repeatedly, especially the type that may cause a negative reaction, and prepare yourself to be amazing today!

Erik Bernstein
erik@bernsteincrisismanagement.com / www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com