Frankie Flack: Why I don’t want my name in your biz story

Every once in a while, I fire up Factiva, my news-clipping database, and do a quick search for my name. Unlike everyone else who ego-searches the news, I’m not looking for a mention. I’m looking for a blank screen.

I’m successful when I’m invisible. It’s not my job to be quoted. I’m an agency flack.

This drives a lot of my reporter friends nuts. They figure if I can deliver them a nugget of news, I should be willing to put my name behind it and get some ink. But that doesn’t work for me, mostly for one big reason: talk ain’t cheap.

If you’re in business communications, especially if you’re dealing with public companies, any statement provides fodder for lawyers and regulators looking for evidence of false statements or inappropriate disclosure. This is why nearly every company has a lawyer look at press releases and why most quarterly conference calls sounds dreadfully scripted. Say the wrong thing, and you have the potential to create a mess that will dog you for a long, long time.

Now, there’s a margin of error for a CEO or a CFO or a head of corporate communications. Sometimes those folks will screw up and say the wrong thing (or, more commonly, the not-quite-right thing), and the lawyers will get worked up and breathe into paper bags. But 99 times out of 100, or 999 times out of 1,000, nothing happens, and everyone forgives.

But if you’re the agency flack, no one forgives. It’s one thing for a CEO to get tongue-tied. She’s got a lot of balls in the air. She’s crucial to the company. Communications are a small sliver of her job. Me? I have one job: keep the happy light of public opinion shining. Screw that up, and I’m out, along with the rest of my agency (and buckets of money).

So I keep my trap shut. I talk off the record, or I don’t talk at all, or I shuffle reporters to the appropriate corporate guy to deliver the messages. Drives everyone nuts, but these are the rules of the game.

I worry this will burst a bubble that suggests that the reluctance of flacks to be quoted is some sort of Machiavellian ploy to ensure “message discipline.” The reality is that it’s mostly a ploy to avoid needless risk.

And this is kind of a new concept. Old-timers probably remember a bygone era where everyone talked and the lawyers lived stress-free lives. Then, in 2000, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted Reg FD (for “fair disclosure”) that made it crystal clear that — for publicly traded companies — certain people could communicate certain things only to certain people in certain ways.

This was a damn good move, because it put the kibosh on a lot of sketchy behavior. But one of the consequences was that everyone thinks a lot harder about who gets to say what, and to whom. And in that world, it’s not just worth it for me to open my trap.

I’m happy to talk to you all about this more. But keep my name out of it, OK?