Manage Your Brand like Michael Jordan: Avoid Gossip Wars and Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

Growing up, I wanted to be like Michael Jordan. I think that was the dream of every kid I knew. We wanted the shoes. We drank Gatorade and ate McDonald’s. We stuck our tongues out on the court.

Okay, so none of that really worked. But we weren’t wrong about wanting to be like Jordan. We merely focused on the wrong details. We should have been learning to copy his media relations off-court.

One could argue that Jordan’s genius was as much about public relations as it was about basketball. He handled bad publicity and gossip wars better than anybody.

What was Air Jordan’s secret? It was simple: shutting up and avoiding gossip wars.

When the media reported a bad story, he would back off and say nothing. This advice is easy to state, but it’s extremely hard to follow. Most people get defensive from simple criticism. Think about the restraint necessary to shut up about affairs sorted out in the public media. And that’s essentially what Jordan was able to do.

I will give more details about Jordan at the end of the article. I first want to take a step back and consider why the strategy works. I liken the scenario to a game theory concept of deterrence in military games. I break the discussion into two areas.

The first is mutually assured destruction (MAD). This is one doctrine for deterrence in a nuclear world.

The second is gossip wars. These are more routine situations that start with escalations and end up in games of MAD.

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

Description

MAD is a way to achieve peace on facing the threat of nuclear annihilation. It’s often used to describe the peace between America and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The game is as follows: America and the Soviet Union are engaging in a nuclear arms race. At any moment, both countries are choosing whether to maintain peace (“back off”) or to launch missiles (“strike”).

If both countries “back off,” then the status quo is maintained and nothing happens. That’s the only peaceful outcome.

If either country is defiant enough to “strike,” then both countries will engage in all-out nuclear warfare until mutual death. The theory is that a unilateral strike will ruin any future hope of reconciliation. Because any strike will lead to mutual death, the game earns the name “mutually assured destruction.”

Diagrams

The game can be represented as either a matrix (“grid”) or a game tree. Here are the diagrams:

The payoff of negative infinity denotes individual destruction. The payoff of negative one indicates a small tension of peace. The number choice is arbitrary–any finite number will do.

The game tree has one noteworthy feature: the nodes for the Soviet Union’s choices are circled. This is to indicate the simultaneous aspect of the game–the Soviet Union chooses at the same time America does.

If the circle was not drawn, the interpretation would be that of a sequential game. That is, the Soviet Union would be making a choice after observing America’s choice.

For this particular game, it is important to model the action as simultaneous. Sequential games often have different outcomes.

Nash Equilibria

As usual, we look at how each player would best respond to the opposing player’s actions.

If the other country chooses “back off,” then the choice is between “back off,” which leads peace, and “strike” which leads to world destruction. The logical choice is “back off.”

What if the other country picks “strike”? In this case, the world will be destroyed regardless. Either choice of “back off” or “strike” is reasonable.

In summary,

–”back off” is a best response to “back off”

–”back off” or “strike” are best responses to “strike”

An equilibrium occurs when both countries are picking best responses. Two cases jump out as equilibria: when both pick “back off” for peace or when both pick “strike” and get mutual death.

There’s only one more case to consider: one country picks “back off” and the other picks “strike.” Could this be an equilibrium? The answer is no. The best response to “back off” is “back off;” hence, the country picking “strike” is not choosing a best response.

Thus, the two equilibria of the game are both picking “back off” or “strike.”

Interpretation

There are two equilibria to the game: one ensuring peace and one leading to world destruction. To sane people, the peace option is clearly preferred.

You might think the world destruction is just a footnote as no one would want it to happen. But that is not true. The world destruction equilibrium is actually crucial to obtaining peace. Well, that’s the principle of MAD, anyway.

It has to do with credible threats. For example, kids know a parental threat of being kicked out is not going to happen–it’s non-credible. The parent’s best response to misbehavior is discipline, not kicking them out of the house. Hence, the threat fails to change behavior.

In contrast, in MAD, nuclear retaliation is credible because it is a best response. It is because annihilation is an equilibrium that both countries fear retaliation and choose peace.

MAD is a controversial principle. I’ll briefly touch on two issues.

First, it’s an unsettling situation. A small miscommunication could trigger mistrust and quickly turn into world destruction. That’s a high stakes game.

Second, both countries are expending lots of money to build up arms in the first place. If peace is the desired outcome, then both countries are spending money simply to stockpile. That doesn’t seem the most efficient way to get peace.

But don’t get too caught up in the details of MAD as a nuclear war game. As I will discuss next, MAD comes up in life games too, such as “gossip wars.”

MAD in Gossip Wars

Description

We don’t play high-stakes games in our daily routine. More realistically, we face small escalations and retaliations until a boiling point is reached. That stage is essentially a game of MAD.

One such example is a “gossip war” between two people, such as two best friends, a child and a parent, a husband and a wife, or the media and a celebrity. I will use the last example as the framework, but the analysis can apply to any of those situations.

Here’s how a gossip war works. In peacetime, the celebrity and the media work together. Profitable, peaceful stories keep both sides happy and exclusive access and publicity are traded freely.

But occasionally, the celebrity is implicated in controversial rumors. They could be true or not–what’s important is that spreading the news would hurt the celebrity’s image and give the media marginally higher profits.

To start the game, the media has a choice. One choice is to simply “back off” the story and keep the peace. The other choice is to report the rumor and hence “escalate” the relationship with the celebrity.

If the story is reported, the celebrity also has two choices to respond. Once choice is to “back off” and take a small reputation hit. The other option is to publicly deny the claim and “escalate” the matter again.

If both the media and celebrity choose to escalate the matter, the situation will turn into a full-blown media extravaganza. There will be name-calling, wild allegations, and juicy stories that are completely unrelated. In short, it will be a “gossip war.”

The gossip war is analogous to a nuclear war. If both sides “back off,” the matter will be settled in peace at a small cost. If, however, either side “strikes” with damaging evidence–then both reputations will be substantially damaged. The celebrity will get washed up, and the media will lose out on stories about the celebrity.

How does this game play out?

Diagram

Here is the game presented as a tree:

Like the MAD game above, the payoff choices are somewhat arbitrary.

But here is the overarching logic:

–an initial media backoff leads to no change, hence a zero payoff to both parties

–a media escalation followed by celebrity backoff gives the media some profit (2) at the expense of the celebrity (-2)

–the peace outcome of the gossip war is better for the celebrity (-1) than backing off just prior (-2). And conversely, the peace outcome for the media (-1) is worse than if the celebrity had not backed off (2)

I find the assumptions reasonable but certainly debatable. Changing them could change the analysis and implications.

Solution

We can analyze the game by using backwards induction. This essentially means beginning from the bottom of the tree and proceeding upward.

The last phase, if reached, is the game of a gossip war. The equilibria are analogous to the MAD game above: with either both players choosing “back off” or both choosing “strike.”

The two cases should be analyzed separately.

First case: The “back off” equilibrium will be reached.

Moving up the tree, what would the celebrity do if the media escalates? Knowing the gossip war will end in peace, the celebrity would prefer the choice to escalate (ends up as -1) rather than to backing off (ends up as -2). Going up one step, the media would anticipate the celebrity’s retaliation, and at the start of the game, decide backing off the rumor (payoff 0) is better than escalating (payoff -1).

Here is the reasoning illustrated, with the optimal branches highlighted:

Second case: The “strike” equilibrium will be reached.

Moving up the tree, what would the celebrity do if the media escalates? Knowing the gossip war will end in destruction, the celebrity would rather back off (ends up as -2) than escalate (ends up as negative infinity). Going up one step, the media would anticipate the celebrity’s backing off, and realize it’s better to escalate (payoff 2) than back off (payoff 0).

Here is the reasoning illustrated, with the optimal branches highlighted:

Interpretation

Which equilibrium path is likely to be reached? Well, it depends on the celebrity and the media.

I imagine that most celebrities and media members are vindictive and would escalate the gossip war into mutual destruction.

Using this logic, that means the second case is more likely.

This means the media is likely to escalate all news and in response celebrities will be best served by shutting up about allegations. Even if that means taking a small reputation hit, it’s better to minimize losses than face a destructive gossip war.

Of course, most celebrities tend to escalate the matter by calling news conferences and creating a publicity storm. Only rarely do celebrities achieve redemption from a gossip war (Lance Armstrong). Most of them end up with damaged public images (Tom Cruise and Terrell Owens).

Michael Jordan

We all know the great basketball side of Jordan. But on the sidelines, he was shrewdly playing the gossip war game and backing off each time.

According to sports columnist Skip Bayless, Michael Jordan avoided gossip wars with the media by refusing to respond to any questions. In this manner, both Jordan and the media profited from Jordan’s image.

As Bayless reports on ESPN’s Page 2,

When I was writing columns for the Chicago Tribune, I studied Michael, and got to know him a little. Michael arrogantly strode through many of the same mines that are exploding around Kobe. Michael wasn’t the best husband after hours. Michael punched out two nice-guy teammates during practice — Steve Kerr and Will Perdue. Michael ran off a coach, Doug Collins, in part because of their soap-opera feud. Michael was often at war with an opposing player or the Chicago media.

Yet many of these potential bombs went unreported because Michael never lit the fuse by answering questions about them [my emphasis].

And there’s more:

Some of the raw, real Michael first surfaced in Sam Smith’s “The Jordan Rules.” Yet Jordan refused to comment on the book, which CAME! and went. A woman claiming to be a former mistress of Michael’s sold her story to the National Enquirer as Michael wound up his career in Washington. But he had no comment and the story did no damage.

Conclusion

As I said earlier, the analysis is more than just about Jordan and military games. It can take place with any two-person conflict: like two best friends, a child and a parent, or a husband and a wife.

I can honestly say I have used this analysis to better my life. I find myself responding to escalations all the time, and mostly, I am disciplined enough to back away. Before I understood the high-stakes nature of the game, this wasn’t always the case. I have burned bridges and lost friends out of gossip wars–more than I would like to admit. To think, I could have salvaged those situations just by shutting up.

Here is my appeal: if you feel slighted by a small rumor from a friend, family member, or the media, see if you can back off and take the loss. If possible, don’t feed the flame and avoid the gossip war.

No matter how slighted I feel, I think of Jordan and minimize my losses. The chance of a single blow-up is not worth it.

Can you imagine if just one of those scandals with Jordan blew up? As Bayless points out, they are all land mines. A single problem would have irrevocably damaged his image.

Instead, he’s an admired celebrity.

BE LIKE MIKE
AVOID GOSSIP WARS

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