PR or not PR? To handle or to shut up? Well, look at Dotan

Dotan is a Dutch singer song-writer that liked to have the control over what he did and stay close to his fans. He didn’t want a PR, what for? He had a strategy. Unfortunately, he dug the grave of his own career not only by doing dirty marketing but mostly by not properly reacting to the exposure of his crimes.

Retrieved from A bit of Music (April 16, 2018)

So, how do you think it turned out for Dotan not having a PR? Well, rumor has it that he will represent the Netherlands in Eurovision, what is kind of the same as being finished.

Let’s rewind. In 2011, Dotan had a debut album and not much media attention, so he started a quite creative marketing and communication strategy to boost his artist persona. Creative not for the originality, but because he literally created at least 140 fake social media accounts of extremely devoted fans. Crass mistake.

Highlights of the case are, for instance, using photos of a dead woman for one of the fake accounts or a post explaining that Dotan helped a dying brother with leukemia achieved to fulfill his last will of meeting him. So nice of him. False! Even Ziggo Dome, where he played the same night of the event, twittered it. Another elucidation of Dotan’s impressive skills for newsworthiness made him go viral on 2017 posting that he was on a plane and, next to him, a girl was listening to his album. Extremely cool if this would happen to you, right? False!

One could even call him a pioneer on self-branding, for making it all about himself (Khamis, Ang, & Welling, 2017) instead about his music. Nevertheless, it didn’t take him too far. De Volkskrant, one of the biggest Dutch newspapers, run an investigation on him and, on the 14^th April 2018, they exposed him long, loud and clear.

Despite the scandal, we know that the most important is not the crisis but how to handle it (Colapinto & Benecchi, 2014), what did Dotan do then? This:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHH7zS0vLOA

After this untruthful ridiculing video, nada. His Facebook, Instagram and Website are empty, only he says hi to some people who says hi to him on Twitter.

What do you think? I see two massive mistakes: one, replying to the crisis with more not-so-true stories and two, shuting up. In 1980 they knew already that silence is too passive and lets the rest take over the control of a crisis (Brummett, 1980 as cited in Coombs, 2010) and I tend to think that communication is always better than silence. However, studies show and we know that users have the power to disseminate the information… what if this information is gone?

No, it didn’t solve it. I wouldn’t say that Dotan’s reputation is saved, it needs healing, a strategy, and, please, don’t let it be Eurovision! I would have made him the bad boy playing with fire. This new face next to the singer song-writer humongous hyper sensibility, would have burned his social media with new fanatic fans, but the real ones.

A

About the author:

Carla Navarro is a Social Sciences traveler, from a not finished BA in Sociology to a nearly finished MA in Communication Science passing by a completed BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology and a MA in Visual Anthropology. She feels that this will be her last stop and will finally put her knowledge into a proper job, although she decided to start a music documentary festival in Amsterdam.

References:

A Bit Of Music (2018, April 16). The Dotan Case: can artists actually fake it until they make it on social media? Retrieved from: https://abitofpopmusic.com/2018/04/16/the-dotan-case-can-artists-actually-fake-it-until-they-make-it-on-social-media/

Colapinto, C., & Benecchi, E. (2014). The presentation of celebrity personas in everyday twittering- Managing online reputations throughout a communication crisis. Media, Culture & Society, 36(2), 219-233

Coombs, W. T. (2010). Parameters for crisis communication. The handbook of crisis communication, 17-53.

Khamis, S., Ang, L., & Welling, R. (2017). Self-branding,‘micro-celebrity’and the rise of Social Media Influencers. Celebrity Studies, 8(2), 191-208.

Miserius, M., & van der Noordaa, R. (2018, April 14). De fanatiek fictieve fans van Dotan. De Volkskrant. Retrieved from: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/de-fanatieke-fictieve-fans-van-dotan~bed4fd67/

Parker, J. (2018, April 14). DOtan Exposed: Musician Accused of Masterminding Fake Fan Accounts. All Things Loud. Retrieved from: https://www.allthingsloud.com/dotan-exposed-musician-accused-masterminding-fake-fan-accounts/

Sung, M., & Hwang, J.-S. (2014). Who drives a crisis? The diffusion of an issue through social networks. Computers in Human Behavior, 36, 246–257