Celebrity chef Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa -- Food Network mega-star, bestselling cookbook author and posh convenience products maven -- has cooked up a real PR disaster for herself.
Last Friday, we learned she’d declined three years’ worth of requests by the Make-A-Wish Foundation to meet with Enzo, a six-year-old battling acute lymphoblastic leukemia who became a huge fan while watching her show during treatment.
Enzo’s mother, who writes an alternately heartbreaking and inspiring blog about his struggle, posted the news. It got picked up first by TMZ, then by other media and … well ... flambéed from there.
Initially, Garten’s rep said definitively that the chef had passed because her schedule was too busy (apparently, for three full years), she gets too many requests and did other charity work.
Then after three days of endless roasting, Garten’s rep flip-flopped, stating that Contessa Dearest had never been made aware of the request and certainly wished to meet him.
Interestingly, Make-A-Wish announced that Garten was welcome to reach out to Enzo herself, but that they would instead honor his back-up request, to swim with dolphins who apparently didn’t have as jammed a calendar.
What’s strange is why this became a PR mess in the first place.
Similar scenarios involving what appears to be an imperious, detached talent get resolved invisibly every day. Why did this one blow up?
Theory No. 1: Her numerous PR reps dropped the ball.
I can attest that celebrities get endless pitches for help, many heartfelt but impossible to fulfill, others a little fuzzy in their intent and some outright bogus.
Yet the official involvement of Make-A-Wish -- an established, credible, PR-savvy organization that’s well-connected across the entertainment industry -- should’ve red-flagged this particular solicitation as important enough to acknowledge, consider and somehow finesse.
But it’s not as if Garten has one person managing her image who might not have been minding the store.
Beyond personal publicists are Team Gartens at the Food Network, her cookbook publishing company, the manufacturer of her pricey products and their prestige outlets including Crate and Barrel and Sur la Table.
All have significant financial and reputation management reasons to ensure her positive public image. Particularly among her key demographics which, I’d guess, are mainly women. Specifically, moms.
Did every one of these PR departments not track Garten’s media coverage quickly enough? Did they expect it would stay contained or blow over? Could no one come up with a clever solution to get Enzo and Contessa together somehow and give this unnecessary drama a quick, happy ending?
Most of all, do these PR people or, more specifically, the CEOs of their companies not have sufficient clout with Garten and her inner circle to have convinced them to do something fast to stop this mess?
Theory No. 2: No one around Garten understands social media.
While media coverage has been critical, the general public -- speaking through Twitter, multiple Facebook pop-up pages, cooks’ and parents’ online communities and endless personal blogs -- have been brutal.
