Our client was the founder, owner and CEO of a well-known private company. A highly public figure who served as the “face of the company”, his organization had grown over a decade into a true American business success story.

A provocative tweet had invited waves of inaccurate and unfair negative media coverage. Competitors publicly defamed and denounced our client. Sponsors, partners and allies publicly distanced themselves and shamed him to promote their own brands. Privately, the leaders of these entities - many of whom our client regarded as friends, mentees and supporters - told our client they knew he was a good man, but that their response was good for business. Public pressure continued to build.

Our client’s existing PR team advised him to apologize, hide from the public eye, and wait for things to blow over. This approach did nothing to contain the damage, and within weeks he had publicly resigned from the CEO position.Immediately following this resignation, he faced a wave of offers to purchase the business. Many of these offers were offensively low, provided by individuals actively involved in the efforts to defame our client who saw an opportunity to devalue the business and buy it for scraps. When these offers were rejected, public pressure escalated further to include claims of physical and sexual assault against our client, all of which he privately denied to be true. It was at this point Kleio was retained to protect our client’s reputation, his interests, and to ensure a fair transaction.

Kleio immediately shifted our client to an active approach. We thoroughly investigated all allegations, identifying the likely sources and their motivations. We collected evidence indicating these allegations were at best not newsworthy and in many cases were entirely false. We then directly approached the reporters covering this story at the largest and most prestigious outlets in the country with our findings. Within weeks of our client retaining Kleio, all claims against our client had been dropped publicly and privately, and the stories based on them never ran. Our client was able to sell his business at his asking price.