The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson

The Beckham Family Blowup: A Crisis Manager's Play-by-Play

• www.mollymcpherson.com • Episode 347

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Brooklyn Beckham just torched his parents on Instagram, and the timing? Impeccable. Devastating. Strategic.

In this episode, breaking down the Beckham family crisis as it unfolded in real time (Literally! Molly was doing a live BBC interview about the drama while it was still erupting). From Brooklyn's calculated Instagram story to David Beckham's suspiciously polished CNBC damage control, this is a masterclass in reputation warfare dressed up as family dysfunction.

This isn't just celebrity gossip. It's a case study in power, perception, and the brutal calculus of crisis management when the stakes are both personal and public.

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Molly McPherson:

Hello, Molly McPherson. I am your friendly neighborhood crisis manager. I do this full time for a living, and I should be doing this full time today, January 20th. The reason why I'm hopping on now is because I just finished an interview with the BBC about this. I was scheduled to do an interview with them anyway this morning. And then I get a call from the producer who says to me, Molly, how good of a mood are you in? I knew exactly what she was going to say to me. Uh, can you speak about the Beckhams? And I was like, Now, last night, I looked at my my chats, whatever. I immediately get an email from Australia from uh a network there, the Today Show there, which I think is channel nine. They want me to speak about the Beckham's. So I did this interview this morning, UK. So it was me with a BBC uh correspondent. Let's just personally where I come at it, as I told you. Could I sit and tell you a dissertation about Brooklyn Beckham or the four Beckham kids, cruise all of them? I could probably talk about it for three minutes, tops. But I come to this via Spice Girls. I come to this via Polly. People know David Beckham. People know Victoria Beckham. Uh Gen X, definitely. That's we're Spice Girls, right? And then you have David Beckham. But then you have Millennial Gen Z. Now you get really Gen Z, right? You get into the Beckham kids. During this BBC interview, uh, part of the interview talked about why this is such a big story. And they were saying that the Beckhams are akin to the royal family, you know, in terms of dominance. Now in the US, obviously we have familiarity with it. I mean, clearly the Beckhams went to Harry and Megan's uh wedding. And didn't David have like the thing on the website? Um, but in the US, they're they're still huge. I'm not gonna put them as huge as they're in UK, UK, but they're still a huge brand. Now, my angle, let's look at it from the crisis management reputation management piece of it, because that's really the angle that that I'm coming at it. When I was doing this interview, David Beckham already has a response. Like there's already responses coming in. So let's let's talk about what's happening. Before we get there, let's go to Brooklyn real quick. And just so we can see this is how he's starting. I've been silent for years and made every effort to keep these, to keep these matters private. Unfortunately, my parents and their team have continued to go to the press, leaving me with no choice. Okay, what's interesting about that is, you know, going to the press reads very royal family, right? How families use PR against each other. Okay. And I don't, I do not want to reconcile with my family. I'm not being controlled. It's hard to read a story because they go, I'm standing up for myself, first time in my life. For my entire life, my parents have controlled narratives in the press about our family, the performative social media posts, family events, and inauthentic relationships. Then he goes in to talk about how he's been trying to ruin his relationship since it started, about his mom, talks about the wedding, about her dancing inappropriately. He goes on to talk about, you know, what Victoria, what his family's doing. So it's really uh in those stories, Brooklyn Beckham is piercing his family with an arrow. He not only knows what to say, he knows when to say it. Because I think that's part of what's going on here as well. It's the win. So we have two people, Victoria and David, Posh and Bex. They have been in the global spotlight, the media spotlight since the 90s. When you learn media in the 90s, you learn a more combative tabloid environment. They they came of age in peak tabloid, and that's important here. That's important. They were able to transcend a lot of other people, uh, certainly in football, UK football, soccer. But even Victoria Posh, I mean, what wasn't I arguably like maybe there were better singers there that were happening. But she was able to transcend all of the reputations of the Spice Girls because her and her husband were incredibly savvy. They were incredibly savvy. And you don't just have US tabloid, you have UK peak tabloid. You also have at a time royal family, uh, like coming off of Princess Diana, everything with the tabloid press and how it operated, but also how the royal family operated. So for David and Victoria, they know how to control narratives. They learned at a young age how to do that. I think that's important. So they're married, and we definitely hear about things and allegations that happen in their marriage. Like the marriages are marriages, families are families, things happen. Now, as a crisis manager, I deal all day, every day, except today, because I'm doing this. Uh, I deal with other people's problems and other people's crises. And I can tell you with certainty, the advice that I give my clients, my paid clients, I am giving the same advice to my friends, to my kids, to myself. They're the same. They do not distinguish themselves at all. A crisis is a crisis. And the people who play roles in a crisis play roles in a crisis. They're all kind of the same. We have heroes, we have villains, we have tactics, we have gaslighting, we have blame, we have deflection, we have all of those things. And you want to know what? The Beckhams have it as well in this drama. And this drama is happening in real time. So we have Brooklyn dropping this uh Monday, January 19th. So in the US, the the news narrative right now, the news stories, consumed by politics. Our culture stories are all about what the hell is happening as a culture. It feels in the U.S. that everything wants to implode. And I had said this in the BBC interview. People need a release valve. But in terms of headlines, nothing's really making the headlines and poking through the headlines at all, because Trump and Trump's action and the White House actions are like taking over everything until the Beckham's. This, I think, is the first culture story to really pop through. And and part of what Jimmy did open, and this is just my media mind, bear with me, just work with me on this, is sports. Okay, because now we're getting into football playoffs. We're getting closer to the Super Bowl. We had the national championship last night. It opens up the news cycle. And that's where I think the Beckhams were able to come right in. It was right after the weekend. Now, the reason why I think Brooklyn Beckham did this, two, it was a particular timing that happened as well. So he's putting it now. US doesn't matter as much. It's technically a federal holiday. Not a huge news day, uh, the 19th, but it's still a news day. And it's actually still up right now. During my BBC interview, the reporter, Nick, the correspondent, says, Oh, well, David Beckham is in Davos, Switzerland, right now. Uh, not the celebrity Mecca of the world by any means right now is Davos. But that's where business is happening, marketing is happening. Now, when I was doing this interview and they were asking me, what would you do as a crisis manager if you were the Beckhams, or what do you think is happening? Now, I will say I heard from a little that the Beckham's have deployed PR. They have engaged crisis management PR. I am not the person who they have engaged, though I know the person allegedly who they have engaged, uh, and they have definitely engaged in in PR. And we are not going to shame that because that's what you should do in a crisis. If you are in any type of reputation crisis, you get crisis management. And it needs to be separate than legal, okay, because the two are different. That's a huge mistake that people make, is they have their lawyers do their reputation management. The Beckham's, David Beckham and Victoria Beckham are a lot smarter than that. Okay. They're a lot smarter than that. That's what they're doing. So what I was prepping for is what would you advise David Beckham and Victoria Beckham to do? So I'll let me tell you that quickly, and then we'll then I'll tell you what they did. What immediately starts happening when Brooklyn puts his story out. I mean, clearly the family, I don't think, has any idea uh that this story is coming out. But Brooklyn may have known what his dad was up to and may have dropped it on his dad as a bomb, but it may have benefited his dad. The Beckhams find out that Brook that Brooklyn has dropped this this Instagram story. And the Instagram story, um, the IG uh story drop is so very Gen Z, right? And very millennial. That's that would not be how uh David Beckham and Posh work. They they don't well, I shouldn't say Posh, I should say Victoria. That's not how they do media. That's not how they do media. That's how Brooklyn's gonna do media, and it makes sense to do it that way. By doing the Instagram story, he's driving people. There's some irony here too, by the way. He's driving people to his Instagram, to his account to get his statement. It was a choice that he made. And for Gen Z, that's the choice that you make. You go to your stories because you know everybody's gonna grab it, which you can, you can screen grab it. It's screen grabbed everywhere, but now everybody is going there for 24 hours. Everybody is going to his stories and clicking on him and following him. So now he's getting the engagement. Now, what I would have said to Victoria and David is you don't go to Instagram, you do not do tit for tat. I say that to my clients anyway. Like wherever your crisis is happening, you do not go to the same channel and insert yourself. Because if you do that, you are going to be um, if you do that, all you're doing is driving the algorithm to your story. And in many cases, with clients I work with, we want the story to go away. We don't want it to get traction. I think Brooklyn Beckham timed that statement. No doubt about that. It's timed because in any type of crisis, timing is usually never said, but it is always there. Crisis managers pick up timing. There's a reason why they do things when they do it. So he dumps it out there. The Beckhams are not going to respond in kind. Before what they did, what I would have said is I would have framed it as more of a the damage control would not be like an Instagram essay. It would be a lot of behind the scenes. It would be lawyers look going line by line by line by line, looking at all the contracts that they have with with brands, with with all the collabs, everything involving their kids. And then the framing would have been about this is a family dynamic. So from the David and Victoria point of view, the Beckham point of view, what they need to do, their PR strategy right now is containment. They cannot contain the buzz, the traction, and the headlines. They can't even come close to containing that. What they need to contain is the narrative. They also need to contain the damage, the potential damage to their brand. They need to maintain the brand deals. When I work with, particularly when I work with influencers who are in crisis, it's not just their own personal crisis, but usually the first level, because I always ask, what's at stake? What's at stake are brand deals? They want to protect the brand deals because that's the that's the Beckham name. Beckham brand. The Beckhams are a brand. They make money as a brand. They make money collaborating with brands, whether it's social media, whether it's soccer, football, club in Miami, everything, whether it's fashion, it's all about the branding. They're gonna go through every single allegation. Now, first I thought what they could do if if they wanted to, but I don't think the Beckhams would do it. But maybe another family in another situation, what they would do is we love our son like all families, you know, there are issues, but we reject the inaccuracies. We're not going to fight our family in public. That would have been the humanity take. Don't like take sides. But with the Beckhams, wow, during my media interview, during the interview, it comes out that David Beckham made uh made a bit of a statement. David Beckham right now is in Davos, and he is there to talk about the economy and the business of sports. He is not there to talk about his son. So this is the reason why I think Brooklyn knew exactly what he was doing.

SPEAKER_00:

I I I've liked what you have said about social media, David, in the past. Just the idea that it was easier growing up without it. I think about my own kids who are growing up with everything they've ever done being posted on it. What what do you say to kids who are growing up right now? People who have those things.

SPEAKER_02:

But what I've found personally, you know, especially with my kids as well, use it for the right reasons. You know, I've been able to use my platform and my following, you know, for UNICEF. And it's been the biggest tool to make people aware of what's going on around the world for children. And I've tried to do the same. I've tried to do the same with my children to educate them. They make mistakes. Children are allowed to make mistakes. That's how they learn. So that's what I try to teach my kids. But you know, you have to sometimes let them make those mistakes as well.

Molly McPherson:

But if you imagine doing media interview, like a media interview, and this is happening while I'm in the middle of the media interview that I prepped for something completely different. This is why I think Brooklyn knew precisely where his father was, and that his father would be ambushed on this. Uh, there is video I saw it on Sky TV of the cameras following David Beckham. There's shouting questions at him. What do you think about your son? What do you have to say about your son? He didn't say anything. He said nothing, which is smart. There is no doubt in my mind that the Beckham team, their PR handlers, worked with CNBC and there was a deal made. Uh, and the deal made was this David will sit down and do this interview with you, but you have to serve him, this opener. You have talked, you have to talk about social media and the damage that it can cause. They extended it to David Beckham. That is silver platter. Then David Beckham states social media, how he uses it for good. And then he absolutely injects that he is like an ambassador for for UNICEF. He talks about globally how he uses it to better the world. So it gives him, so now he's given that opportunity to talk about all the good that he's done. David and Victoria, they are not of the social media generation. They've leveraged the social media generation, but they're not of it. They're younger. They they came big without social media, they've leveraged it beyond. Their four kids and their family is very much about it. And they've profited mightily off of social media. The majority of people who are in a crisis, and when they have a hand in that crisis, when they can't just come out and deny a hundred percent of everything, they have to deflect. They have to thread a needle. And you thread a needle in statements by only looking at one piece of the argument. Instead of talking about a family drama, David Beckham avoided that. He's not touching the family drama. If you listen to him, he talked about now the dangers of social media and what it does, perhaps thinking, oh, it can poison your mind. It can do crazy things to a person. It's it's not healthy. That is the threading the needle of messaging, where he also wants people to read between the lines. That's what you do in statements. He's not going to come out and say that my son is wrong, and he should not have said this, and he should not have put an Instagram story out, and he should not have said all these horrible things about his mother. He's wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. He can't say that. David Beckham can't say that. If he says it, it just blows up. It completely blows up. But he's weaving the story about his kids. Also, Brooklyn is not a kid. He's an adult. He is a married adult. He's not a kid anymore. So it doesn't quite work, right? Uh, but he's also saying um they make mistakes. So in my BBC interview, I said David Beckham has released a statement about his son, Brooklyn, but he's not addressing it directly. He's addressing it indirectly. And people who want to cover culpability in a crisis, they have some ownership of that crisis. They still want to deflect themselves from it. The people who deflect that really have ownership in a crisis but refuse to take ownership, what they do, they blame the internet. They blame the internet. They blame cancel culture. They blame the problem with the internet, the problem with social media. And that's what David Beckham did. So when I watched that video, I went, damn. He took the he took the low-hanging fruit. He took the easy way out and just blame social media. That's not a good choice to do. To say that kids make mistakes, yeah, kids make a mistake. You want to know who else makes mistakes? Parents. They make mistakes all the time. And what Brooklyn is claiming are a lot of these narcissistic takes. He's also coming out with this narrative, the mother-in-law from hell. And I've seen now some videos and clips coming out where ice cold on the carpet when it's when it's Brooklyn with his wife. Is it a believable narrative? Well, yeah. What do reasonable people think in a drama like this? A reasonable person is gonna say families have problems. Families have issues with parents who do bad things. People are addicted to alcohol, people are addicted to drugs, people are addicted to shopping, lying, people are addicted to fame, people are addicted to money, whatever it is. Everybody's got problems. And that's what we're learning with the Beckham's is they're not different than any other family out there. I mean, they have differences, definitely. But when it comes to drama, everybody has, you know, anybody can relate to that. Reasonable people. Would a reasonable person assume that parents who grew up in the 90s in the tabloid world and really received the bonus of fame from those 90s, could they grow up to be a little narcissistic? Sure. You can't be a big global brand without having an ego. You can't. You can't sustain that. Now let's go on the Brooklyn side of it. Brooklyn is an adult, he he's married, he goes on Instagram stories to tell his side of the story. There's a lot of ego brand involving, like brand deals and money and followers and content and influence and clout. Many times that clouds people from the Brooklyn point of view, I think needed from maybe a healing point of view, needed to blow it up. Maybe there's influences there to make them blow it up. Maybe he needed to blow it up to create news, to differentiate himself from his brand. It also could be if I this is a callback. This is a callback. The Duggars, a lot of these big fundy families, fundamentalist families. The Duggars had a documentary where, or there's a documentary about the Duggars, shiny, happy people, where they interviewed, oh God, one of the Jays, Jessa. I can't remember. Interviewed her and the husband. And she talked about contracts with the parents and how her parents signed contracts. They were all minors for the television show on TLC. The parents had full control over all the money. The kids got nothing. All the money went to the dad because that's very fundamental as thinking, too, because the dad is the head of the family, not the mother, and not the kids. They had this kind of umbrella. Where that relates to the Beckhams, they have been doing contracts since before they even had kids. So as soon as those Beckham kids were born, they already had profiles. They were a brand. And a brand under control by the parents, by their parents. So that also gives us insight into Brooklyn that maybe he's trying to exercise his own control. And in so many cases, with a crisis, whether it's professional, personal, whatever, it you always look for self-interest. Brooklyn, right now, clearly what he wants is independence. He wants to be independent from his parents. He wants to be independent from the brand. He wants to start his own new life, married, with their own money. Brooklyn wants his own money. When you are a baby Beckham, you're not in control of your money. You're controlled by your parents. So Brooklyn's claims about his parents, are they accurate? They could be accurate. They could be accurate. But the Beckhams could also say, hey, we have been, we have been protecting our kids' brands since they were babies. It's part of what we're doing as parents, as parents in this in this industry. So they can message their way out of it. So it'll be interesting to see. Like we may not know in the next 24 hours what's going to happen, but we have there's three more Beckham kids, right? To see how this all plays out. Looking at it like this. There's narratives here. They need to control the brand. Uh Posh, Victoria, she's being labeled as the mother-in-law from hell. You can look at both sides, but what does that really mean when it talks about contracts and names and branding? It's money. It just means money. Money. It just comes down to money. So now the big question is: can the brand Beckham survive? What do you think? It's very subjective what we think of a brand and the survivability of it. Uh, David and Victoria have been through a lot. They need to be a brand. They need to be aspirational. They need to be the footballer, the footballer. They need to be a pop star turned designer, the four photogenic kids. That's the brand that they want to be. Brooklyn is exposing the underbelly of that, what it means to grow up in a family. And he's essentially saying that the brand brand Beckham comes first. And maybe with that, there is a kid, if you look at it, he's technically an adult, but there is a kid who's hurt, you know, and that's usually what happens too. Kids get hurt by parents. They do. You always look at self-interest. And if you really want to kind of figure out is it a parent issue or a kid issue, look at the self-interest of the parent. So you have the beckums, but in the real world, look at parents. If you have a parent or there are other parents out there who are putting the good of the child first, then you can lean on that and say that's the parent's priority. The self-interest for the parent is the kid. When the self-interest is the brand, then you can see why a kid would be hurt. When the self-interest of a parent is self, kids get hurt. When parents criticize their kids to their face or other people around them, or during a CNBC interview, you can kind of see why Brooklyn's doing what he's doing. But David Beckham went on CNBC and basically threw his kid under the bus. He did. And he wrapped it uh in a in a sandwich with UNICEF. He promoted Miami, his team. He talked about what he is and what his family is as a brand, and he threw his kid under the bus. That's where I fall. I don't know the Beckhams. I have no idea. I'm just looking at the pattern. I think Brooklyn probably went through a lot with that parent, with those parents. Probably went through a lot. The question: can Brand Beckham survive? Yeah, a hundred percent. It will absolutely survive. Family has drama all the time, but the brand has to evolve at this point. David and Victoria now, they will need to brand themselves as individuals more and what they do as individuals. That's definitely what David Beckham did in this interview on CNBC. But if if they were working with me, I would have said something to the effect, we love our son. Okay. But like all families, um we we made mistakes and we don't want to cash in on his pain. That's what they need to do. But will they do it? I don't know. We've seen the first move out of the gate was throw Brooklyn under the under the bus. I was gonna say throw Brooklyn under the bridge, which I guess that kind of works too. We're gonna give uh Bex and Posh a little bit of leeway here because they became big global brands during the 90s when it was brutal. And not just in the 90s, 90s tabloids in the US, but in the UK. Brutal, brutal, brutal. They got through it though, and they made bank a lot of it. So they bring their kids into the fold, but now we have to look at them like influencer parents because that's what they are. And they brought all four kids into the fold. And it's very difficult to put a kid into uh Hollywood celebrity influencing without damage. It's I think it's almost impossible to do it based on the fact that Brooklyn is trying to separate himself with his family, he's trying to be independent. There's a lot of hurt there. There's a lot, and he's just exercising those demons, right? If I'm pointing the needle anywhere, I gotta put it on Brooklyn's side based on David Beckham making a statement on CNBC where he threw his son under the bus and he blamed the internet and said, kids make mistakes. And essentially, which what is saying, he could have looked right in the camera and said, Brooklyn, you're making a mistake. You're wrong. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for listening and for watching. Bye for now.

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Molly McPherson

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