The internet never forgets.
And it never forgives without a show.
Google “reputation management” and you’ll get a buffet of bland services. Agencies offering to respond to bad Yelp reviews, delete nasty Reddit threads (good luck), and flood the web with positive press to push the ugly bits down the search page.
But you can’t bury a scandal with SEO.
Because anyone with an ounce of curiosity can dig it right back up—and when they do, it’s worse. Now you look guilty and sneaky.
What we need isn’t digital janitorial work.
What we need is perceptioneering.
Yes. I made that word up.
Because the old frameworks were built for a time when attention was slow and trust was thick. That time is gone.
Now? Reputation is a currency.
It can be hacked, stolen, traded and rebuilt.
But only with well crafted, well timed narratives.
I’ve helped dozens of high profile individuals fix their public perception. I will never break their trust and say who they are. My job is to be a ghost. This article is to share my process to help those who’ve been hurt by scandal. I’ve rebuilt my life after divorce, business failures and bad choices. It was a long, hard road to get here. Now I want to pay it forward.
Perception affects very tangible things in your life:
- Your access and approvals for credit – loans, credit cards, mortgages.
- Your career and business opportunities – jobs, deals, speaking gigs, etc.
- Your trajectory – each opportunity builds upon the last, and knowing how to build that path is invaluable.
Many people have to suffer the negative consequences of issues like corruption, messy divorces, family disputes and ugly layoffs–even when they had nothing to do with it.
I’m here to help you rebuild.
The first rule of perceptioneering: humans make decisions based on emotion, not logic.
Reputation isn’t just about what people see. It’s what they feel when they hear your name.
That feeling is built by optics, actions, reactions, and the story you tell in between.
Think of filling a jar with rocks. Each action that you take in the public eye is one of those rocks, contributing to your personal brand. Your stories fill in between those rocks, tightening the space and solidifying your image.
We’ve been taught to think of reputation like a credit score; something that can be improved by doing “positive” things consistently. But the internet changed that. Dramatically.
Now? One mistake can torch ten years of goodwill.
You don’t just manage your personal brand. You engineer it. Technology is moving at a rapid pace–adding ever more elements of science to human behavior. Not just psychology, but actual tools that allow you to manipulate behavior, reactions and conversations with the click of a button. More on this in a bit.
Step One: Get the real story, not the PR version
Before you do anything external, you need to turn inward. If you’re helping a client, this is where you ask questions that sting.
- Tell me your version of what happened. (Not the press release. The raw cut.)
- What do you think will happen next? (This reveals their psychology.)
- Did you actually do it? (You can’t build a strategy around lies.)
- Have you spoken to a lawyer? (Because if this is legal, everything else pauses.)
- Who and what was affected by your actions?
You’re not their therapist. But you are their harbour.
This phase is calm, clinical clarity. You’re mapping the damage like an emergency surgeon before the first incision.
This phase can also be extremely emotional. If it’s time sensitive and they’re not in a state to speak clearly, you appoint what I call a “Power of Reputation.” This person will act and speak on their behalf. Not legally, but socially.
Step Two: Monitor the fire before you fuel it
This is where technology becomes your best ally—and your most dangerous tool.
We dive into social listening and sentiment analysis.
Think of it as the MRI for your public perception.
You’re not just tracking mentions. You’re decoding mood.
Remember the tools I mentioned earlier? This is where that comes in.
Here’s a simple example of sentiment analysis. Someone tweets:
“Tony’s hat looks awful.”
Basic sentiment analysis says: subject = Tony’s hat. Descriptor = awful. Score = -5.
Now add:
“Tony’s hat looks awful, lol.”
That “lol” flips the vibe. It’s still negative, but it’s playful. Maybe sarcastic. The AI now adjusts the score to -4. Less aggressive. Still trashing the hat. But maybe you’re in on the joke.
What’s happening behind the scenes there is millions of comparisons of that tweet to a library of texts inside the LLM. The AI is making a guess based on all the other things its seen. The machine can’t feel. It can only compare. If more examples match what it’s analyzing, then it’s trained to give a result based on that.
That’s the game we’re playing now.
AI aggregated interpretations of things we say. Open your iPhone right now and open your mail app. See those AI generated summaries? What do you think is feeding that?
LLMs have smashed this door wide open, but human nuance is still the final boss.
Step Three: Build your campaign in time layers
Short term (0–3 months):
Issue a signal. Something that shows you’re paying attention. If it’s something that warrants an apology, do it now. Apologies are empty without actions. Write it with empathy and give at least one action that shows what you’re going to do next. You should be firm, but don’t rush. People respect those who think before they respond. Remember that silence is also a signal. I wrote more about that here.
Medium term (6–12 months):
The PR circuit. Podcasts. Interviews. Content. Get seen being human. Not defending. Focus on reflecting and storytelling. People will either love you or hate you. You can’t control that. Your job here is to give footholds on who you are. People are trying to classify you: what school you went to, what your interests are, who you’re friends with–all so they understand what mental container to put you in. The information you put out here will direct them to the container you want them to create about you.
Long term (1 year+):
This is the big play. Rebuild your personal brand. Show up online with consistency. Speak about the lesson. Turn your wound into wisdom.
The formula isn’t apology → forgiveness.
It’s vulnerability → trust → transformation.
Step Four: Pull the right levers (yes, this is manipulation)
If you think manipulation is a dirty word, you’ve never run a political campaign, managed a celebrity scandal, or rebuilt a CEO’s image. You’ve also never convinced a toddler to do something (the hardest task on this list).
Take a look at Mark Zuckerberg’s personal brand now vs. two years ago. It’s the most obvious personal brand rebuilding campaign I’ve seen in years. After years of government trials and investigations, then his focus on the Metaverse, his responses made him seem void of emotion. Meta stock remains volatile, losing $200bn in value in 2024. Zuck knew he had to reinvent himself.
Why do you think US presidents are all older men with a wife they’ve been married to for years? It gives the image of stability. (Trump is another essay by itself).
Why do you think news broadcasts use the words ‘eliminate the threat’ when referring to government sanctioned missions, but ‘kill’ when they’re speaking about terrorists? It gives the image that the bad guys are worse than us.
Negative comments
People think that negative comments are bad, but they’re mistaken. Negative comments drive the conversation forward. They bring alternative takes and push back on established ideas. Sure if you only have negative comments, then that’s a clear problem, but you’re never going to have a 100% approval rating. Someone is always going to hate you.
The bigger your ideas, the more hate you’ll get.
That’s the nature of the game. Get used to it.
Negativity will always be louder than positivity in the media.
Conversation drives your brand. If you had to pay 1000 people $500 each to comment your name on posts for one month, you’d run a bill of $500k. They’re doing it for you for free, and feeding the algorithms the data it needs to decide if you’re relevant or not.
We don’t control people. We influence narratives, and narratives move hearts faster than facts ever will.
You engineer reputation with levers like:
- Google Ads (to control what shows first)
- Meta campaigns (to target the right attention)
- Press coverage (to document your evolution)
- Video storytelling (to show, not tell, your change)
This is how you shift the conversation from “Look what they did” to “Look who they’ve become.”
The tools used by digital puppeteers
Ever wonder what real social engineers use?
Here’s the digital toolkit (certainly not an exhaustive list) used by everyone from marketers to private investigators:
- People Search Engines: Spokeo, TruthFinder, BeenVerified
- OSINT Tools: Maltego, SpiderFoot, Sherlock
- Social Deep Dives: Social Searcher, Twint, Google Dorking
- Sentiment Tracking: SproutSocial, Brand24, Brandwatch
- Face & Geolocation: PimEyes, EXIF.tools
- Dark Web Monitoring: IntSights, DeHashed
These aren’t for vanity metrics.
These are for mapping digital identity.
And your enemies may already be using them on you.
Don’t fight fires. Start better ones.
You can’t out-optimize shame.
You can only out-story it.
When you own the narrative, you reclaim the room.
When you tell your story with scars, screw-ups, and everything in between, you give people a seat in your journey.
And people don’t judge those seats.
They relate to them; with them.
So if you’re trying to rebuild your reputation, start perceptioneering.
And remember:
You can’t control the flame.
But you can light the spark that starts a better fire.
—
This article is a sliver. I can write an entire book on this. It’s something that I’ve been exploring recently because it makes up such a large part of my life. If that’s something you’d like to see, or you have a situation like this that you need guidance on, then shoot me a message so I can help you.
