Can Shakira Shake Her Bad Publicity From The VOICE?

Four simple strategies to help Shakira and you recover from bad press.

The VOICE continues to attract strong ratings thanks to millions of viewers who enjoy both the singing competition and the superstar coach/mentors. This season featuring Shakira, Blake Shelton, Usher and Adam Levine was pretty uneventful until Shakira's April 22nd performance.Columbian born Shakira is described by Wikipedia as a singer-songwriter, dancer, record producer, choreographer, and model.

After she performed her hit song, Empire, she earned another, not so flattering title, lip-syncher. Fans of the VOICE complained that her dance was too provocative and that she was scantily clad.

Both claims were accurate yet expected from the Latin sensation.

What was not expected was that the leader of the self titled Team Shakira would lip-synch on a vocal competition show.

I am quite certain all of the current and past contestants would love to have been judged on their singing as produced in a multi-million dollar studio, but they were judged on one thing and one thing only, their voice.

In fairness, Shakira was performing not competing, but the bottom line is she performed on a vocal competition where she is supposed to be teaching, training, coaching, mentoring her team of competitors.

Shouldn't she have taken her role seriously enough to actually sing?

The question now is how does she respond to and recover from the bad publicity she brought on herself?

The following four tips can not only help Shakira, but they can help you too, the next time you, your company, or your brand gets some bad press.

1. FESS UP - Admit what you did and apologize. Don't try to cover it up or rationalize. Don't offer rationalization or try to justify what you did. Simply saying, "I did it, it was stupid and I'll never do it again", is almost always the best way to deal with a mistake.

The general public is pretty forgiving when we apologize but they hate lies and cover ups.

2. FIX IT - Whenever possible fix whatever you did wrong. Make it up to someone. Make it right. Shakira should ask the producers to let her sing again. She should do the same song and she should do it live. That takes guts, but it will get her positive attention and good publicity that will far overcome the bad publicity from her lip-synch misadventure.

3. FOLLOW THROUGH - Make a conscious decision to not repeat whatever you did that was wrong. Don't spend time contemplating on how not to get caught in the future, just decide not to do it.

4. FOCUS - Focus on things that will get you GOOD publicity! The truth is we all get bad press. If you attract any attention to yourself, your company or your products you will get some, hopefully not many, bad reviews and some type of bad publicity.

If you establish a publicity plan and focus on getting good publicity, then that will overshadow the occasional bad publicity you get.