The greatest show on earth: Ringling Brothers' Ken Feld takes a stand against cause-driven activists. Would you? (Crisis Management).

For years he endured the attacks of activists, but as he sat in a San Jose, Calif., courtroom last December, Kenneth Feld, head of the world-renowned Ringling Bros. And Barnum & Bailey Circus, decided the time had come to take a stand. His friend, Ringling's star animal trainer, Mark Oliver Gebel, was on trial, accused by two animal rights activists of abusing an emephant in his care.

After five days of testimony and only two hours of deliberation, a jury unanimously absolved Gebel of any wrongdoing. But to Feld, CEO of Feld Entertainment, one of the world's largest entertainment companies, which includes Ringling Bros., Disney on Ice and Siegfried & Roy, the use of the criminal justice system to target Gebel as part of a campaign against using animals in entertainment represented a new low. "These groups are trying to tear down an American institution," says the CEO of the private company, whose sales neared $776 million in 2001. "We're 132 years old. We're older than baseball and before I let something happen to this great institution, I'm going to come out swinging."

And swing he did, with an action that put him in the forefront of CEOs willing to defend their company against attacks from activists. A handful of animal rights groups had taken on Ringling Bros. over the years, but People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, was by far the most vocal. After the trial, Feld challenged his tormenters head-on.

He prepared a full-page "open letter to animal rights groups," and ran it in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and several other newspapers. His ad provided fodder for radio talk shows and editorial pages across the country, and he got an extra boost from a Wall Street Journal editorial that laid out the circumstances leading to Feld's aggressive action. The editorial concluded: "With its talent for showmanship, maybe the circus will set an example of how the mau-mau crowd can be beaten at its own game. Now that would be the greatest show on earth."

Feld's open letter challenged animal rights groups and PETA in particular to tell the public how they spend the money they raise, and asked them to detail how much is spent on animal care and how much "on creating politically motivated lawsuits, violent and sexually titillating ads, publicity stunts and support of political extreme groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (listed as a terrorist organization by the FBI)."

It was an attempt, Feld says, to get them to tell the truth. "I wanted to put these people to the test," he explains.

The action surprised PETA, admits Debbie Leahy, the group's captive-animal specialist, but she saw a silver lining. "From a public relations viewpoint, it was about the dumbest thing he could do," Leahy says. "We were flooded with calls from the media, and that gave us an opportunity to explain to reporters all over the country why we wish Ringling would go animal-free."

Feld did not really expect answers to his questions, nor did he think the harassment would end. He was right. Without acknowledging or responding directly to his questions, PETA launched its own ad campaign, "Why PETA won't let Ringling off the [Bull] Hook," accusing the circus of "routinely beating elephants with the sharp, heavy instruments."

Though Feld's approach may seem like business as usual, the CEO changed the rules, abandoning the typical ignore-it-or-acquiesce responses. In its press releases, PETA boasts that it has forced McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King to "bow to pressure" for more humane treatment of animals.

Eric Dezenhall, president of the crisis-management firm of Nichols-Dezenhall in Washington, D.C., saw significance in Feld's response. "This marks a sea change in the willingness of businesses that have been harmed for years by extremists to publicly take on their attackers. For the first time, PETA and other animal rights activists are on the defensive--something they do not handle well because they are not accustomed to it," he says.

As head of a family-owned business, Feld recognizes he is m a special position to take on the activists, and admits that the board of directors of a public company might not have approved of his aggressive approach. At the same time, he has watched some public companies, which he won't name, compromise their principles when they negotiate with groups like PETA. "They acquiesce and then PETA comes after them again," says Feld, 54, who has run the circus since his father died in 1984. "You haven't won anything, only compromised your principles and your business when you haven't done anything wrong anyway."

It took Feld more than a decade to decide to fight back. Protests by animal rights groups against the use of animals in the circus started more than a dozen years ago with periodic demonstrations and demands for better care for the animals. But, he recalls, the message gradually changed and became part of a political agenda that called for no animals in entertainment or zoos, no animals as food or in clothing.

The change was not something that Feld noticed right away. "We run a business every day and I ignore distractions, like a piece of lint on a suit. You pick it off and don't think much about it."

How to counteract bad publicity

So Ringling Bros. did little at first to counter the bad publicity. But then the "nuisance" tactics changed. Protests were no longer simply pickets on opening night. Before the circus arrived in a town, members of animal right groups would send the media photos and videos and releases claiming to document animal abuse. Naked women painted like cats sat in cages outside circus venues on opening nights. Activists started calling Ringling Bros. the "cruelest show on earth." Comic books describing circus cruelty to animals began showing up in schools, and PETA opened a circuses.com Web site to detail alleged abuses.

About three years ago, Ringling Bros. became more "assertive." Knowing the media would receive videos and photos purporting to document animal abuse, the corporate communications director, Catherine Ort-Mabry, began visiting news editors ahead of time, armed with source materials and original footage to show how and where materials provided by activists were manipulated. She pointed out the age of some of the footage, and explained that it featured zoo animals, not circus animals, or African elephants, not the Asian elephants that travel with Ringling Bros.

Ringling is proud of its treatment of animals, spending $50,000 per year per elephant for feeding and care. The circus has an open-door policy for visitors and holds animal open houses. People can watch the circus at work and take pictures whenever they want, though security is increased during the television sweeps months of November and February, when managers know activists will try to get coverage on local news programs. Ringling, of course, sponsors its own Web site "to make sure the story is told over and over, and that it is accurate," Ort-Mabry says.

Ringling Bros.' breeding program

Ringling Bros. also started talking about what it does for elephants. In 1990 the circus began a breeding program for Asian elephants on a 200-acre facility in central Florida dedicated to the conservation, breeding, research and retirement of Asian elephants. So far, there have been 13 births, with a survival rate of 100 percent. Activists argue the circus is only doing it to get more elephants as performers, says Feld, who considers this work a contribution to survival of a species that is now reduced to about 50,000 worldwide. "We'd like to see more in the wild, but that's not going to happen," says Feld. In the wild, elephants are victims of poaching and increasingly compete with humans for food and space.

Feld himself, known as a colorful and controversial figure, has also been the target of several well-publicized personal attacks and lawsuits. Animal rights organizations accused him of hiring a former CIA official to infiltrate their ranks, then sued him "for return of documents stolen during surveillance and infiltration activities" in a case that is still pending. Another pending suit seeks millions in damages for a freelance writer at work on a manuscript on Ringling Bros. who says Feld had a phony agent develop a different book to distract her from further investigations of the circus.

But it was the use of the judicial system to attack Mark Gebel that proved the proverbial straw for Feld. Under a never-tested California law against the mistreatment of elephants, activists accused Gebel of causing a "nickel-sized red bloody spot" on the left front leg of one of the elephants in his charge. No one actually saw him touch the elephant, and a circus veterinarian found no damage to the elephant's skin.

Complaints were brought by an officer with the Santa Clara County Humane Society, which has police powers, and a San Jose policewoman, both of whom claimed to have witnessed the alleged abuse. When offered the opportunity, they declined to bring in a veterinarian to examine the alleged wound. Instead, they brought the charges. During the trial, the two witnesses admitted that they had belonged to animal rights groups and failed to convince the jury they had actually seen any abuse. The prosecution's case was so weak that Gebel's lawyers did not offer a defense, and the jury voted unanimously to acquit Gebel.

The accusations made headlines all over the country, but the verdict did not get the same kind of attention. Meanwhile, Feld recalls, the animal rights groups toned down their accusations, finally declaring that the loss did not matter because "we drew attention to animal abuse in the circus." But Feld, who sat through the trial, was seething. "I couldn't believe that for five days this took up taxpayers' money.

Hundreds of letters of support

The response to his ads surprised him. Along with the negative form letters from PETA members, he received hundreds of supportive letters and email messages. "I think people are fed up with a small group trying to tell them what to eat and what not to eat, what to wear and what not to wear and what kind of entertainment to see," he declares.

He sees no way the two sides can come to an accommodation. Animals are an integral part of the Ringling Bros. circus and reflect a philosophy that animals and humans work in partnership. But, Feld continues, "they want no animals in the circus, no animals on the plate, no animals in what you wear. So what's the conversation?" He doesn't expect the harassment to end.

Indeed, PETA says it has no intention of stopping its campaign, at least not until circuses stop using animals. "We're not against circuses, just against the animal acts, says Leahy. Now it is time, she says, for them to stop "prodding animals and coercing them into doing silly tricks for our amusement."

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RELATED ARTICLE: Fighting Back--Consider This

Most CEOs are used to crises--floods, fires, faulty products, sabotage, strikes, terrorist attacks--and these days there's no shortage of specialists willing to tell them what to do. Some offer advice on what to say and how to say it, others design plans.

Eric Dezenhall, president of Nichols-Dezenhall, specializes in managing the attacks of cause-driven activists, and he believes that fighting back is catching on. More and more corporations "are sick and tired of being right and losing, of caving in and still getting shaken down."

Dezenhall helped Kenneth Feld, CEO of the company that owns Ringling Bros. circus, manage attacks from animal rights activists. He has also worked with other firms in similar straits, and offers a few ideas, and warnings, to CEOs thinking about taking on a cause.

1. The CEO needs to be intimately involved.

When he tackles a crisis, Dezenhall works directly with CEOs, and he is "blunt and brash." Only the people below, trying to protect the CEO, have problems with his approach, he believes. "I can look at a chief executive and say, 'If you do that, you're the dumbest ass I've ever seen.' Everyone turns purple but the CEO." He adds: "I've never been canned by the CEO for telling him he is wrong.

2. Expect confrontations.

Most companies will not sue activist groups for fear it makes them look like bullies, and they won't challenge spurious allegations for fear of keeping the issue in the news. What they don't understand, Dezenhall believes, is that the key to attacker strategy is audacity, not truth. The crisis manager's suggestions are often straightforward and direct. "You don't hide from these issues," he says. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

3. Be wary of capitulation.

As far as Dezenhall is concerned, the worst thing a company under attack can do is capitulate. "Beware of people who counsel appeasement to your attackers," he cautions. "A whole generation of public relations firms specialize in capitulating." The latest gimmick, he adds, is to hire people who work for attack organizations, then get them together with a corporate client. The client believes he is engaging in a dialogue but he is really negotiating surrender. What's happening is not like the classic protection racket, where you pay and don't get beaten up. "Here you can pay and still get beaten up."

The major lesson from Feld's experience is that it is possible to stand up to activists and not be destroyed. "Attackers are not 10 feet tall. They are mortal and just as sensitive to taking a hit as any of us," he says.

4. Some problems can't be cured, but they can be managed.

CEOs need to understand that some problems are chronic and no magic solution or knock-out blow will achieve total victory. "It's something like having diabetes," explains Dezenhall. "You can treat it, but you can't cure it."