Deadcatting

In the public relations world, a “Dead Cat Strategy,” sometimes shorthanded as “Deadcatting,” refers to the divulgence of a shocking revelation in order to shift the news cycle away from something you don’t want people to see or pay attention to.

This is an old PR trick that seems to have been popularized in Australia, but which was projected to global notoriety by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (and his political strategist).

Johnson made ample use of this strategy while in office, but he also wrote about it while working as a columnist for The Telegraph, saying that if you throw a dead cat on the table, mid-discussion, all further discussion will be about the dead cat, not whatever it was you were talking about before. There’s not really room left for discussion about anything else at that point, because the arrival and continued presence of that dead cat is just such a show-stopping thing.

Thus, if your administration is in the midst of some kind of crisis—let’s say the economy is crashing under your leadership—it might be prudent, in some circumstances, to leak a piece of negative, personal news, like that you had an affair or that someone in your administration has been fired for shoplifting.