Archive for January 21st, 2009

Gordon Ramsay’s given up his flak-managing flack Gary Farrow as part of a series of moves that see him scaling down his spending and financially restructuring his massive empire under the management of his father-in-law, Chris Hutcheson.

This may come as something of a blow for Farrow in these recessionary times; his skill with crisis management has seen Ramsay through some hard times, not least the revelation of an affair with Sarah Symonds last year, but it’s the sort of thing that should come as no surprise to a seasoned publicist.

It’s the sort of move that has happened time and again, as I have described in The Fame Formula. An early example is the relationship between Harry Reichenbach and Rudolph Valentino. Reichenbach discovered Valentino, pushed him on movie executives and encouraged them to see beyond the cauliflower ear to the essential star within. Valentino, with Reichenbach’s help early on, went on to become one of the great screen presences of all time.

Eventually, a time came when Valentino began to resent that he was spending money on publicity when he – and particularly his wife – thought that his image could be managed in house. Valentino’s wife took on the role of managing the star’s career. She vetoed all the publicity work that Reichenbach, then working for Paramount, offered her and struck out alone, even though she did not know how to go about managing a star.

The audience for Monsieur Beaucaire, the first film for which Mrs Valentino handled all publicity, was 80 per cent men when previous Valentino film audiences had been comprised almost solely of lustful women. This picture proved a failure, as did the follow-up, Sainted Devils.

‘In 1923, a thousand women swarmed around the Ritz-Carlton when I walked out of it with Rudolph Valentino,’ wrote Reichenbach. ‘But ten days before he died – he was eight years older then and already wore a wig – we went to see George White’s Scandals and nobody knew he was in the theatre. In his case, his wife was an anti-alchemist changing gold to dross. She handled the selection of his stories, dominated him and the studio and inflated his ego to the breaking point.’

There’s a definite risk that Ramsay, out of reach of the man who has guided his personal life through the press and who kept at bay the potential full impact of the Sarah Symonds story, will run into trouble again. His father-in-law has kept on Sauce PR, the firm that oversees event management, brand work and building the reputation of Gordon Ramsay Holdings, but seems to have forgotten that the man is the brand and the brand the man, something that Gary Farrow knows only too well. Without Farrow’s ministering influence, the rumours that surround Ramsay might well have sunk him years ago.

If Gordon Ramsay, in the face of mounting business problems and a recession, strays again, it won’t just be a personal crisis. The whole business is tied up in his image, and if the public’s perception of that changes, as it did for Valentino, then all is easily lost. Dispensing with Farrow’s services, which have kept Gordon Ramsay’s image magnificently afloat in the face of many difficulties, could well be a saving that will end up costing Ramsay and his company much more than mere money.

When über-chef Heston Blumenthal III was asked to wave his magic wooden spoon over the roadside diner Little Chef, I raised my eyes to the gods. ‘What a gift for the production company,’ I thought. ‘Brilliant fly-on-the-wall telly at the expense of a tired old brand; we’ll be chuckling all the way to bed.’

How wrong can an old git be? “Big Chef takes on Little Chef” has turned out to be a publicity coup. Middle class angst about the sort of food that Little Chef offer is in no way representative of what most people want. The reality is that there are a great many out there who want Little Chef’s menu to remain conservative and a great many more who just need reminding that the Little Chef exists.

Little Chef’s Ian Pegler demonstrated that he has a real understanding of his investment; this is a man who has an authentic passion for the chain. He clung on, as did his staff, to the traditions of the diner and fought tooth and nail against the vision of the TV show.

Despite Heston’s attempts at bringing his own brand values to spruce up those of Little Chef, the reality was clear – Little Chef’s fare has an audience who like the food and don’t want some media kitchen-luvvy fiddling with their comfort nosh. The programme became nothing more than a prime time TV advert for the stoic brand values of Little Chef.

The flailing Blumenthal looked on like some bemused foreign football coach forced to watch his Galácticos knocked out of the FA cup by a bunch of amateurs from the Middle Hellenic league. It was something of a PR reality check for the “wunderkind”, but more importantly, for the swish TV execs who didn’t get what they expected.

Channel 4’s rhetorical hyberbole gave its true intentions away – can a chef with a reputation for innovation transform the fortunes of the much-loved British institution? Well no, because Little Chef didn’t actually want to be turned around in the first place. All Ian Pegler wanted was to get as much publicity as possible – and Channel 4 walked straight into a case of “Little Chef shafts Big Chef”; David and Goliath played out with frying pans.

I am now off to my local Little Chef to sample the Olympic breakfast. Looks like it could kill me, but I will at least be able to slide into Hades on a slope paved with delicious bacon fat.

British Olympic gold medallist Rebecca Adlington will be announced as the new face of swimwear brand Speedo on Thursday, according to the Telegraph.

Adlington will join Michael Phelps, who won a world record eight golds at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as Speedo’s official face of the world’s biggest swimwear brand. Phelps has been sponsored by Speedo since he was 16 and received a $1 million bonus for winning over seven gold medals in a single Olympic Games as part of the contract.

After securing her medals in China it was predicted that companies such as BP and BT could offer Adlington up to £100,000 a year each to endorse their brands.

“[She] represents a fantastic opportunity [for brands],” commented PR and brand specialist Mark Borkowski after the Beijing Olympics. “She has become an over-night British figurehead.”

Adlington wore Speedo’s revolutionary LZR Racer swimsuit when she swam to two gold medals in Beijing, becoming the first British woman to win an Olympic swimming race in 50 years and the most successful British swimmer in a century. The 19-year-old from Mansfield already trains in Nottingham where Speedo has their headquarters.