Unless you’re in the UK, that is, in which case you’ll be watching episode seven of 13 and the spoilers could really hurt your enjoyment of this remarkable series. The start of the series may have been brought forward in the UK, but we’re still too far behind. In today’s social media world, the narrative is just not as powerful when the story is out of sync in different parts of the world with a (fairly) common language and culture – it is diluted by spoilers and web-chatter.

True event TV benefits from Twitter and the Twitterati show fans of Britain’s Got Talent, the X Factor and the Inbetweeners offer great examples of tweet chat from the sofa. A great way to pull in more followers is to use show hashtags and demonstrate sharp wit that can be retweeted. True entertainment brand-love usually has a crowd that engages with Twitter. But it is hard to engage properly when a global source like Twitter is moving faster than the shows its users love. For narrative TV brands like Mad Men to keep up, they need to be shown as close to simultaneously as can be achieved to avoid dilution.

For the next series of Mad Men, mind you, they will need all the PR and web-chatter they can muster just to achieve the amount of coverage the show gets in the UK at the moment, as it will debut for the first time on a Sky subscription channel, alongside all of the output from HBO. I suspect many more people will be driven to file sharing, not only to avoid having the narratives of their favourite shows spoiled before they’ve seen them but also to avoid paying fees for what was previously free to view.

And now, a sneak preview of Mad Men’s radical new direction for season five.

“But will he stay the course? ‘Very difficult to predict,’ says the publicist and historian of celebrity Mark Borkowski. ‘He’s had a huge amount of American fame in a very short space of time. But standup comics from the UK don’t have a good track record – not many succeed. And tucked away somewhere on his torso is a self-destruct button. America is still very small-c conservative. There is,’ Borkowski adds, ‘still time for him to mess it up.’

Talking of messing things up, I was asked to comment the effect of Tiger Woods’ meltdown on the brands that have supported him over the years. According to Paul J Davies’s article, When star power finds the rough (Financial Times, April 7th): “…the stock market value of all the companies endorsed by Mr Woods collectively lost $5bn-$12bn by the middle of December [last year].”

The article discusses the need to protect against reputation meltdown. My take on this was to point out that companies needed to be prepared to combat reputation meltdown effectively and well. Here’s an extract: “When Kate Moss, the supermodel, was caught taking cocaine in 2005, many of the brands she then represented, such as H&M, the retailer, ran a mile – but other, differently positioned names, such as Sir Philip Green’s Top Shop, soon took her on.

“’Kate Moss is an interesting example,’ says Mark Borkowski, who runs an eponymous public relations agency. ‘The teenage brands fell apart, but Virgin and some other edgier brands moved straight in.’

“Companies are increasingly recognising that reputation is an important and valuable asset that is vulnerable and volatile…

“’In the digital world, everyone can comment on your product or brand immediately and you have to be aware of what people are saying about your brand,’ says Mr Borkowski. ‘There will be a time when Twitter gets a billion followers [and] that’s a huge conversation. As a company you have to have the resources to monitor and respond to that – and quickly.’”

To read the full article, click here and register with the FT.

Next up after that is a debate at the University of Westminster on Monday, February 15th on Celebrity Brands: Desire, Dollars and Danger? It’s an equally topical debate, asking if we are near the limit of public interest in celebrities, or if there is no limit, whether celebrities mirror or lead society and if they need or deserve greater protection from the media. Bearing in mind the Tiger Woods case and the more recent John Terry meltdown, we’ll also be discussing what the risks and benefits for brands of associating with celebrities are.

Chewing over the issue with me are Max Clifford, Julian Linley (ex-Heat editor and now creative director of Bauer Media), and the advertising guru Trevor Beattie. The debate will be chaired by Trevor Morris, Visiting Professor of Public Relations at the University of Westminster, and the co-author of ‘PR- A Persuasive Industry?’ It should be a fascinating evening.

Will it make a difference that it is foreign owned? In the long term, not really, I think. The most recent ‘owners’ had no affinity with the brand. They were not part of the Cadbury family, merely caretakers, who have now lined their pockets with plenty of silver. And the chocolate will taste the same, wherever it’s made. The truth is that there are almost

The worry with Cadbury is much more that there is every chance that the owners will have no respect for the human element of the company and see the deal purely as a way to service debt and make money. What the Glazers have done to Manchester United is a travesty and there’s no reason to believe that Kraft won’t do the same.

The only winners are the senior people at Cadbury, who will get a fat payout, and those who invested in shares. The workers will most likely eventually be left standing, redundant, outside the factory gates.

The Cadbury brand has only been kept alive by a chocoholic public. Will they stop buying Cadbury chocolates now that the Americans own it? A few diehards may cause a short blip, but in time, it will recover, depending on what Kraft do next. What Kraft will most likely do is bring in more business-focused expertise, attempt to make the brand more profitable and play with evolving communications and marketing.

Losing a great British brand to a foreign investor may massively jeopardise the emotional connection and nostalgic appeal that the consumer has with the brand. Cadbury has been a part of the fabric of British culture for years and its demise is like losing a trusted friend. This may well have a significant impact on social media as I don’t believe consumers will feel a part of the change; therefore they will not be engaged or empowered to join the brand conversation.

Consumers trust heritage brands and Kraft has a big job ahead to build up a new trust relationship with the UK audience. Social networking, which the Americans will doubtless utilise ruthlessly, will have to be made to work harder and will become even more important for foreign brand owners to embrace. Foreign owners will not have near the same level of respect as their financial objectives are so clearly the driving force behind this deal, at the expense of human and emotional issues such as jobs and brand character – which the consumer relates to most.

Kraft have won the first stage of the PR battle hands down – they have Cadburys and will be moving it onwards. If that means asset stripping or careful nurture of a brand remains to be seen.

A perfect case in point is the trick he showed me. I didn’t dare ask – it felt too gauche – but Blaine offered. He got me to shuffle a pack of cards and lay out two lines of ten cards, making sure that each one was different. Then he asked me to take ten of them and hold them behind my back. Next, he suggested I look at the remaining cards and mentally pick one. “Not the Ace, it’s too obvious,” he said.

I chose the four of diamonds and told him that I’d chosen. Next, he made a gesture and told me to place the cards I held behind my back on the table. The ten cards I had hidden behind me were now eleven in number and sure enough, the eleventh card was the four of diamonds. I was gob-smacked. I have absolutely no idea how he did it – it seems an impossible trick.

But this is the reaction Blaine is constantly seeking, since he instinctively knows I would go away and talk to several people about the trick and how astonishing it was and, in this way, his reputation would be perpetuated. Now, of course, I am also blogging about it. The chances are that his reputation will spread in ever increasing circles if everyone who is astonished by him does as I have done.

Just as interesting was the revelation that Blaine actively thrived on the people who came and taunted him with food and insults whilst he was attempting to live on only 4.5 litres of water a day in a Plexiglas box above the Thames. “I needed people to react in the way that the did to get through the stunt,” he told me.

Their antipathy during his 44 days of starvation gave him something to prove to the haters and became a media focus for the endurance stunt, guaranteeing it more coverage and even comments from then-President Bush. No wonder he was heard to murmur “I love you all” when he finally completed the stunt.

He is the greatest modern showman / illusionist and will remain popular as long he can maintain the incredibly high creativity, the quality of his unique stunts and continue to amaze and astonish. Celebrities, brands and publicists have a lot to learn from David Blaine.

“This post is part of my desire to both shine light on discrepancies in advertising and to attract people who want to use advertising as a genuine tool to build better customer relationships, products, and long-lasting brands,” she writes.

She is clear-eyed on what has brought about this need for transparency; the internet. She is part of the burgeoning conversation on the web about transparency and empowered users of brands. 

“A powerful global conversation has begun,” she says. “Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

“So we have this rich, conversational internet happening, and the bloom of social media and social networks almost everywhere I turn. There are incredible opportunities for brand-building and even transactional results. Dell has sold over $1 million worth of refurbished computers on Twitter. More than ever people want to tell their friends about the things they love.”

The more this type of conversation can be encouraged the better, I say. It will be interesting to see what comes of it in the coming months, when recession will make it all the more necessary for people to feel they can trust the brands they are being sold and the people who are selling them.

“They have spent the best part of two decades as Britain’s most unlikely TV power couple. Now it seems the fortunes – and ratings – of the husband-and-wife team are dropping fast, despite once having A-list guests queue to appear with them and a lucrative book club that could make or break an author.

“Since the couple’s move last month from Channel 4 to the cable channel Watch, viewing figures for Richard and Judy’s New Position have slumped disastrously, even by cable channel standards. The prime-time show attracted just 20,000 viewers for one recent broadcast, plummeting from 149,000 for the much-heralded first show at the beginning of October. The average is just 47,000 compared with 2.5 million in their Channel 4 heyday.

“Mark Borkowski, a publicist and PR expert, said: ‘Personality brands occasionally have to be rested and try to create some nostalgia for that person to come back. Some of the best television formats have been those brave enough to cut personalities off in their prime, rather than suffer the ’slings and arrows’ when they’ve stretched for too long.’”

To read the full article, click here.

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