Posts Tagged ‘corporate’

Whilst flitting between a flurry of meetings lately, the issues of growing a company have been playing on my mind. Whether you’re selecting which new business pitch to opt for, attempting to prioritise a hectic diary or thinking about enlisting new staff, defining and sustaining a true corporate culture is as essential as it is difficult.

Arthur Schopenhauer, that eminently quotable German, once said ‘We forfeit two thirds of ourselves in order to be like other people.’  In the past, I’ve occasionally prioritised the need to get the job over the passion for it. I’ve let myself and what I do be defined by what a client wants, rather than what my heart (and my more hard-bitten instincts) tell me I should be doing.

If you’re pitching without passion, it’s more likely than not a question of too many mouths to feed: unchecked growth leads to serious issues. In growing your business with limitless tenacity, the likelihood is that you’ll fall victim to the 33 and 1/3^rd factor: some unalterable law of the universe dictates that, left unfiltered, your employees will appear in three types, in equal proportion.

The first 3^rd are the stars, the challengers, those who grow the business with their unstoppable thinking and enthusiasm. The second are the support staff, the dependables and hard workers without whom the company could not continue day to day. Both of these are necessary components in the agency vehicle, whether it’s a slick ad world Beemer or a dependable in-house people carrier. Managing the ratio between them is the secret of a great corporate culture.

The last 3^rd are the hangers on, drifting through the day like fugitives clinging onto the sides of a train, only without the diligence or sense of opportunity. The overlarge organisation, or the agency which cannot fully define itself and stick to that definition, attracts an inordinate number of these energy sappers. Without a firm culture to define them against, it gets harder to keep them away.

If you’re questing after true efficiency, you won’t find it by increasing your workforce. Take the time to define the way you work now and establish the way you want it to change. Grow slowly and strategically, and you’ll be left with far fewer hangers on, and far less air resistance as you travel.

As Andy Gray and Richard Keys reach the desperate end of their careers, Jeremy Clarkson has weighed in to the row, saying that he is concerned about people being sacked and vilified for “heresy by thought”.

Is it possible he’s worried about people discovering what he’s thinking? He should be if he is foolish enough to say it aloud and it’s newsworthy; you can’t avoid the inevitable, There’ll come a time when even King Clarkson’s brand is out of fashion. The prayers of the in-house Car PR teams will one day be answered.

If you are in public life in 2011, be you a sports commentator, a chief executive of a major company, a politician, a pop star, a journalist or an actor, you need to be on message at all times. There is no off the record any more. You are a target and anyone has the means of catching you digitally and transmitting unwanted, candid moments up on the net in minutes where your conduct will be judged. If Twitter and Facebook can start a revolution in Egypt, it can take down a brand or a celebrity with ease.

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Andy Gray and Richard Keys were relatively well known sports commentators until a leaked tape showed them uttering sexist comments about assistant referee Sian Massey at the Liverpool v. Wolves game yesterday. Now, their faces are everywhere.

There’s no excuse for the sort of behind the scenes off-the-cuff black humour they were indulging in, but it is surprising that this is turning into a PR disaster. With Andy Gray’s departure from Sky Sports just announced, it’s interesting to note the leeway given to comedians like Frankie Boyle. What is the tipping point between joke and PR disaster?

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Scathing and probing headlines are continuing to castrate and castigate BP’s hapless crisis PR endeavours, further to my blog of the other day. Disapproving chatter clutters the web and denunciatory journalists, bloggers and commentators continue to feed on the corporate leviathan’s swift downward trajectory.

The latest casualty in the ongoing debate about the oil spill fiasco is the global PR financial shop Brunswick. Alan Parker’s stately independent whale has made a habit of maintaining the lowest of profiles. Accomplished, circumspect and effective, Brunswick are respected in the financial orbit for their tactful and discreet diplomacy. The company have successfully produced a number of Richelieu figures, many of whom have gone on to the most powerful corporate multinationals.

The diabolical fix their client is in has started to spatter even their enviable brand reputation with the sticky, oily residue of failure. Brunswick now face a very public, very uncomfortable test. There was a time when the solemn and sober Alan Parker would, like Zelig, be visible at every corporate disaster; an undertaker with a reassuring demeanour. But no more. Crisis comms have not been one of Brunswick’s most effective tools of late. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a relief to see a little justice being meted out over Bhopal, only 20 or more years too late. The long-standing avoidance of justice is a major stain on the PR industry, bearing in mind how integral PR was in keeping the case out of the courts over the last 25 years.

The Indian unit of US chemicals firm Union Carbide has been found guilty of negligence and seven former employees have been fined and jailed for two years, although it’s all too little too late for the families of those affected by the gas disaster.

The PR companies who have charged huge fees to help cover up the worst effects of Bhopal’s toxic spew should be glad they are all a couple of continents away from the families of the affected Indians, some of whom are calling for the former workers to be hanged. Read the rest of this entry »

Where have all the rebellious heroes of British music gone? If the Brit Awards are anything to go by, there is pretty much no such animal anymore, just a parade of no-marks who are too wary of upsetting Mastercard, the sponsors, and the TV executives to do anything interesting.

The fact that the inoffensive Welsh songstress Duffy, a fine singer if you like your music to hark back to a supposedly innocent era where everyone was happy and no one rocked the boat, has been crowned the overall winner of this year’s Brits merely reinforces the corporate sheen of the modern awards, and where no alcohol is served whilst the TV show is filmed in case of trouble. No trouble is allowed, of course, in case it interferes with the mundane business of rewarding money with more money.

As recently as a decade ago, there was an inevitability about some sort of mischievous prank being pulled at the Brits; the award ceremony could be relied upon to provide at least one instance of much-needed end-of-winter anarchy in the TV schedules, be it Chumbawamba dousing John Prescott in water and changing the lyrics of Tubthumping to support the Liverpool dockers, Jarvis Cocker waving his arse at Michael Jackson or the KLF firing blanks at the crowd from the stage before depositing a dead sheep outside the venue.

Even Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox’s notoriously bad presentation style at the 1989 Brits seems like a paragon of rock ‘n’ roll anarchy now, in an era when all we get by way of mischief and outrage is the crawling skeleton that is Amy Winehouse abasing herself in the Caribbean.

Of course, it was Fleetwood and Fox’s reign of autocue terror on the show that stopped it from being broadcast live; the first step in a steady progression of limitations that saw the Brits become less a celebration of modern music and more of a corporate jolly at a seaside resort, shackling British rock music to the tedious format that spawned it simply by reacting violently against it: the 1950s variety show.

Watching the Brits now, it’s as if the Beatles never went to Hamburg or discovered acid, as if the Rolling Stones never scared the parents of the Baby Boomer generation. Everyone plays nicely and the nation’s passion for music dribbles away.

The Brits, and pop music in general, need adventure, excitement, mischief, stunts and anarchy. Someone needs to be rewarded for all of the above, not just for toeing the line and practising the art of appeasement with big business and the company bosses. Rock ‘n’ roll demands bad behaviour. It’s great that Iron Maiden were awarded Best Live Act – here was one band in the line up who have always pushed the boundaries of publicity, moved forward and never just caved in to industry pressure, thanks in great part to their excellent manager Rod Smallwood.

The same can’t be said for the other winners. Girls Aloud are, without doubt, a nice bunch of women who perform cheery, upbeat songs, but they have no serious agenda; they are part of a celebrity money machine that is dying on its feet as the world of high finance implodes and people discover that they want more serious, cerebral and inventive things in their lives.

Sales of broadsheets are up, The Economist is experiencing a surge in sales. In the face of coming hardship, people are bound to want their entertainment to mean something again, to have a story behind it that is more than a metaphor for the excesses of the banking world. Amy Winehouse drinking herself into oblivion is not rebellion; what the rock and pop scene needs is a good selection of agent provocateurs amongst their ranks, unsettling the stale corporate shindig that is the Brits with something a little more radical and exciting.

Good music PR cannot just rely on churning out the latest set of sound-a-likes and hoping they’ll do something stupid or crazy (within a certain set of limits) for the press. In a digital download age, where music is becoming as ubiquitous as breakfast cereal, acts that want to break through with credibility intact are going to have to think very hard about what they have to say, what their music has to say and how they want to go about promoting it.