Posts Tagged ‘Daily Mail’

The BBC seem to think that the revelations about cutbacks in the last few days are a job well done, given the leak to the Times and the reactions it engendered. The deliberate leak is certainly a small PR coup, given that it went to one of the papers most vocally opposed to the BBC and it shows Auntie Beeb willing to wield the axe.

But will the cutting of BBC6 Music and the Asian Network be seen, at least by papers such as the Daily Mail who are naturally opposed to the BBC and didn’t get the exclusive, as anything more than cosmetic, as more than the the wielding of a very small axe? Read the rest of this entry »

A week is a long time in politics, so six months equates to an eternity. Just ask David Cameron who, six months ago, looked to be a shoe-in for the next Prime Minister.

I’ve been up in the smoke all week and the conversation, from left and right, is dominated by the possibility that the Tories might not win the election. It’s a simple case of making a couple of mistakes and watching confidence seep away. And the ill-advised Tory poster campaign, featuring an airbrushed David Cameron, is not so much a mistake as it is a PR disaster. Read the rest of this entry »

Speculation surrounds the departure of Jonathan Ross from the BBC after 13 years – did he jump or was he pushed?
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When the troubled tabloid-sacrifice uber babe Katie Price decided to re-enter the jungle, I received numerous requests to comment on TV and radio. For once I held back; I just wasn’t convinced that I had the interest or the energy to offer any opinion on another Katie Price PR move. In truth, I could not ascertain whether I thought she was obsessed by self-absorption or self-loathing.

My reluctance to comment changed when I read Jan Moir’s fantastic assassination of Katie in the Mail: “Sweet kangaroo cutlets, what have we here? Katie Price back in the jungle again? How much more of boobilicious, publicity-mad She-Chav Katie can we take?”

Jordan, the goddess of the tabloid centre spread, is seriously wounded; instead of avoiding jet lag by popping into a rehab clinic (on discounted rate for the assured media coverage) she has placed her surgically engineered torso back in the reality stocks. Is it a hapless move to rehabilitate her image in the public eye or an unrecoverable PR disaster? I am sure the audience can spot the PR conceit and are not persuaded.

Katie Price’s arrival on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here is a stunt motivated by the ego drive that comes with self-expression and self-manifestation for its own ends. Price set the trend and rewrote the wannabe handbook on how to succeed in the modern celebrity “have-a-go maelstrom”. Her self-importance can’t be restrained with niceties.

This latest PR endeavour illustrates that her addiction to column inches is now her greatest enemy. Obsessed with crushing her personal Satan – estranged hubby Peter Andre, who she met in the jungle the first time round – the exercise is surely going to go the same way as Jade Goody’s second, unpleasant experience in the Big Brother house. Can we ever forget Shilpagate?

If we take a moment to reflect, it is worth noting that we are all connected to the tarnished icon that is Jordan, addicted to the guilty pleasure of watching her antics. Her latest quest to relaunch her brand is, at the core, naïve. On the one hand, constant refreshment is at the heart of everything that has made her what she is, but on the other, it’s the core of everything that is rotten. It is a putrid masterpiece of strategy, to care so desperately for the opinion of those that don’t care.

By going into the jungle, she is begging her disciples to listen to her truth. Months of battling to win the hearts and minds of the great unwashed has failed, whilst her cuckolded other half, Andre, has been swept up into the coddling arms of the public, who see him as a victim of Katie Price’s machinations.

Now the dust has cleared – a little – in the wake of Jan Moir’s Mail article looking at the circumstances surrounding the death of Stephen Gately and the subsequent outpouring of Twitter anger, it’s worth asking what the difference is between Moir’s article, aimed at a certain set of like-minded readers, and the response on Twitter.

However ugly and unpalatable Moir’s insinuations were, there will always be celebrities and personalities in the public eye facing deconstruction, valid or not, and there will always be snarky columnists at the Mail. But it would help, if there is to be a mass outpouring of fury on Twitter in response, if it were more akin to constructive debate; it was disappointing to see that much of the response was simply mass retweeting of a few salient tweets from the likes of Stephen Fry.

It was an effective campaign, certainly, given that the Mail lost a number of high profile advertisers from the online article. But it was very much a case of an angrily bleating herd retweeting a few choice points – in much the same way as Moir’s supporters reiterated her views.

It’s interesting to note that the Mail have run a couple of big articles looking into the Twitter phenomenon over the weekend – they were clearly unsettled by the likes of Marks and Spencer pulling adverts – but I am not sure that, once the dust settles, the Mail will change its modus operandi significantly.

The only way that is likely to happen is if the masses use Twitter to voice their own opinions, rather than just relying on a few informed celebrities to dictate their opinions. The only way Twitter can become a truly democratic tool is if people find their own voice.

It will certainly be interesting to see what Moir has to say on Friday, once the dust has settled, and what reaction her response engenders.

Celebrity death is best done young, or youngish, whilst all the characteristics that enamour the public to them remain intact. It’s not great for the celebrity in question, perhaps, but certain brand-builders love a good image that’s been soused in aspic and preserved for an eternity of milking.

Take Michael Jackson, whose death has seen the worst elements of him shorn away, with only the adulation left; there’s now a competition to design a fitting memorial for him. And of the entries, there’s not one but three suggestions to build a Jackson-shaped island off Dubai, next to the other man made islands. The proposals would, of course, all have theme-parks on them – a home for Neverland ranch, if the new owner feels the need to sell it.

It’s astonishingly gauche, but somehow hardly surprising. I half expect one of the entries to win and then we’ll be able to see a Jackson-shaped landmass from space. What an alien visitor would make of this is another question.

An alien visitor’s reaction to the relentless plundering of Jackson’s brand in the months since his death would make for interesting reading, too. The family started it, with Jackson’s father launching a record label in the wake of his son’s death. The only way from here is to plunder more, until all the contrary mystery that Jackson maintained is gone.

Not that you have to be dead for your brand to be plundered: licensing firm CKX Inc recently bought an 80% stake in the image rights to the great boxer Muhammed Ali, paying around $50 million to use his name, image and likeness of the boxing champ, as he was at the height of his powers, as they see fit. Ali retains 20% of himself in the deal (more, I suspect, than is actually left of the iconic boxing champion in him) as well as taking the money upfront, a shrewd deal for a man who was so badly damaged by boxing, one which guarantees his survival in the collective consciousness.

The same plunder is happening with all sorts of iconic figures of the 20th century, from Marilyn Monroe to Elvis to Che Guevara. Their images have been in use for years, generating awesome amounts of money for the license holders and for the estates of the dead stars, but it will be interesting to see where new technology takes their images – we’ve already seen Laurence Olivier resurrected for theatre and film, but as the technology advances, so will the scope for looting the brands of dead stars. Whole films carried by computer-generated versions of James Dean? A new romcom starring Elvis and Marilyn with a supporting role for Che? The possibilities are terrifyingly endless.

What fun the brand looters could have with Peter Mandelson, who stood up at the Labour conference the other day and completed his resurrection. As Quentin Letts pointed out in the Mail: “There were self-puncturing jokes, swishes of kitten claw and a series of exaggerated waist swivels, arm gesticulations and eye flashes worthy of a Michael Jackson impersonator.”

It leaves me wondering what we would be left with if Mandelson were to shuffle, untimely, off this mortal coil. Preserve him in aspic now and we would have the new, pantomime Machiavelli, the glamorous manipulator, the ultimate in Lazarene politician-kind.

Simply, he is the current brand apotheosis of this type of politics and the standing ovation he received at the Labour conference is as good as any baptism in waves of spin. Now he is free to fight his way to the leadership of the Labour party. I wonder which way the Sun would turn if he was in charge?

That said, I doubt anyone would consider building an island in his honour, should he pass on suddenly. A scale model of the Millennium Dome in a model village somewhere, perhaps, but that’s about it. Which is more than can be said for Gordon Brown, mind you, who, despite a rousing speech at the conference yesterday, has yet to shake off Steve Bell’s branding of him as a rain-cloud. His only hope for long-term brand management is his wife…

I’m intrigued by the Daily Mail’s leap to the defence of computer hacker Gary McKinnon and am certain that there’s a certain PR agenda underlying their campaign on his behalf.

Whilst it is utterly in keeping for the Mail to campaign to keep the trial of a man with Aspergers Syndrome in the UK so that he can live a semblance of the life he had and see his mum from time to time – a man who claims that the only reason he hacked into US military networks was to discover if there was evidence of UFOs to be found there – I suspect that the Mail are also keeping in mind how many hits they can get on their website.

There’s no doubt that the McKinnon case is attracting a large amount of interest from the UFO-loving community, a group not normally known for engaging with the world at large, except where it concerns potential visitations from the universe at large. McKinnon is a cause celebre in these circles and the Mail, I am certain, has its eye on attracting them to their website – presumably they are not expecting them to leave the computer to actually buy a paper.

Only time will tell; if we see stories on UFO sightings appearing in the deeper recesses of Mail in the near future, you’ll know I was right. In the meantime, here’s hoping that the surface agenda – keeping a frail man who knows he did wrong but does not deserve to be torn entirely from his family for it – works as well.

What do ex-pop star Dane Bowers and the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, have in common? They’re both publicity predators, prowling at the fringes of big news and ready to leap in and attach their teeth into the rump of a story that will get them attention.

Griffin is all over the news at the moment, attaching himself to the coat tails of the BNP’s London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook, who was invited to Buckingham Palace for a garden party and sought to bring Griffin as his significant other to the party. But Griffin, in true publicity predator style, has now consumed the story entirely.

According to the Daily Mail: “The leader of the British National Party yesterday pulled out of the Royal garden party following a public outcry over his invitation. Nick Griffin said he had ‘no wish to embarrass the Queen’ by attending Buckingham Palace on July 21.”

The far right have always been good at propaganda and at getting ink – Goebbels was an astonishing propagandist who turned the swastika into the world’s most recognisable brand logos. Griffin’s trick, learned from pop stars and the 24/7 news cycle, has been to insert himself into the soap opera of the news cycle. Soap, as we know, demands a rich mix of people and always rewards the most Machiavellian characters with big story lines.

You just have to look at Dane Bowers for proof. Bowers is back in the life of his ex, Katie Price aka Jordan, determinedly reinserting himself into the ongoing soap opera that is the Pete’n’Jordan bust up, calling her as his alibi after being arrested for drink driving outside her house. It’s a guaranteed method of reclaiming fame – this fresh injection of notoriety should last him a good fifteen months, even if he and Jordan are not an item again after all.

Griffin’s predatory ambitions are – at the moment, anyway – much more short term. He’s hoping to turn his ‘noble’ gesture to the Queen into votes at next week’s local and European elections. If that works, then the long game begins and Griffin the publicity predator will be red in tooth and claw.

In the meantime, both Griffin and Bowers are successfully writing themselves into the news-soap. For proof, all you need to look at is the reaction of Middle England. Right now, Griffin and Bowers are the names on a huge number of people’s lips.

You couldn’t move anywhere this morning without hearing something about Ben Southall, the British winner of ‘The Best Job in the World’ and the string of idyllic desert islands along the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia, which will act as his home and office for six months. Not surprising, when the job is more like a paid holiday and earns him approximately £74,000!

The campaign, run by Tourism Queensland, is a fine example of PR left to do what it does best – spread a positive story as far and wide as possible in a glowing light. And you don’t get a much more glowing, positive light than in Australia, thanks to the ‘can do’ attitude of the Australians and the sunshine. The story behind this job spread virally throughout the world with a little careful placing on YouTube and Facebook – ‘The Best Job in the World’ was a fantastic hook to take advantage of social networking with.

“This is probably the first time that a campaign has achieved this sort of reach with so little advertising spend other than a few strategically placed job ads around the world,” Australian marketing analyst Tim Burrowes told the Daily Mail. “This has all been about the power of people passing things on, largely through YouTube. The main lesson to be learned here is that if you have an original, exciting idea that gets people talking you don’t need to spend huge on advertising.”

He’s absolutely right, but there are still too many people with great talent of great products out there stuck in relationships with advertising men who just don’t get this or who think that PR is ‘easy’. These are people who will hang on to a client by hook or by crook, telling them what they want to hear and not letting the story out to run free.

It’s amazing what free-thinking PR can do: Borkowski’s award-winning campaign for Wispa won Cadburys huge, nationwide coverage for the return of the iconic 80s chocolate bar and created a conversation with the people who actually bought the bars and wanted it to come back. Through social networking, they were able to be a part of the process. The same is true of the ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign – it spread virally because people felt they were part of it.

The final 50 candidates even competed to gather more followers on the web and interact with them, dressing in Scuba outfits and filming themselves walking through cities being one of the popular stunts. It’s appropriate, given that part of the job remit is to communicate with the world from the island. This, then, is a PR campaign that will just keep on unfolding.

If the ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign had stayed in the hands of advertisers who felt they could manage a little easy PR on the side, however, the story would have been far less likely to have the enormous impact it has had in a little over four months. PR needs to be let free to do what it needs to do – if the ‘Best Job in the World’ story had stayed in the hands of Machiavellian advertising men who are most skilled at managing a client’s expectations and keeping the client in a hole, who claim knowledge of PR when the client knows nothing of it, then it would have faltered at the first.

The campaign could also have easily faltered under the weight of stories about the other islands near to Hamilton Island, where Southall will be taking up residence as caretaker for six months. On the Today programme this morning, Chloe Hooper revealed the darker side of Australia’s relationship with the islands; she talked about Palm Island, founded in 1918 as a prison island for ‘misbehaving’ indigenous Australians – misbehaving meaning speaking their own language or asking about wages.

This is not an island the tourist industry would want known about, especially as indigenous Australians are still beaten and murdered there – Hooper related an incident from 2004 a drunken indigenous Australian swore at the white officer in charge of Palm Island and was found beaten with his liver cut in two some hours later – and the life expectancy is 20 years less for the indigenous population than it is for a non-indigenous Australian.

This story could well explode in the tourist commission’s faces – there is a curious dichotomy between the ‘can do’ attitude of the Australians and the institutionalised racism that survives in the country still. But, by allowing the positive story free reign, they have kept the negative angle at bay for now.

If they can use the waves of unleashed positivity to help address this negative aspect of the Australian psyche – and break down the barriers contained by the barrier reef – all the better, but it’s worth realising that, in the hands of an advertising agency which thinks it understands PR, there would never have been the vast positives in the first place, nor the room to address the darker side of Australia and its relationship with the indigenous population in a constructive, transparent manner.

The Daily Mail today extended their puritanical approach, newly fired up and raring to go in the wake the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand hoo-ha, to Carnage UK, a company which promotes themed pub crawls for students in university cities in which the students dress up in outrageous costumes, coat themselves in vulgar slogans and drink themselves insensible through a number of pubs. The Norwich event, which has evoked most ire in the paper, was in “Dirty Porn Star” fancy dress.

The article, entitled Degrees of Excess, is long, outraged and thoroughly illustrated. Some will read it as an attack on the company, but others will see it as advertising. The approach the Mail have taken is likely to create an own goal for the paper – it will almost certainly suggest to a large number of students that here is an opportunity to have fun.

The Mail, unwittingly perhaps, are selling the Carnage UK brand as the perfect pre-packaged rebellious night out for young students. The more the older generation froth at the article, the more likely it is to appeal to their offspring, who, like most young adults, are always looking for ways to rebel.

It was ever thus – the new puritanical approach is just business as usual. Outrage has always engendered publicity for the people the outraged would like to condemn. From PT Barnum to OZ magazine, it has been fulminations in the press that have given such happenings the oxygen of publicity.

To read the Mail article, click here.