Posts Tagged ‘football’

Yesterday’s failed Bayern Munich stunt was an ideal example of what happens when creative energy fails to connect with the reality of the media narrative. For those who didn’t hear, the German football team wrangled a piece of PR trickery which fuelled an horrific backlash.

An announcement on their website that “a spectacular name” was to sign for the club invited fans to watch the name’s unveiling on the team’s Facebook page.

Needless to say, an incredible amount of furore was generated and fans eagerly tuned in at the proposed time in their thousands. However, following a short video clip from FCB’s general manager Christian Nerlinger, fans were treated to a view of their own Facebook profile picture, followed by their own name on the back of a Bayern Munich number 8 shirt.

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Football’s back in the news, but this time it’s not about vast sums being splurged on footballers in the transfer market, it’s a stunt that raises awareness about the quality of food at your average sports match.

My local team, Forest Green, have a new chairman, CEO of Ecotricity Dale Vince. Vince is vegan – and he has just abolished all red meat products from being sold to punters during the match.

Out go meat pies, chips, curry sauce, sausages. In comes healthier food – though what exactly has yet to be announced. It’s likely to open up debate about the strange imbalance between watching men at peak fitness playing football whilst gorging on artery-clogging fast foods, positioning Dale Vince as the Jamie Oliver of the footballing world.

It’ll be interesting to see what vegetarian and vegan alternatives come in – veggie burgers never will quite cut the mustard in the eyes of hardcore footie fans. But the fight could well make for an interesting debate on the way people approach food in the football stands. Let’s wait and see if this makes its way up into the canteens of the Premier League.

Vince has lots of local interest and is building his brand locally. It’s fascinating to see the way Vince has taken his core values and woven them seamlessly into everything he does, from his green electricity company to a meat-free Forest Green Rovers. It has become a brand truth that instantly allows an audience to recognise what he and his companies stand for. It will be interesting to see how far he can take them.

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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Tottenham Hotspur have pulled off a nifty coup for the New Year, bringing David Beckham in to train after a few weeks of speculation and “will he/won’t he?” in the tabloids. Regarding Beckham actually playing for the team, nothing is certain still, but that is hardly the point.

The point is that this is a perfect way for Beckham to maintain his British profile prior to LA Galaxy’s season start in March, it’s not a bad way for Beckham to get fit for that purpose too and, if he does sign, Spurs will be able to turn quite some coin on the back of the fans who will want Beckham shirts. Read the rest of this entry »

So Russia have the 2018 World Cup and it’s to go to Qatar in 2022. Anyone trying to suggest that this decision has anything to do with football needs to go away and sit quietly in a dark corner whilst they reevaluate their opinion.

The decision by FIFA bigwigs is solely about where the power is in the new world order, and it’s not in quiet, dusty old England. No-one should be trying to make Panorama a scapegoat, either – this is a decision that would have been reached regardless of their investigations.

We live in an age of infocapitalists. Those with the biggest budgets are always most likely to buy up these big events – and who is bigger these days than the big, oil rich states?

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Wayne Rooney’s incredible decision to sign a new five-year contract at Manchester United has shocked the football world, just days after he made it clear he was looking to leave. The persuasive powers of Ferguson are legendary in football and he could well have played another blinder to keep Rooney on-side.

Bear in mind that what was said in Rooney’s statement a mere 48 hrs ago undermined his fellow players, the fans and, surely, the manager too. Rooney said publically that Fergie and the club had no ambition! He pointed the finger at everyone at Manchester United.

How, then, can he ever recover? It may help that people expect these duplicitous ways but that is unlikely to stop them feeling cheated by the soap opera that has played out over the last week.

The abrupt Rooney U turn is bad all round; a PR disaster for his brand and deeply unhelpful for his club. Using the back and front pages to play hard ball brinksmanship, the furore has produced the result his management team desired: more money and better terms. Read the rest of this entry »

Conundrum of the week is the strange case of why In Touch magazine ran a story suggesting athletic rumpy pumpy between Beckham and exotic model-come-prostitute Irma Nici.

I might be wrong, but it all feels so fake. Certainly, David Beckham looks set to sue the US magazine for the claims that he went a bit Rooney.

Bauer – who publish In Touch – clearly did not comprehend the chaos that would be unleashed. I suspect their office must have echoed with the cry of: “Bugger the truth, the story is too good to ignore!” The fall out and collective web chatter suggests a plethora of conspiracy theories. My favourite so far is the one that suggests that it is a hoax attempting to derail England’s World Cup bid. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll be examining the manipulative new age of PR and social media, and how the herd is motivated to reshape our lives, in Edinburgh next week. My lecture is one of the key events in the inaugural Edinburgh International Marketing Festival on Tuesday 24th August at 17.30 and the lecture aims to reveal exactly how important PR 2.0 can be – and to stir the hornet’s nest a little.

In the brave new world run to the tune of the ten minute news cycle, where traditional media has been reduced to merely commenting on and affirming stories that are broken on Twitter and in the blogosphere, almost at the speed of thought, and where advertising budgets have been slashed down to the stump, what else is there but PR? Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s edition of the Sun features an exposé of Wayne Rooney’s recent night on the tiles as his team-mates “completed rigorous pre-season fitness tours”. It is a typically irked and excitable article, chipping away at the veneer of sporting heroism that has been liberally applied to Rooney and his sporting colleagues in the past.

The article is desperate to get people fulminating about spoilt football players in the wake of England’s World Cup flop, on the assumption that these football “legends” are heroes and idols for the nation’s kids who are betraying their legions of fans by going out and being normal. They are doing nothing of the sort. Read the rest of this entry »