Posts Tagged ‘guardian’

Is PR spam the new chlamydia? Certainly it’s being fulminated about an awful lot as the latest social disease that may have infected us all, although we’re too often too ashamed to check out the symptoms.
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Another piece, by me, on the Tiger Woods brand disintegration has appeared in Guardian Online’s Media section. It looks at the way that sports endorsement has been shifting away from volatile and risky sports stars, and at where the big money is settling in the aftermath of the Tiger Woods PR meltdown.

“Let’s get one thing straight: Tiger’s situation is no ordinary brand collapse. This is the high watermark for individual brand disintegration. It’s not of massive media interest just because of the girls; the attendant hoo-ha surrounding Tiger’s spectacular brand disintegration has been heightened to such an extraordinary degree because of the high level of brand protection surrounding A-list celebrities and sporting giants.”

To read the full article, click here.

The Media Guardian published an article of mine in yesterday’s Media comment looking at the rise of Google’s SideWiki and what it will mean for the future of PR. To read the published version, click here. For the unexpurgated version, please keep reading!

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Given the amount of fear other Google innovations, like their library project, have caused, it’s surprising that alarms bells have not been heard ringing throughout the PR world since SideWiki’s launch in September. The internet is an evolutionary tool and for the world of PR, its daily use is as significant as the use of the wheel for stone age man. Except revolution has taken the place of evolution as the net brings about change at an astonishing rate.

Few people in PR, it seems, have considered the way that SideWiki will change the lives of beleaguered PR folk. I believe that, in time, this tool will significantly change the way brands strategize, think and exist. SideWiki is going to challenge PR by providing the masses with the tool for the ultimate expression of people power, something uncontainable that will need constant monitoring.

As the name suggests, this is a tool that allows anyone who wants to (and who has the right browser – Firefox or IE) to comment on anything on the web and have that comment displayed in a pop out window alongside for all to see. All they have to do is download the Google toolbar and they’re ready to go. SideWiki will change the way that everything is perceived, especially once it reaches more browsers.

A lot of the PR industry, however, is living like an ostrich with mange; only just summoning up the energy to bury its collective head in the sand. Too many PR folk are too busy pitching half-arsed ideas to see the real threat. The clear and present danger for sluggish PRs is the way that the net continues to develop and construct devices that enable individuals to increase their power. These devices shift as quickly as riptides and, at the moment, it seems that the only people that can survive them are the consumers they cater for.

SideWiki will make it impossible to promote one message and not be held to account. Organisations that have traditionally engaged only in one way conversations or broadcast models will struggle to survive in a SideWiki world. Angry at the latest government wrongdoing? Why not post your grievances next the department where everyone can see them? Find out the ethical practices of confectionary giant aren’t quite as ethical as its advertising suggests? SideWiki is there to help and any PR firm that fails to provide acceptable answers will be open to further public assault by irate consumers.

Brand integrity has to be at the core of brand thinking if the brands are to survive this transparency. Companies will be compelled to consider taking a real position and relate to a set of ideas the marketplace cares about – SideWiki will surely force their hand into a position of fundamental and overwhelming transparency. For fashionable PR execs this transparency will either be terrifying or inspiring. I hope that, thanks to SideWiki, we will see the death of the myopic PR clone and evolve to a position where serious strategic thinkers in PR will challenge the other marketing dinosaurs.

The recession has herded agencies into a pit; they have been humbled in particular by ad agencies who are moving in on proven PR processes, eager to keep making money but who aren’t necessarily experts in that field. The American company Crispin Porter & Bogusky declared in a recent Campaign article that they had asked the agency to stop writing ad script and start writing PR releases instead. Very 1980s. Also in the mix are highly creative and respected agencies like Fallon and Mother, who are taking a firm hand in the PR aspects of campaigns.

PR companies must offer and embrace sophisticated monitoring and tracking devices to keep their clients up to speed, offer solutions and encourage brand bravery and transparency. If they don’t, they will die.

Predictable PR is on the red list of endangered species. The evolution of SideWiki is a seminal moment, when the industry’s destiny is in its own hands. Development forces contributing to the evolution of the web are threatening PR’s demise. PR budgets on the whole bring about reactive, crisis thinking, based on negative responses that threaten their clients’ spot in the market.

The Innocent brand signaled the way forward back in 1997. Lacking bags of readies to spend on traditional marketing, they chose instead to launch a multitude of catalyst conversations around their packaging and experiential events. They were a word of mouth success well before the full web revolution and have paved the way for many more campaigns using the new technology.

Applying the ancient conventions and old codes of conduct of communications to the new world of parallel influence will only accelerate the inconsequence of traditional marketers. The Social Media world encloses our personal and professional actions – the only answer for PR folk is to take a more active role in being brand custodians, representing a higher degree of brands and reputation management.

Ad agencies once proactively shaped vision but now PR is demonstrably just as capable at understanding and cultivating future thinking, if not more so. PR has always engaged in a two-way conversation and should be capitalising on this to earn their clients’ trust. SideWiki is a call to arms – there is no excuse for complacency, as failure in today’s landscape is public, searchable, and enduring.

Lucozade is going through PR hell at the moment, in the wake of lurid headlines such as “The Lucozade Bombers” referring to the thwarted plot to blow up seven planes with bombs concealed inside bottles of the energy drink. The Guardian asked me what I though that Lucozade would be doing about it, in an article published today.

“Smaller brands might secretly welcome the association or at least make an irreverent joke about it, reckons Borkowski. ‘You can see Mock The Week having great fun with it but it’s too uncomfortable for the parent company. The problem is these brands are owned by enormous companies who are incredibly nervous because of beagle-smoking issues.’”

To read the full article, click here.

Politicians may have a lot to sweat about at the moment, but the appearance of actual sweat can knock back their image management incalculably. The Guardian published a piece on this today, with reference to the MP Bill Rammell’s sweat-drenched appearance on the BBC a couple of nights ago, and asked for my opinion on the matter.

Click here to read the story.

It seems, of late, that sleaze is a gift worth giving and that it’s for life, not just for Christmas or for politicians. The latest example – the News of the World phone tapping scandal – is, in Variety’s slanguage, a “dramedy”. It has the potential for seriously succulent consequences, which might be deeply costly for News International. The potential scale of the scandal is enormous.

Most agents and celebrities will be trying to find out if Nick Davies’ research is robust, wondering if they are one of the thousand celebrities whose phones were hacked. If nothing else, the alleged espionage will result in a welter of wealthier celebrities – all thanks to Davies’s diligence.

These are dark times for executives in the Wapping gulag. The sound of gnawing of fingernails will do nothing to deaden the relentless hum of prurient, smug outrage from the celebrity commentariat. For some battle-scarred PR flaks it will come as no surprise that the tabloids have deployed the dark arts of espionage to root out succulent showbiz sweetmeats.

But, from my standpoint, I am expecting the hacking scandal to empower prominent celebrities to wreak legal havoc in a bout of retrospective revenge. Wasn’t it Edward Gibbon who said: “Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive”? Celebrities will certainly be riffing on the first part of that quote in the coming months – the genie is about to be escape the bottleneck of secrecy and those affected will almost certainly start suing News International.

I guess that the News of the World will struggle to contain the details of the Taylor settlement, the details of which they have, to date, been able to withhold from the public domain. Once out, however, the paper will be forced to pay out and the ensuing costs will cripple the title. I expect a snowstorm of writs and a couple of spectacular court cases – all of which will make the News of the World look very feeble. Many celebrities will want to follow the Taylor example and will be eager and greedy to extract their own a six figure sums – I know that various high profile legal figures have already attempted to discover who the targets were.

It’s a fact that many misguided public figures feel that their treatment by the likes of News Of the World, who leverage mundane and routine facts and turn them into highly pejorative and prejudicial reports, is entirely unjustified. To achieve monetary reparation for what they see as unfair treatment will certainly be a revenge of sorts. And the paper has played into their hands.

But can you image the chaos the likes of Max Mosley, David Beckham, Gordon Ramsey or even Max Clifford, aggrieved and determined to get some reparation, might create if they can prove that the News of the World has gained access to their phone messages? Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but I’m certain it’ll be heating it up in the microwave of public attention soon enough.

The wrath of a celebrity is impossible to underestimate. There is an apocryphal tale about a celebrity crimper, apoplectic that he had been turned over by the News of the World. To ease the pain he created an effigy of Andy Coulson out of a teddy bear, which he threw it into the bathtub, doused it with lighter fluid, and set it on fire in a fit of voodoo celebrity therapy. Now it is possible that he will be calling Messrs Schillings instead to achieve a more satisfactory – and conventional – form of retribution; a financial sting.

The likely consequence of this potentially seismic activity is that the world of celebrity will have the upper hand in tabloid land in the future. Journalistic research will have to rebooted and the honourable profession will need their own PR to rebuild a tarnished reputation. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

I was asked for my opinion on how to maintain an online presence by the Guardian, for a piece published yesterday, looking at the ways you can be vetted by employers through postings to Facebook, Twitter etc. Here’s an excerpt.

“Publicist Mark Borkowski encourages his clients to make good use of the web, though he urges caution. ‘You wouldn’t go into a pub and scream out ‘I’m drinking a pint of lager’, but if you sit in a corner and do some people watching, others may join you and have a conversation. It’s the same with the net. The way to make it work is observe first; be a voyeur.’

“Borkowski is a big fan of Twitter but says it is not for everyone. ‘Don’t blunder in because you feel you have to, or you will look like a dad dancing at a wedding.’

“Unfortunately, you can’t control everything online – a friend may tag you in a photograph one drunken night out, and just like the paparazzi snapping a celebrity falling out of a club, years of good work are instantly undone. Similarly, if you post something in an online forum or blog while drunk and the host refuses to remove it.”

To read the full article, click here.

Could the tabloid-friendly sight of Cristiano Ronaldo and Paris Hilton in a Los Angeles nightclub the night before the footballer’s Real Madrid deal was confirmed be a coincidence? Originally published on the Guardian website

Call me a cynical old publicist but I have to admit that I am hardly surprised to see Cristiano Ronaldo spread across the tabloids today with Paris Hilton tucked under his arm at a club in Los Angeles.

It’s a marriage made in franchise heaven - the world’s most expensive footballer and the headline-grabbing socialite together on the eve of Ronaldo’s ascension to the giddy heights of football godhood – and an act of sublime stuntsmanship. It cannot be a coincidence.

Bear in mind that Real Madrid is almost certainly banking on being able to get more than a bit of loose change back from Ronaldo’s £80m price tag – not to mention his mooted wages of £200,000 per week – on the back of selling shirts, and it makes perfect sense that Ronaldo is to be found in an American nightclub… the night before the deal is announced.

They want to hook the American Latino market, which is where the US’s huge soccer audience is to be found. They need Ronaldo to follow in the golden boots of David Beckham. What better way than to place him at the jugular of America’s uber-celebrity, Paris Hilton?

Rumour has it that the deal was put in place a year ago - Real Madrid have had time, then, to plan an assault on the media to hurtle their player into the celebrity stratosphere. Ronaldo’s nightclub dalliance is simply the first step on the road to turning him into the biggest brand in the world of soccer. Already today, by playing the Paris card, he’s knocked Becks off the tabloid front pages in his latest photoshoot in his grundies.

All the ingredients have been carefully crafted and placed in the Petri dish of fame. Over the coming weeks we are going to see a new mutant ogre celebrity emerge from the stew that’s been cooked up.

Football is less and less a game of two halves – it is becoming more like a 3D chess set. On the lowest level is the game itself. Above that are the great players and their wives and girlfriends. But on the topmost level are the superstar money-spinners like Beckham, who hardly even need to play football anymore to earn everyone a living – and now Cristiano Ronaldo is clawing his way up there too.

It’s game on for the press. The planning phase is over and the celebrity games have begun. You can forget the likes of SuBo and the reality freakshow turns – Cristiano Ronaldo is where the uber money’s at. This is the million dollar deal.

I’m still recovering from a sold out Hay Festival appearance and the blazing sun. I’d forgotten how wonderful the Festival can be when the weather’s good!

The discussion, Hype and Glory, with the Guardian’s Marina Hyde and our excellent chair, Paul Blezard, was wide ranging and got an excellent response from the audience. Marina wanted to reclaim the world from celebrities and wanted real people with real talent to get recognition. Why should Angelina Jolie be the face of the UN when there are committed and talented people out there who, though less glamorous, do all the hard and amazing work that Jolie is employed to make palatable to the people.

The crux of the talk was who will stop the process of fame at any cost and foreshadowed the results and aftermath of Saturday evening’s Britain’s Got Talent final perfectly. The media love a good celebrity meltdown and there is no doubt that the people who own the formats dictate the stars – and the events on Britain’s Got Talent and in its wake prove this without the shadow of a doubt.

It’s great that Diversity won – here’s a group of talented dancers who represent the best of Britain – but it’s the meteoric rise and post-loss wobble of Susan Boyle that will hold the media’s attention for longer. It’s clear that Boyle has problems – she was diagnosed as having learning difficulties as a child – and has invested way too much of herself in the rollercoaster media ride through the talent contest, as her admission to the Priory for ‘exhaustion’ proves.

Jan Moir at the Mail summed up Boyle’s performance as follows: “Boyle did seem a trifle unsteady, not to mention tranquilised during the final. Yet I still phoned in my vote for her, because she delivered the most compelling and thrilling performance of the evening.” To read the entire article, click here.

The programme has a duty of care to its contestants, but how far will they take that when there’s money at stake?

Carole Malone, in her column in yesterday’s News of the World, worries about this too: “TV bosses have a duty of care to EVERY contestant on that show-but Susan needed more support and I don’t think she’s had it. I just hope they don’t – but I worry that once BGT is over, the powers that be will wash their hands of her. No one wants to be responsible for her losing it or coming to any mental or physical harm-especially because of a show that purports to change people’s lives for the better,” she wrote. To see her entire column, click here.

There have always been troubled stars – from Gwili Andre, who I have discussed here (and in my book The Fame Formula) before, to Judy Garland. Back in the glory days, however, the stars were protected from the ugly side of fame and the intense scrutiny that is now the norm. Now, of course, we are getting to see the nightmare of fame thanks to the people’s constant, urgent need for soap opera and the media’s willingness to supply it.

On another note, I noticed that David Milliband slipped into the discussion – perhaps to learn a bit more about spin and how to patch up tarnished reputations – just as I was getting into my stride about the need for people such as myself going into schools to talk to children about the true price of fame. It was noticeable that the more political I got about fame the more uncomfortable he got, to the point that he slipped out almost as soon as he’d arrived. A shame; it would have been interesting to get his viewpoint…

Neal’s Yard have committed a grave PR error by backing out of the Guardian’s You Ask They Answer debate on homeopathic treatments and going into hiding. Twitter has been in a twirl about it all morning.

In an age when there is a need for transparency in all things, Neal’s Yard have to fight to support their brand – and part of that fight is in online debates with informed, and often critical, consumers.

If they can’t deal with the fact that people demand a conversation, the Neal’s Yard brand risks going further into meltdown than it has already; just look at the scathing comments all over the net and at the Twitter maelstrom.

People are fed up with lies and evasion and all brands must address this. The response of Neal’s Yard to probing questions is a salient lesson for other brands in what not to do.