Posts Tagged ‘politics’

Since I last penned a brief note on the St Pauls occupy London shenanigans, it seems there’s been some new story almost daily. The resignation of two senior church officials, the alleged 48 hour deadline, the declaration that the protestors are here to stay, the threat of legal action by the city, comments from both sides of mainstream politics (including Jonson’s memorable exhortation ‘In the name of God and mammon, go’) and now, finally, a silence-breaking Observer article by Ed Miliband.

In between the possibly hypocritical condemnations by the Tories, the possibly equally hypocritical support offered by Labour, the regulations of the City of London and the public dithering of the Church of England, there’s enough fuel here to keep the media busy for as long as the camp remains in place, and probably longer.

Dr Rowan Williams’s comments last week, in which he acknowledged the inequality inherent in the financial sector and called the protest ‘a real focus for people’s feelings and their imagination,’ were perceived by many as an antidote to the church’s infighting. In fact, they confuse matters further by acknowledging the ideological alliance between the church and the protestors while smartly avoiding the legal conflict.

The whole affair’s like a messy divorce case: the issues are being ignored because everyone has a claim to being a victim- a problem the media has taken it upon itself to sort out. The entire confused, irrational mess was summed up by the Daily Express last week in an unintentionally genius bit of satire: a reporter camped out in front of the house of a protestor, armed with a tent and a sign reading ‘how do you like it?’.

It’s an interesting quandry: it’s hard to think of a recent protest of this scale which has earned itself so many column inches, and arguably, visibility is enough. The rational, we might argue, will draw their own conclusions. However, my fear is that the temptations of a juicy bit of finger-pointing will obscure the issues at heart far more effectively than a thrown fire extinguisher ever could.

The video of Polish politician Katarzyna Lenart stripping for votes has generated the kind of online buzz that other party political broadcasts (and I use the term in its loosest sense) could only dream of. Shot on what appears to be a pretty low grade camera and featuring a swivel chair that wouldn’t look out of place in the head office of a packaging company in Slough, it looks a bit like something you’d find on Babestation at 3am. Still, at least she doesn’t stoop to airbrushing.

The knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss this out of hand. It’s not just crazy, it’s obvious. Surely even the voyeuristic, big brother guzzling, internet porn fed, fetid mess of a world we live in wouldn’t fall for something so desperate. It may be getting watched, but it won’t win votes.

Having said that, futurology is a tricky discipline, especially in the fad happy world of politics. Perhaps Lenart’s dance is so mad that it works. Lord knows we’ve been waiting for something to kick off the ‘digital elections’ repeatedly promised- and denied- through campaign strategies over the past few years.

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(You can also read this post in the Huffington Post, here)

The excitable and ubiquitous coverage of ‘labour boy’ Rory Weal following his appearance at the Labour Party Conference on Monday said a lot about the power of narrative. From Melanie Philips’s enraged dismissal of his ‘mantra of hate’ in the mail to the Guardian’s moving video content, everyone found something to grab them about this 16 year old child of the welfare state turned political prodigy.

It’s hardly a surprise: his back story looked pitch-perfect. Following a divorce two and a half years ago, his family home was repossessed and he was cared for by his mother alone: despite her suitably hardworking yet appealingly lowly job as a cleaning supervisor, his ravaged family required a leg up. They aren’t TV Guzzling, lazy tabloid welfare bugbears, yet Rory stated categorically that ‘I owe my wellbeing and that of my whole family to the welfare state’.

Now he’s working to develop his socialist creds: an interview published in the Times on Wednesday was a total spinmeister’s wet dream. In it, he name checks The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist (his ‘call’, in narrative theory terms) in the same breath as extolling almost calculatedly ordinary clothing brands like Primark (where he bought his tie) and Tesco (the suit: ‘great buy’, says Rory). He stresses that his less extraordinary friends are issues driven, too, but acknowledges, humorously, that the issues which drive them involve the ‘trebling of their bus fare’ rather than ‘party politics’. His favourite programme is Question Time, but he despairs, affectionately, of his mother, who won’t stay up to watch it.

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In his Today programme interview with Justin Webb yesterday, Nick Clegg’s intended, unflappable nice guy image was showing the kind of serious wear and tear that can only result from a shortage of publicity muscle and back room support. By turns repetitive and needlessly confrontational (over the question of Italy, for instance, he veered back and forth before tersely interjecting that noting the difference between Britain and Italy was ‘a statement of the obvious’), he answered questions like a man in HomeBase asking after a product he’s forgotten the name of.  When you’re getting rattled by Justin Webb, you know you really have a problem.

The conference as a whole seems to have been getting more coverage than any other party conference in recent memory. Journalists can sense the chinks and cracks forming in the lib dem PR armour. All this is fuelled by the #ldconf twitter discussion which is more overwhelmingly negative than even a cynic like myself could have predicted, with some particularly quotable intrusions from John Prescott, who recently responded to journalists irate at accreditation issues with the somewhat inflammatory tweet “Is the #LDConf accreditation crisis at a conference centre proof they can’t organise a p***up in a brewery?”.

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I went to the opening of The Expendables recently, in the mood for a little bit of escapism, and was bowled over by the crowd’s whooping, hollering love for Sly, Lundgren, Arnie, Bruce et al. There seemed to be more love than you could have ever expected for a formula, and a set of stars, who for the most part reached their peak in 1985, at the height of Reagan’s presidency.

Looking at reports on the latest Vladimir Putin photoshoot, however, I realise that perhaps I should not have been so taken aback; this sort of macho posturing has never really gone away. Possibly these sorts of fashions travel the world in a kind of Mexican wave – in Russia right now, the macho image is the sure way to win the love of the electorate, while it looks ludicrous here. For now, at least.

Certainly it is easy to satirise Putin in the UK or America at the moment – when he poses like a hero from Call of Duty 4 or, in a bid to show a softer side, nuzzles up to his horse, he is playing to local tastes that look utterly ludicrous to a more cynical western European and American audience. Read the rest of this entry »

Another year, another PR Week Awards night. Winners love it, losers loathe it. My agency, Borkowski, ignored it for years. Truthfully, it’s a somewhat odd night. I met so many friends I just didn’t know I had. I don’t usually have the emotional stamina to stay the course and tend to slope off before the end. This has its dangers; especially when, a couple of years ago, Borkowski took the Grand Prix award. PR legend has it that my over-enthusiastic MD, Larry Franks, rushed the stage and entertained the crowd with his Shrek-in-drag impression.

Last night I mused that few of the gathered PR luvvies didn’t smile at the award for Communicator of the Year. The gong went to Head Prefect, the creepy Nick Clegg, Lord Smug of Camberwick Green. Does anyone else think he looks like the footman in Downton Abbey? Of course, he didn’t turn up. How could he?  Winning an award for his PR skills isn’t something he is likely to be leaping up and down about right now. Read the rest of this entry »

In the greater scheme of things, does it really matter who William Hague shares a room with? I’m sure his wife, Ffion, would think it does, especially as she’s the one who’s been thrown unceremoniously to the wolves in the name of promoting her husband’s heterosexuality, in the wake of the rumour-mongering hoo-ha over his supposed relationship with special adviser Christopher Myers. I feel for Ffion, caught in a clutches of desperate PR ploy. Promoting a happy marriage is a recipe for disaster if the marriage is not actually happy.

The story floated in the Telegraph last week that a allegations about to be printed by Sunday tabloids would be met with strident legal action potentially alerted the wider audience that to a breaking scandal. This was rash and perhaps too clever. Read the rest of this entry »

All brands in this new age require a long-term strategic overview of every potential threat. The corporate vicissitudes being thrown up by the 21st century means that communication and PR skills must be, of necessity, embedded in the captains of industry. After all they are the brand custodians. But looking at BP, and Tony Hayward in particular, that lesson has clearly not yet been learned.

Problems can no longer be brushed under the carpet – corporations need to be fearing the worst and preparing to deal with it in public. The brand narrative of the big corporations needs to be played out transparently and in public.

BP in particular has neglected to consider how devastating a corporate crisis – especially one so mismanaged from the top – can be in this age of instant opinion, globalised rolling news, social media and febrile politics. They were still locked into a comms crisis planning scenario built in the 1990s in the wake of the Brent Spar disaster when the spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurred. They had not planned any new PR approaches at all. Read the rest of this entry »

New media commentators have decreed that the age of the personal PR minder is dead. “Long live Twitter” is their clarion call. It’s the new communication tool for folk in the public eye. Openness and willingness to feed the twitter cycle offers an opportunity to unveil the ‘real you’; to be judged as well as to engage in an open, public conversation.

Who needs a flak when you talk directly to the people? The evidence that stellar Twitter personalities – in the shape of Ashton Kutcher, Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry and Sarah Brown – have benefited from this thesis is proof that they are shining examples of successful DIY #PR 3.0. Read the rest of this entry »

What is the status of the 12-year-old Samantha Cameron photo shoot that’s been sashaying its way across the news agenda over the last 24 hours? Has an enemy found something new to embarrass the Tories with or is this just another shot across the bows of the upcoming election by the party’s spin doctors? Have these photos really been in an attic all this time?

I’d say not. It strikes me, looking at this morning’s excitable ruminations on SamCam’s modelling “past” in the press, that this is a sure-fire PR distraction from Lord Ashcroft and other pre-electoral woes, that the Tories will revel in the “slightly racy” past of SamCam at the expense of having to worry about her husband’s policies and his party’s veracity. Read the rest of this entry »