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.

Cue slow clap. It’s not hard to imagine the brainstorming session behind that one. The scene: a smoky little room, the unearthly glow of a dozen iMacs lending a superhuman sheen to the bearded mugs of the creative team. Who knows what blue sky heights they tapped into to get there, but the point is that when that eureka moment came and someone threw this ‘off the wall’ nugget of media disruption into the ether, everyone was clearly too busy congratulating themselves to think for a second about the fans themselves, and the ongoing, human narrative that would arise.

A football team’s stock in trade is the illogical, desperate and oddly beautiful passion of its fans. Football is not just another consumer product, and its fans are not simply consumers. Like the release of a Morrissey album or the unveiling of a new Pope, the transfer window is something that inspires interest and conversation that transcends the rational and borders on the obsessive.

In order to keep fans onside, buying tickets and following the team after the window has closed, the most important thing that a team’s communications need to do is inspire and retain trust. If the fans trust the team through and through, then no matter what disappointments or controversies come their way, they will stick by the team with religious ardour.

Ironically, of course, this ardour and support is something the stunt was clearly trying to acknowledge, and I’m not claiming that FCB was deliberately sticking two fingers up at its fanbase. However, the main shortcoming of creative is that it gets so wrapped up in its own genius that it forgets how the great unwashed actually think. In the eyes of someone who’s skipped a class or skived off that all important meeting just to watch the announcement of a name this is not a clever stunt- it’s a sick joke.

In short, the team weren’t thinking in narrative terms. They planned meticulously up to an initial moment of shock and disruption, but failed to plan for what would come after. Feeling betrayed and abandoned, fans have lost some of that crucial trust. While 20 years ago this may not have been such an issue, they’ll now whip each other up into a frenzy via social media, and likely leave in significant numbers.

I encourage clever media thinking, but when clever become smartarse, particularly in a supposedly grassroots organisation like a sports team, you’ve got disaster on your hands. Some good may come out of this fiasco if the suits who run modern sport can be made to see that.

Being a PR, I just can’t resist a quick plug: those looking to understand Bernstein’s remarkable talents could also do worse than investing in a copy of my book The Fame Formula. In it, I dissect, analyse and celebrate the incredible gift of Bernstein and his ilk for capturing the public, as well as understanding so well the stars they catapulted to fame with apparent ease. Their arts aren’t lost, but they are essential background reading for anyone seeking to make waves in the comparatively anodyne world of modern communications. In these uncertain days in the shadow of a certain Lord L, the lessons of the past have never been more pressing.

Bernstein was one of the absolute greats. Unmistakably, he was a true showman of the kind I’ve always admired. His stunts, which ranged from artificially stoking Tom Jones’s sex bomb reputation with hired pantie-throwers to holding his own-televised- wedding underwater, are now the stuff of legend. Like Jim Moran and other ancient heroes of mine, he was a fabulous ringmaster of publicity and pizazz.

However, for all the hype about him being the ‘inventor of the modern publicity stunt’, his greatest talent was far more subtle. While researching the Fame Formula, he was one of the figures I had the pleasure of interviewing during a stint across the pond. A gent and an enthusiast, he gave up his valuable time without complaint. Upon entering his house- formerly owned by Rita Hayward and site of the first Jacuzzi in Hollywood- my eyes were assailed by a remarkable collection of memorabilia. The place was filled with debris from his remarkable time in the industry.

As a hopeless collector myself I was excited by the sheer volume of it (and I particularly wonder what happened to his incredible collection of stuffed animals), but I was also impressed and touched: these deeply personal items were evidence of the highly developed bonds Bernstein had with his clients. His memories of each and every client were fond, full and nuanced. One particularly memorable moment involved him musing as to what John Wayne might have said if he’d been offered the script for Brokeback Mountain, just released at the time.

He took clients all the way, and each of the crazy stories he launched came from a place of deep thinking, considered strategy and mutual trust.

It strikes me that, while Jay’s stunts place him in the vein of ‘publicist’s publicist’, his relationships with clients offer up lessons to those in any line of work. Brand communications in any field can only work from a basis of deep mutual respect between those working within the brand and those pushing it out. Madness, controversy and conversation spring from narratives mutually developed and sculpted over years- Bernstein knew this, but I fear it’s something we’re starting to forget.

One advantage of the thinking that goes in to this kind of offering is that along with the new ideas I discover and devise, I am reminded of some of my favourite pieces of wisdom. Amazing quotes and thoughts which get pushed to the back of my mind are suddenly thrust back in front of me- and my audiences- a couple of times a week.

One is from the great film-maker Jim Jarmusch, and it informs much of my thinking about modern communications: ‘Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Authenticity is invaluable, originality is non-existent’.

In these times, it’s a good insight to remember. One of the less-observed effects of the rise of the internet is that it has disabused us of the illusion of originality. Before 1996 or so, those everyday snippets of inspiration or bursts of creativity didn’t get stored for later consumption and re-consumption. Nowadays they do.

Too often, people in my business forget that what we do has a proud heritage, carved out by bullshitters, showmen and mavericks. That’s why I couldn’t help but feel a small thrill as PRs working for the stain remover brand Vanish and the “Wear it Pink” Breast Cancer Campaign were firmly reminded that claiming total originality as a point of difference is always a risky business.

For those who didn’t catch it, the campaign launched with a stunt whereby allegedly ‘the world’s largest bra’ was hung across a skyscraper in central London. The news was swiftly responded to by one Joey Skaggs, a conceptual artist and genius of media manipulation of whom I’ve written before, pointing out that he came up with the same idea back in the 60’s, except his was bigger, bolder, and immeasurably more badass. More importantly, his wasn’t touted as ‘world’s biggest bra’ (even though it probably was). The size was pertinent to its underlying feminist agenda.

Skaggs was one of the greats, a true genius. His stunts were always not only attention-grabbing but poignant, judging the zeitgeist and the instincts of the media to perfection. Above all, he was an artist, with the front page of a paper his ever-willing canvass. The best number too many to list here, ranging from his Christmas day 1968 staging of a life size Vietnamese nativity scene to his 1976 ‘cathouse for dogs’ to the more recent 2006 ‘universal bullshit detector watch’.

One group of folk who should have taken a leaf out of Skaggs’s book were PRs at the Guinness Book of Records, who today got a nice slew of coverage for their Guinness World Records Day. They are to be feted for the global dimension of the day, which saw record breakers around the world playing up to ironic stereotype-themed stunts (largest collection of leprechauns in Dublin et al). However, their photo ops still largely came from biggest, tallest, most- the kind of bread and butter offering a creative like Skaggs might have eschewed.

The spirit of Jarmusch’s comment doesn’t require that we constantly bow down and pay homage to our illustrious forebears, but it highlights an important distinction. While originality is impossible, authenticity is not. Don’t claim to be the first, the best, the biggest. Instead find the same seams of genius that others have tapped, and dig deeper to find what is true and right for your project.

Another quote I’ve been using in my presentation sums it up. An old PR friend of mine once remarked to me that ‘what matters is contacts, culture, energy, creativity, bullshit and bollocks. And of course, the last piece of coverage. We succeed because we are scum-sucking, news-junky, urban cosmopolite, ambidextrous grasshoppers’.

A true publicity showman has his nose to ground, his finger on the mouse, and always knows just what to steal and when.

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.

Cameron fell foul of the net when his vote for change poster, complete with his staring visage airbrushed to Jordanian levels, was appropriated by a few ingenious trolls who created http://mydavidcameron.com/. The site allowed wannabe satirists to introduce their own accompanying slogans, with often hilarious results. It became one of the few truly concentrated, attention grabbing focal points of leftist criticism.

Across the pond, Boston senator Scott Brown ran into controversy earlier this year after guerrilla online tactics instigated by his communications department majorly backfired. Senior Republican advisor Eric Fehrnstrom attempted to artificially create the kind of satirical bite that grew naturally from the David Cameron affair when he set up a fake twitter account for Democrat Allan Khazei (@crazykhazei).

Apart from being disastrously unfunny (sample tweet: “Just read Scott Brown’s book. He isn’t the only one who had it tough growing up. I once got a splinter.”) the whole affair generated a storm around Brown’s use of public funds- an area of debate more or less untapped prior to the revelations. It was the exact opposite of a political communications campaign’s intended effect.

In short, whatever they say to the contrary, political brand advisors know bugger all about how to harness the internet: Obama’s web success aside, online campaigning is still uncharted territory. So who knows, perhaps in twenty years’ time Lenart will be hailed as the messiah and cabinets the world over will look like the B Team of a home counties branch of Secrets. If Theresa May is looking to try something similar, I hear Vaseline on the camera lens works a treat.

What is it with snack moguls? First Fredrich Baur, retail genius and inventor of the iconic ‘Pringles’ can, had his ashes buried in one of his beloved crisp receptacles back in 2008, and now this fantastic news item from West, presumably a sight that roughly resembled Doritos’ stoner student target customer after a big night in. The real genius of the retail surpremo is represented by these almost mythic funerals: these were guys who truly lived the brand, who integrated their lives and their behaviour into what they were communicating. There is something unimaginably inspirational about these two men, who know who to grab column inches even from beyond the grave.

Their heritage is rich. When Gordon Selfridge came to London, he made a fortune out of the women’s lib movement by promoting luxury shopping as a lifestyle choice, a statement of freedom: he was unafraid to be a huge character and to consciously attract huge characters. He encouraged women to look at his freedom, to look at that of his wife, and to demand this for themselves via the medium of their wallets.

Throughout his career, he ran his store less as a business than a story factory. He invented the clapometer, he maintained extraordinary contacts throughout the national media, he orchestrated fabulous window displays with top celebrities. Selfridge, like West and Baur after him, understood that being a true brand ambassador means treating each day as a news item, investing each step you take with narrative flair. He was Selfridges, and he lived by one of his most powerful maxims: “People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.”

Even going back as far as my idol P.T. Barnum, we find the tradition of the showman retailer. Before the FeeJee Mermaid, Tom Thumb and his great travelling roadshow, Barnum was a store clerk, and apparently an excellent salesman. This stuff isn’t coincidence: the retail world represents the beating heart of what all communications and sales industries do. On the shop floor, it’s sale or nothing, and it’s a cradle that has taught some of the best the art of haggling, cajoling, dazzling, even deceiving. What’s more, whole retail brands have been built on those personalities that rise to the top of such a world.

There is nothing more inspiring than having a marketing mind at the top of the tree: when a showman is running an outfit, their communications strategy isn’t something pasted on top of a rigid corporate interior. Their very essence, all of their activity, is informed by the spirit of the big risk and the hard sell.

The question is, where are the inheritors of this tradition? In these days of corporate retail groups, where shareholders reign supreme and ideas often have to pass through so many hands that they’re killed off before delivery, is there room for another Arch West? I see a lot of truly ambitious kids in the course of my work, I only hope some of them resist the pressure, keep the fire, and remember even at the age of 97 that a funeral is just another stage to be mastered. As Ken Campbell, another recently departed showman, once said: “the anagram of funeral is real fun”. Let’s hope that we in the commercial world don’t all now take ourselves too seriously to remember this.

The campaign, which allowed people to sign up their friends to be ‘pranked’ with a serious of worrying emails from one of 5 colourful fictional characters, was a bungled attempt by the Saatchi suits to make the world’s most boring car company look radical. This is a textbook example of why forging the brand narrative is best left to the publicists: the creative excellence of Ad Agencies does not extend to long form narrative content.

In other words, it was a textbook example of advertising as insular and irrelevant communication. Instead of seeking to connect with any true brand narrative or profile, the Saatchi & Saatchi team betrayed their arrogance and remained convinced of their idea of what the brand needed, irrespective of what people actually wanted.

Ad folk lack understanding of the psyche of the news agenda: unlike PRs, they aren’t programmed to anticipate the downside, to work the worst case scenario into the fibre of their strategy.

Amanda Duik, the woman suing the company, was apparently targeted over a week long period with emails- genuine, for all she knew- from a football hooligan character called ‘Sebastian Bowler’, who came complete with his own S&S-created myspace profile and other web-based proofs of existence. She reckons she experienced sufficient mental distress over the terrifying period to sue for massive damages from all involved.

Those who don’t follow my thoughts closely might be surprised that I’m condemning S&S for this: what differentiates it from the kind of stunts perpetrated by myself and my influences? It’s certainly not because I’ve decided to clamber onto my high horse.

When classic Hollywood movie publicist Jim Moran placed a lion in a motel room under the name ‘TR Zan’ to promote the release of a strikingly similarly named movie, he caused a good deal more distress than S&S have here.

However, his stunt did what good PR does: it tapped into the popular conversation and interwove the brand narrative with it. It spoke of wilderness and adventure, which was exactly right at a time when movies were reflecting the increasingly adventurous spirit of the American public. It had also involved significant calculation of risk, and understood that inevitable bad press would be absorbed by the whole daring nature of the thing.

In part it’s a question of money: ad firms, arguably, have too much. Insular ad campaigns are bred when teams have the time and the resources to ponder their angles until they’re warped out of all recognition, over-thought. PRs, by contrast, are fleet footed. Their spatial awareness of the publicity landscape is second to none because careers spent responding to repeated brand events in real-time have honed their instincts and trained them never to slip up.

It also adds weight to a pet theory of mine: of communications professionals, it’s the PRs who skew furthest to the right (creative) side of the brain. Rightbrained functions, both numerical and linguistic, are much more involved with the comparative, the contextual, the pragmatic. While the leftbrain has the advantage when rigorously pursuing a clear, single minded idea, it must be difficult to wrap a leftbrained mind around an idea as mutable and intangible as a brand narrative.

While I think that Duik is probably taking this rather too seriously, her lawsuit should come as a warning to ad folk everywhere. In the modern world, the hierarchy of ideas does not flow from the comms professionals to the public. Communications must be discursive, responsive, and above all, narrative. Nobody understands this better than a good PR.

Excitement has been amping up and up since the band announced the early digital download release of the album to the point where the media is saturated with information - the Guardian have been running live updates about it and even the Daily Mail ran a long piece about these ‘Industry Rebels‘ shunning their record label. Radiohead have certainly played this well.

The Mail are right to call them rebels – Radiohead have stepped out of the major label industry by selling the album online, although they will be releasing it in traditional formats with indie label XL later in the year. But by releasing it at the height of the bloated awards season and making headlines just as effectively as ever, they have proved that they have the emotional intelligence to connect with both media and, more importantly, their fan base. It is almost certainly no coincidence that they released it at the same time as the Brit Awards – it certainly smacks of a two fingered salute to the industry.

This is a band at the height of their ability to stir up conversation, who are bending the art of the stunt out of its traditional shapes and using it to their own ends.

Now, let’s hope the album is as good as their ability to stir up conversation. If it’s as good or better than In Rainbows it will only compound their ability to sell albums in any format in future.

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.

It really is fabulous news, in such tough economic times, that the cuts will not affect everything. In 2011 there will be something for the whole nation to celebrate, especially the merchandise sellers, caterers and makers of bunting. It’s really an early Christmas present for them all.

And better still, it’ll take place 30 years after Charles and Diana’s wedding. We will have a new Princess of Hearts – and the same sort of economic straits then as now. Perhaps we’ll get anniversary riots in Brixton and Toxteth too, only to have the wedding calm them down.

And if this exceptional and fabulous stunt doesn’t calm the angrily beating heart of Britain, then there will be a second pageant the following year when the Olympics comes to town. All this should make up for the fact that we probably won’t get the World Cup, shouldn’t it?

And if this pump priming of the economy still doesn’t work, we could always celebrate another anniversary in the Falklands in 2013, couldn’t we? There’s nothing quite like a war for stimulating economic revival, after all!

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Cynicism aside, it’ll be interesting to see how the royal couple cope. It is to be hoped that the couple – and the a Royal PR – have learned lessons from Princess Diana’s trials and tribulations, but the media has changed beyond recognition in the past thirty years. How will Kate Middleton learn to cope with the pressure?

As I noted yesterday, the Palace used to shut its doors at 5pm daily. Now it is proactive and on call to respond to anything, anytime. The couple need to be well prepared for the onslaught of interest a Royal wedding inevitably brings, what with the digital explosion and easy, instantaneous access to information. I expect they will be being drilled in the ways of dealing with the media over the coming months.

They’ve got to be perfect if they’re going to act as a fillip for the economy, after all.

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This is a one fact story – “they’re getting married” sums it up – and yet, as the day goes on, it is elongating out of all control. It’s all over the news channels and I can’t help but suspect that all sorts of brands and celebrities will be getting in on the act, hoping a little of the stardust will rub off on them. After all, David Cameron is already proudly announcing that he slept on the Mall aged 15 for the 1981 wedding…

The stunt was simple; Hitchcock simply demanded that the audience be barred from entering the cinema after the film had started. Back then, people tended to wander into the cinema half way through a film and stay for the first reels of the next showing if they liked what they saw.

Cinema owners weren’t happy, but changed their tune rapidly when audiences, thrilling to Hitchcock’s reputation and the demands he put in them, queued around the blocks to see the film in the correct order. The exhibitors soon perked up, too – when the low budget slasher pic turned in a cool $50 million worldwide. Sometimes the stunt really can be as big as the film.