The Calacus PR Blog

There's a reason why John Terry has had so few personal endorsement deals over the years.

Despite his high profile, tremendous success and on-field reputation as a battler who leads by example, the misgivings over his off-field persona have made sponsors reluctant to invest in him. He simply doesn't fit the image most sponsors want to promote.

Footballers want to do their talking on the pitch, to quote the cliché, and it is no wonder that so many of them struggle when thrust into such a public environment at an early age.

The days when players might join supporters in the pub after the game or wander around the local shops unhindered may be long gone.

For young players at top clubs, the wealth they accrue from early on is hugely disproportionate to that which their peers tend to earn, and showing off is an understandable temptation.

Being one of the best footballers in the country is an accolade most young kids dream about and few will to achieve. The fact that most players are sheltered from the media and cosseted these days means that they are ‘protected’ to such an extent that perception and reality rarely match.

Players don’t understand that they are role models not just living the dreams of millions, but representing their communities and nations as well.

However important or not John Terry considered it to behave as captain of Chelsea, he has a personal responsibility that goes beyond rousing his team-mates and inspiring his fans when wearing the armband as captain of England.

Terry is representing his country – he is the highest possible ambassador for English football and in truth, he has let his country down once too often.

Tales of womanising may not be new for the England captain, but on the back of revelations of family misdemeanours including drug dealing and shoplifting, threatening behaviour, gambling issues and betrayal of friends, his image has taken a serious battering.

When Terry had the first inkling that the press had  discovered his off-field misdemeanours, he should have gone on a PR overdrive, taking positive steps to admit to what he had done, espress his remorse and be brave enough to realise taht he had tarnished the England captaincy and therefore had to resign.

It has been said that Terry is not the sort who would ever resign, but that in itself underlines his weakness - the inability to realise that he is not beyond the laws and conventions or decency and respect.

Whatever happens now, his excellent performances as a defender will always be inextricably linked to his off-field behaviour.

The fact that a judge suggested that Terry’s pursuit of a gagging order against a national newspaper was as much about protecting his personal endorsements as anything else has hardly helped matters.

It was a red rag to the media bull, who doubled their efforts to make sure they exposed the true scale of Terry’s misdemeanours.

So what now?

Terry can publicly go for marriage counselling, endorse or support charities and spend more time giving something back to the community but it will do little to restore his personal reputation that will not be seen as cynical or superficial.

It is only when he makes personal sacrifices that he will claw back any respect from fans and the general public. It’s hard to say whether that respect really means anything to him anyway.

With the World Cup only a few months away, England need a united squad who fight for each other.

Sadly, Terry’s actions have undermined that necessary togetherness and resigning the captaincy, rather than waiting to have it taken away by strict disciplinarian coach Fabio Capello, would at least have shown that he had some sense of responsibility, however superficial that may have been.

Perhaps now Terry can reflect about the damage he has done to English football and his team and start getting his head down and focus on his on-field responsibilities.

Prevention is always better than cure but having a plan in place to deal with the sordid allegations rather than trying to stifle their publication may have been a better strategy for Terry and his 'advisors'.

Sadly for him, he is far better at protecting his goal than he is at protecting his own reputation as a leader and role model.

From the moment Tiger Woods was involved in a car accident 10 days ago, the rumour mill has been going into overdrive.

A lot of journalists and media types already knew something more was going on that a simple road incident but the extent of the alleged misdemeanours by the world’s biggest sporting icon has surprised most of us.

Tiger Woods has always maintained a perfect off-field image.

That’s why he has become the wealthiest sportsman on the planet, amassing a wealth of almost $1 billion through deals with the likes of Gillette, Accenture, Nike, EA Sports and others.

As a mercurial sportsman Woods’ impact on the global landscape is perhaps beyond even his comprehension.

When Woods burst onto the golfing scene in the early 1990s, he was a revelation, a black American proving his excellence in a traditionally white-dominated sport.

Insititutional racism still exists – bigotry and prejudice is everywhere, bubbling under the surface and Woods had done so much to prove that black sportsmen could be a success in a typically white sport.

Unlike boxers with their bravado; footballers with their posturing; and athletes before Usain Bolt brought new life to the sport, Woods gave respectability to black sportsmen in a way no one had done before.

I was shocked by his statement last week when he said he was “…dismayed to realise the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means. Personal sins shouldn’t require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions.”

You’re wrong, Mr Woods. Your wealth has been based on your sporting success and squeaky clean public persona and that has now been shattered.

He had a bigger responsibility to maintain his standards than possibly anyone else in sport – and if he didn’t realise that or like it, he was perfectly happy to take the huge wealth that came his way as a consequence.

The public love a hero but there’s been a case of shadenfreude as more incidences of alleged misdemeanours come to light.

Will it harm the Woods brand in the long run? Most PR experts say no, as long as he keeps on winning, with other sportsmen cited as examples who recovered from scandal.

The difference is that none of them earned as much or were as ubiquitous as Woods, nor lived a life based on the integrity and solid values he built his brand upon.

With success comes temptation, opportunity and the show you’re human after all.

Regardless of what he said before, the only way Woods can recover some of the respect he has lost is by staging a very public press conference where he opens his heart and, without necessarily going into details, vows to make amends.

I’ve spoken to people who claim to feel very let down by his actions and there’s no doubt he has set back the progress he made when blazing a trail as one of the greatest sporting talents of his generation.

There’s more to being a great sportsman than just winning, as Woods is finding out.

Formula One is like marmite –you either love it or hate it.

One the one hand, you have an international tournament that provides glamour, drama and excitement like no other sport.

On the other, you have the argument that it is all about the machine, not the driver. Ferrari’s failure to continue winning every season following Michael Schumacher’s retirement may raise questions about that but Lewis Hamilton, so dominant over the last couple of seasons, has faltered alarmingly despite his obvious talent.

His team, McLaren, have had their problems, of course. They were found guilty of viewing documents from rivals Ferrari and fined heavily and then again admitted to lying at the start of this season when Hamilton finished on the podium.

This week, Renault Formula One team has released team bosses Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds over a deliberate crash by Nelson Piquet Junior, who had left the team in August.

Piquet admitted that he had crashed to help senior driver Fernando Alonso last season in Singapore, prompting legal proceedings against the Brazilian for damaging their reputation.

It should never have come to that, of course.

Given the recent departure of Briatore and Symonds, clearly Renault knew that they were guilty – and their admittance of the charges underlines that.

Briatore, whose reputation for being combatant both at Renault and Queens Park Rangers FC has made him a fearsome figure, is likely to have to leave elite sport altogether now, and perhaps that is for the best.

That Renault have reversed their initial stance underlines how seriously they take these accusations and how damaging it could be for their future to be found guilty while trying to conceal the truth.

Former Formula One driver Eddie Irvine said today that every team tried to stretch and bend the rules wherever possible, which hardly helps the credibility of the sport.

Will Renault still have a team in 2010? Only the FIA, the sport’s governing body, know what they will do.

For the good of Formula One, a punishment of the utmost severity for actions which ultimately affected the course of a race weekend must be considered.

And for Renault, the slow job of restoring their reputation must be as comprehensive as possible with charitable initiatives, new codes of conduct, open and honest dialogue with every stakeholder.

Time is a healer and Formula One may be very separate to the consumer market, but Renault sales may be affected by the reputation of a company who showed no respect for the rules they proclaimed to support.

The power of the media is a curious thing.

Sometimes it can create madness and mayhem out of the most trivial of incidents.

Sometimes it can lead the fight for justice and the common good.

Thankfully, in the case of the Manchester United abusive chants, Amazon has withdrawn the offending album/MP3.

It took them four days and only after, it seems, Arsenal indicated that the offending chant was defamatory with all the legal implications that selling the MP3 could entail.

Media coverage of the chant's presence on Amazon has been widespread over the last few days and the wise move from a communications point of view would have been to remove the offending and offensive item immediately.

Even Manchester United criticsed the chant and its own fans for making such unfounded comments towards a rival manager.

I find it surprising, I must say, that Amazon missed the opportunity to take that stance without the need for the widespread media outrage and official Arsenal to provoke them into action.

The fact that they say in their statement that they needed to be told that the chant MP3 was defamatory without being able to work it out themselves; and that they would consider it censorship to remove the item had the threat of defamation not been made apparent seems incredible for an organisation the size of Amazon.

As the market leader, Amazon won't lose too many customers over this PR error, but I hope they learn the lesson that for a 69p clip that has a limited audience and a huge outrage value, they have damaged their reputation in a way that was entirely avoidable.