The Calacus PR Blog

I’ve been in two minds about the recent experiment of online broadcasting that limited the live audience for England’s World Cup qualifier in Ukraine last weekend.

There was outrage at the confirmation that the qualifier was only going to be available online, even though it’s probably the shape of things to come.

In this age of the internet and iPhones, it’s only a matter of time before all televisions are web-connected and mobiles are linked in at the same standard and resolution quality.

With Sky Sports fans paying upwards of £40 a month to watch football and other sports events, is it any wonder that we finally had a game available solely online?

Is it really that much different to pay-per-view sports events on Sky such as boxing fights that happen in the small hours?

It’s all very well football fans being outraged at the online-only option, and the limit on the number of viewers to just 1m to prevent the service from crashing is less than ideal, but that will no doubt change.

But it provokes the wider question of why certain ‘crown jewel’ sports events are not available on terrestrial television.

The online or iPhone option is great for the traveller or the fan who wants to watch events in the park or somewhere else where television is not an option.

But I’m delighted to see that the next Ashes cricket series in the UK is now likely to be on free-to-air television.

Even those of us who are not cricket addicts can remember the 2005 Ashes series with nostalgia and recall just where we were when England won the final Test to win the little urn back again.

The same cannot be said of this year’s Ashes, which failed to capture the imagination in quite the same way because it was only available on subscription-based Sky.

There is no doubt that Sky has played a massive role in updating and inspiring sports coverage, not to mention the investment in sports at all levels due to their generous coverage fees.

But if events such as the FA Cup, England football qualifiers and tournaments, Wimbledon, the Olympics and the Six Nations, for instance, remain on terrestrial television, it will have so many positive effects.

More people will be inspired by sport, participating and watching local teams and providing a boost to economies as well as potential reduction to their wastelines and the community benefits sport is known to provide.

And why not follow the FA Cup model, where the final is screened both on terrestrial TV AND Sky, with fans given the choice of who to watch.

Would everyone switch off Sky because there is a free option? I don’t think so. And if it makes them raise their game by improving their own coverage even more, it can only be of benefit both for viewers and the sports who are seeking new followers.

The High Definition element, analysis with a wide array of top experts and all-round presentation that Sky offers is not often equalled by terrestrial TV.

But the option of choosing between Sky or terrestrial TV would benefit everyone and ensure sport does not fall further down the list of priorities where funding is concerned. 

I have a confession to make. I like Ryanair.

Yes, sometimes you have to pay more than you were led to believe you would for your flight.

Sometimes the staff can be jobsworths regarding the luggage allowances.

But if you have an Electron card, pick the right days and the right flights in advance, don’t buy food on the flight and don’t mind sometimes being a bit further from your target destination than you might wish, Ryanair is a bargain.

That’s the reason why so many people use the airline.

I’ve booked trips to Dublin and Rome for later this year and a total 12 flights have cost me less than £70. You can’t get that anywhere else.

In fact, it can cost more to get to Manchester from London.

I ignore the sometimes stroppy cabin crew, the often indifferent landings or the cost of food and suchlike that I just don’t buy.

The old adage that you get what you pay for comes to mind.

Like any flier, when suggestions are made about charging for toilets, I consider them to be a step too far and thankfully, so does Ryanair when the dust settles.

If you want more courteous staff, more frills, compensation or understanding for missed flights and putting the customer first every time, Ryanair is probably not for you.

Last night, Panorama broadcast a report about the ‘hidden charges’ Ryanair supposedly charge and other issues with their level of service.

I’m a big fan of the BBC and despite all the criticism of it by other media organisations, I think it does a pretty decent job as a public service broadcaster.

But as far as last night’s report on Ryanair was concerned, it undermined its credibility in a number of ways.

Starting off with a rant about luggage check-in desks being understaffed, the fact that ‘ruthless’ Ryanair had paid compensation may not have been ideal for the family who ended up missing their flight and having to rebook, but it was hardly the absolutely unsympathetic response the programme seemed to want to portray.

Later, there was a clip showing Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary’s resistance to taking part in an edited or recorded interview rather than a live or uncut interview.

As a former journalist myself, I appreciate his anxiety to ensure the interview is not edited and I am surprised that the BBC, so keen as it appears to have been to have an interview with Mr O’Leary, chose not to agree to that.

Even notwithstanding the potential for a ‘hatchet job’ as Ryanair feared, all journalists can edit or cut quotes and, even without intention, portray responses in a manner which distorts the interviewee’s opinion.

I can fully appreciate that Ryanair, based on the wealth of criticism about their service, including on a number of different BBC platforms, wanted their interview to be live or uncut.

The irony is that the BBC even posted an uncut interview with Michael O’Leary, which deals mainly with the debate between both parties regarding a live or unedited interview for the programme.

It makes a mockery of the BBC’s refusal to include an uncut interview which would have been best spent dealing with their concerns or points of interest and doesn’t paint them in a particularly positive light. You can see the clip here.
Ryanair’s initial response to the BBC’s request for an interview, assuming a ‘hatchet job’ and refusing to co-operate, is not the way a big company should deal with potentially aggressive media inquiries.

When the media come knocking, to refuse to offer your voice is to give the impression that you have something to hide, not to mention give more airtime to potential critics and dissenting voices.

Being proactive is the key – the fact that the Panorama journalist complained about Mr O’Leary dominating their interview says much for the CEO’s competence.

When undertaking media training, taking control of the interview rather than being boxed in by the journalist is one of the key skills PR consultants try to teach.

Whether criticism of Ryanair is justified or not, it was imperative of Ryanair not to be defensive and assume the worst, but to be as co-operative as possible.

To be fair to Ryanair, it mellows during the as time goes on, providing responses to detailed questions and even being brave enough to post all correspondence between themselves and the BBC on their website (see here)

What Ryanair has to realise is that, regardless of its customer service standards or additional charges which inflate the headline prices of apparently bargain flights, it is a company which has enjoyed a dominant market share because of its offering.

Ask any company CEO, pop star, sportsman, politician or celebrity and they will testify that the media will build them up and just as happily knock them down.

That’s the nature and consequence of success.

Are any of the Dragons in the Den or other famously successful entrepreneurs ruthless or simply commercial? Finding ways to cut costs and make money is a businessman’s raison d'être.

And while Ryanair offer such cheap flights, even doing a new free promotion today in response to the Panaoram debacle, I won’t be complaining too much.

Just don’t start charging for using the toilet please Michael.

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.

I’ve noticed recently that a number of the journalists working for The Observer newspaper have started being bylined in The Guardian, its weekday sister newspaper.

These are dark days for major newspaper titles, which is ironic given the continuing thirst for news, entertaining stories and articles that we seem to crave in as many different ways as possible.

Rumours that The Observer may be closing have gathered pace in recent weeks and when staff journalists start to work across both titles, it does not bode well.

The threat hanging over The Observer comes quickly on the heels of the news that The London Paper is closing soon.

It underlines how the use of smart phones, citizen journalism, instant news and a wide range of media outlets above and beyond those we would conventionally think of is making it harder and harder for hacks to survive.

A lot of the problems come from advertising of course, which has suffered so much during the economic downturn.

When I was a journalist, advertising department staff used to say ‘You write the stories and we’ll pay for the running of the newspaper’ and that is undoubtedly true.

You only have to look at stunning magazines such as Vogue or GQ and see how packed full of adverts they are to realise that it is the ad departments rather than the cover price which pays to keep publications running.

Rupert Murdoch, whether it is because his titles are generally becoming less profitable or because he feels nothing should be free, is planning to start charging for online content, while The Economist is planning to charge for all online content.

Whether this will turn readers off or not, time will tell, but with a plethora of news and information sources available now, especially in this world of social networking and Web 2.0, I remain to be convinced that charging for web content will ever be the norm.

From a public relations perspective, losing a valuable title narrows the options for exposure for clients.

But there is an irony that us ‘spin doctors’ need the press so much while the media is losing some of the variety and diversity which makes the British media so special.

The Observer, along with The Guardian, has long held a left of centre standpoint but it is also exceptional when it comes to the arts, not to mention its investigative and in-depth reporting and features.

It would be a tragedy if the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper is closed by the Scott Trust.

The National Union of Journalists has organised a public meeting entitled ‘Stand up for The Observer’ http://www.standupfortheobserver.org.uk/ to chaired by Peep Show’s David Mitchell on September 21.

For the good of the Observer’s journalists, balance in the media and in order to retain a British institution, I sincerely hope the campaign is a success. 

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.

No, neither did I.

Can you imagine the FA Cup final, World Cup, Wimbledon, Open golf, Olympics or Six Nations being taken off terrestrial television?

While the magical summer of 2005 will live long in the memory, the England Ashes victory against Australia has been the preserve of Sky Sports subscribers and pub owners across the country.

Now, given the fact that cricket matches can last five days and therefore inevitably cross over to the working week, I’m not suggesting for one minute that when such events occur, we should all take days off to watch them.

But it would be nice to have the choice.

In these dark days of recession, spending £40+ to subscribe to Sky Sports is beyond a lot of people and as one of the ‘Crown Jewels’ of our sporting calendar, it should be on terrestrial television.

Surely, especially given the jubilation a cricket series win provokes in sports fans and the general public, not to mention one against Australia, removing it from the public consumption is, well, just not cricket.

The fact remains that Sky’s coverage is impressive – former captains such as Ian Botham, Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain plus Ashes legends such as Bob Willis and Shane Warne provide a range of opinions and analysis which are unrivalled, as is their High Definition camerawork.

And there’s no doubt that the money Sky provides has a positive impact on all sports – and cricket needs it at elite level as much as anything else.

But while they continue to offer such as high standard of production, sharing the live coverage with a terrestrial channel, as they do for the FA Cup final, is not such a crazy idea.

Of course, those of us without Sky have now been able to savour the delights of Test Match Special which, although not quite as good as having images, it so quintessentially English and irreverent that it never fails to entertain.

But with sport in the UK continuing to falter as sports grounds are closed and investment fails to materialise, how are the next generations going to be inspired if they cannot see the moments that make sport such great unscripted theatre?

It’s a big day for the International Softball Federation and their BackSoftball campaign to promote the sport’s reinstatement to the Olympic Games Programme in 2016.

Softball has come a long way since it was voted off the Programme in 2005 – and sellout crowds and a carnival atmosphere at the Beijing Games last summer only skims the surface of the contribution the sport makes to the Olympic movement.

Softball is a predominantly female sport – at a time when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is keen to promote female sports – and it’s clean anti-doping record; inclusivity and accessibility make a compelling case to the IOC.

The ISF realised in 2005 that they could do more to contribute to the Olympic values and set about a phenomenal initiative, modernising their organisation and providing programmes and support for national softball federations across the planet.

I’ve always been aware of softball as a sport played to a highly-professional level by advertising and marketing friends and it’s true that it is easy to learn and cheap to play.

But the level of camaraderie the sport provokes; the popularity of the sport in the Middle East or other conservative areas where female team sports are otherwise not permitted; and the sport’s fundamental ability to change lives through its global community programmes make it a great choice for the IOC Executive Board when they meet in Berlin today.

Even yesterday when the ISF visited a Berlin softball league, we discovered that the game in Germany is played by people aged three to over 60 from all walks of life and from all over the world.

It has been a privilege for Calacus to be a part of such a tremendous campaign with a team who deserves success when the announcement is made for the right to participate in the Olympic Games in 2016.

 

 

The PR battle of 2009

Everyone loves a romance between celebrities and the very public flirtation between glamour model Jordan and one-time pop star Peter Andre provided reams of copy for gossip-hungry tabloid media and readers in the UK.

Since then, Jordan and Andre have followed the well-trodden path of celebrity couples across the planet.

Just as with Disney girl Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey in the United States, they invite the media into every aspect of their lives.

From romance to wedding to everyday living, there seems to be a hunger from the public and therefore from the media to see how these rich and ‘famous’ really live – and perhaps to draw some comfort in the fact that they have the same highs and lows that we all encounter.

There’s a reason why Jordan has been one of the most enduring and successful topless/glamour models in the last decade. She’s not the prettiest model but she seems to combine flirtation, hedonism and cheekiness with a single-minded obsession to be a success in everything she does.

But she also wanted to be seen as a responsible mother with a brain to match her looks, confirming through her books, her life with Andre and name change to Katie Price, that she had left her bad behaviour days behind her.

At the same time, I get the feeling that Andre, while accepting of his role as part of a celebrity couple, wanted above all to be a father and a partner with all the responsibilities and respect that that entails.

Famed for his six pack in the days of his hit single ‘Mysterious Girl’, stories of him bedding hordes of women just never made the media and given some of the obscure celebrities whose kiss and tell stories reach print, his low profile is not the reason.

Andre has been unfairly described as a wimp in some sections of the media, but throughout his acrimonious split from Jordan, he retained his dignity and the values that come with being from a Greek Cypriot family who take such matters very seriously.

While Jordan has reverted to type, partying, prancing around topless and in skimpy outfits and openly seeing other men, her estranged husband has maintained the air of someone who puts his children before anything – and that is to be applauded.

The last few weeks have shown that Jordan’s conversion into Price was nothing more than an act – as many of us perceived it to be – and the split from Andre has clearly hurt her deeply, regardless of what she says to the contrary.

I can’t help that thinking that when her children are old enough to read back on the spat between their parents, Jordan’s antics are going to remind them that the way their mother has behaved is no example of how to live responsibly.

Perhaps a regrettable aspect of the celebrity world we live in is that, while curiosity into Jordan’s life continues, she and others like her will continue to provide a focus for the media that their lack of talent or contribution to the world really deserves.