Mind the flack

When on the receiving end of a less-than-positive news story, most flacks will fall back on the adage that it's not what you say, it's how you say it.

Skilled - and usually highly paid - crisis management PR operators will spend hours playing around with words, consulting head honchos, re-writing and then getting final approval for clever little statements designed to say very little of interest. I should know, I've written plenty of them in my time.

Fair play, then, to the TfL meeja bod responsible for this gem of a response to this story, which contains a refreshing lack of corporate speak, a smattering of slang and a big slice of humour.

"Some of the spoof announcements are very funny, but Emma is a bit silly to go round slagging off her client's services. London Underground is sorry to have to announce that further contracts for Ms Clarke are experiencing severe delays."

Not quite as good, however, as the response delivered following the MEN's revelations that images being used to promote Rochdale were actually taken in Manchester. Diplomacy flew out of the window as the PR man opted for the 'I'm not in the mood for this and I'm gonna say what I really think' approach.

The spokesman said: "Anyone who says they are misleading needs to get a life.

"They have been up for a year and until now nobody has complained.

"Anyone with half a brain would understand that they are there to illustrate people's aspirations."

Ouch.

Is it just me being juvenille or is there something slightly sniggersome about the name Cressida Dick and indeed the recent headline 'Dick : I didn't crack'.

The said words appeared in The Metro on Friday 2 November following the outcome of the court case in which The Metropolitan Police Service was found guilty of breaching health and safety laws in relation to the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Still, it could have been worse. During cross examination, embattled Met Commander Ms Dick could have said she had some hard decisions to make.

And then surely the subs couldn't have resisted: "Dick: it was hard".

Snigger.

First with the snooze

Commendations to that bastion of white hot news and investigative journalism, The Stockport Times for being first with the news.

The freesheet, which prides itself on printing titbits simply too tedious for the Stockport Express, scooped emminent rivals such as the Heaton Chapel Neighbourhood Watch Bulletin and the Marple Community Newsletter by unveiling the date for the Stockport Town Hall Summer Fayre as 5 July 2008... in an edition of the paper published in early September 2007.

"In less than a year's time Stockport Town Hall will be holding its centenary celebrations," ran the top line, which instantly had Hoary sliding into a deep coma.

When Hoary awoke, saliva had destroyed most of the pages but he did manage to make out that people are being urged to get in quick, sign up for a stall and put the date firmly in their 2008 diaries (which they probably don't even have yet).

And in next week's edition of the mighty organ, read all about how in less than two year's time, on 15th May 2009, the Hazel Grove Retired Servicemen's Club will be holding a charity whist drive with pie and pea supper - by which time Hoary suspects quite a few of the elderly readers bored enough to regularly peruse all this type of claptrap will have, alas, fallen into a rather more permanent deep sleep than Hoary's.

Get your press kits out for the lads

Someone please call be a silly bastard and send me to the Press Club while I'm sober if I'm so dreadfully out of touch, but I have always followed the adage that once the PR flack becomes the story, it's time to take the long walk.

Interesting, then, that one Dana Perino (pictured above), the Deputy White House Press Secretary, should happily agree to be pictured by the world's media with US troops during a recent Bush trip to Iraq - just days before she was due to takeover the chief spinning role in Washington DC.

Slim, blonde and not unattractive in combat pants and a white vest top, it's wasy to see why she grabbed the attention of the military grunts, the ravenous media pack and the grubby picture editors.

But surely, I cry, her job was to remain behind the camera and concentrate on ensuring the best possible coverage for her boss and his powerful, precise and moral-boosting orations?

Oh hang on. Now all becomes clear.

Ms Perino was clearly in the same Leeds comedy venue as me, one wet Tuesday about four years ago. On that night, Mr Mark Thomas offered the view that the government fixed it so that the worse the news coming out of Iraq, the hotter the outfit worn by the TV news dolly delivering it.

So roll up, roll up. Coming soon to a desperate photo opportunity near you - Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's chief spin doctor, wearing nothing but a flashing tassled thong and an impish smile.

Big Things Expected At Sale Sharks

Step forward Sale Sharks's hapless PR team - bow down and claim your wallies of the week award!

Keen to announce the appointment of new CEO James Jennings, the flacks working for the Edgeley Park egg chasers fired out a press release proclaiming their new boss man's arrival in Sunny Stockport.

As any half decent media officer knows, a picture can help sell a story, and so the Sharks's erstwhile PR professionals duly arranged for a photo of Mr Jenning to be taken.

No doubt all manner of scenarios were tossed around the office, in a quest to nail the perfect shot. Mr Jennings proudly holding up a Sale shirt under the posts perhaps? Or sat in the stands with the hallowed turf in the background? Or even clowning around with an oval shaped ball?

But in the end, a killer idea come to the fore. 'Our story can't possible fail now," Hoary imagines an excited flack exclaiming, as they lifted the phone to book the snapper. "He will look just amazing stood right in front of the ladies' bogs."

Rather impressively, sub editors across the land somehow resisted the temptation to publish the shocker and go with the headline "Big things expected from Jennings"....

Notting Hill My Name

For all us lot outside of London know, this year's Notting Hill Carnival might have been one big sham.

What am I on about? Well, just think about it. The reporting of the event follows the same formula every year.

Hacks trot out a list of crimes (one that actually pales in comparison to an average Friday night in Manchester), including a minor shooting incident (inevitably described as a 'horror' or involving some being 'gunned down'), the odd stabbing and some arrests for drugs offences (gasp!).

Every year the word 'revellers' is trotted out with wild abandon - giving the impression that everyone who attends is getting down, waggling their tush in some crazy outfit while clutching a can of Red Stripe and smoking a spliff.

Observing happily at the side of the road in a non-participatory manner is, seemingly, not an option.

And of course, there's the obligatory shot of a policeman dancing with some bootylicious beauty decked in big feathers, trying for all the world to look like he's getting into the spirit but actually looking very awkward and dreading the months of ribbing from his mates back at the nick.

I mean, just look at the picture from the Metro....


Without fail, these three elements crop up every year in stories about Europe's biggest street party (another well trodden Notting Hill Carnival phrase if ever there was one).

Would we even notice if the organisers, the local council, Transport for London, the Met Police, the people of London and southern-based media, decided to save a whole heap of time, money and hassle and just recycle the previous year's event?

Makes you wonder if those softy southerners are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of us Northerners, because they think we're a bit backwards.

Anyroad, got to go, me chippy tea's waiting and t'whippet needs walking.

PR Company Flaunts Less Than Model Behaviour

There's trouble at t’mill at GMPTA’s posh-sounding Spinoza Kennedy Vesey PR agency.

On Monday 9 July, the Manchester Evening News rumbled the GMPTA for fabricating case studies for a leaflet on the muted congestion charge, sent out to millions of households across Greater Manchester.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1010/1010798_ccharge_locals_dont_exist.html

It turns out ‘Terry’, said to be a self-employed van driver from Rochdale is actually a 22-year-old American model named Erich Dalke from Seattle.

‘Ann’, described as a solicitor from Ashton under Lyne is in fact a US model called Kiki.

Their images, along with a mum-of-two named ‘Rachel’ from Trafford and jobless ‘Neil’ from Beswick, are all believed to have been bought from a US Internet modeling library and used on the leaflet.

As anyone who works in the media industry will attest, this sort of practice isn’t all that uncommon.

Case studies can be a nightmare to find and organise, especially with tight deadlines looming. So it’s not uncommon for case studies to be hastily made up and matched with stock photographs.

I know that in my technology journalism days, I roped in mates, put words in their mouth and said I would shout them a few pints if they agreed to their photographs being published.

Think about it; how many times do you see young PR executives or freelance journalists appearing in case studies in glossy womens' magazines, who are no doubt friends of the hacks penning the piece.

So hands up, I’ve done it, so have many other meeja boys and girls, whether they care to admit it or not.

But I actually reckon the whole episode wouldn't have looked so bad, but for one fact; someone apparently tried to get away with telling an outright lie.

According to the MEN:

When we approached Spinoza Kennedy Vesey, the public relations firm which represents the GMPTA, it admitted the pictures were of models but claimed the case studies were real, and the identities of the local people involved had been changed to ‘protect privacy’.

Later the firm admitted the examples given were not genuine people at all, and no-one had been interviewed or surveyed to compile the leaflet.

Probably the first thing I was told when I moved into media relations was ‘never lie’ because the truth will always come out in the end.

So what on earth was a company with ‘more than 50 years combined experience in media and communications’ doing spouting untruths?

Of course, we have not heard SKVPR’s explanation; perhaps the person dealing with the MEN’s initial enquiry was given duff information, which was then relayed to the MEN in good faith?

Or perhaps it was actually a deliberate, high risk, New Labour-esque strategy to try and kill off the story – one which backfired in spectacular fashion.

On its website, the company writes that “reputation management is at the heart of our approach”.

But in the MEN story, it was left to Roger Jones, chairman of the GMPTA, to explain the embarrassing blunder, in which the PR company became the story – a scenario of nightmarish proportions.

"With more time, maybe it would have been better to interview proper families, but I don't mind if they are actors and actresses as long as the information is correct.”

He doesn’t say whether he ‘minds’ the fact a professional representing him and his organisation apparently tried to save face by telling fibs to the media and the Greater Manchester public.

Only time will tell if these reputation management experts manage to repair the damage this sorry episode has done to the already unpopular Manchester c-charge scheme.

** Update 12/07/2007 **

As you will see from the subsequent comments from SKVPR officials, Creative Communications - and not SKVPR - was responsible for the design and production of the leaflet. I am happy to make this clear and have edited the text above slightly to reflect this.

But the point remains, in the media handling of this episode, one of the following things happened; SKVPR was unwittingly fed duff information by another party, maybe Creative Concern, indicating the case studies were based on interviews with real people. Or a decision was taken by a media professional - from which company, we can only speculate - to tell an outright lie to the MEN and the Greater Manchester public, in a bid to save some face.