Talking Point

The Dictator and why he doesn't care what you think

By Craig Regan

There’s a saying in PR that there’s no such thing as bad publicity and, putting it bluntly, most of the time it’s a crock. That came to mind today when the Wall Street Journal asked if promotion of Sacha Baron Cohen’s movie “The Dictator” is savvy or just plain annoying.

The fact that the WSJ ran a piece about it answers its own (rhetorical) question.

If you’re a fan of Baron Cohen’s work (Ali G, Borat, Bruno) you’re going to think the antics of his latest character, Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen, are the stuff of genius. If you’re not, odds are that you aren’t part of the target audience anyway and will stay at home.

PR, like humour, is in the eye of the beholder. In this instance, the campaign objectives are to raise the profile of the new movie, persuade fans it’s worth shelling out their hard-earned to see and convert those who might be wavering into bums on seats.

It’s those waverers – the equivalent of political swinging voters – who will make the difference between a reasonable box office return and a record-breaking cash harvest.

Most PR is about that sometimes intangible quality called “brand.”

The pre-release phase of the campaign hasn’t been about positive or negative media coverage. “The Dictator” isn’t Qantas, K-Mart or Harvey Norman in the conventional sense of branding.  Consider this extract from the WSJ piece:

Monday's news conference was just the latest in a series of in-character publicity stunts. As General Aladeen, the actor has referred to "Today" co-host Ann Curry as ‘Matt Lauer's cleaning lady’ and, on a morning show in Australia, remarked that Prime Minister Julia Gillard ‘should have a sex change and become a woman’. Her office declined to comment.

Clearly, the more offence Baron Cohen causes, the more people will take notice.

I’m a fan of Borat and Ali G but haven’t seen “The Dictator.” If the reviewers pan it, and those box office waverers stay away in droves, it will prove the original point: No matter what some claim, you can’t polish excrement and stunts will only get you so far.

As to the WSJ's question - I'm leaning towards savvy.

 

Break out the popcorn: Your movie choice (supposedly) reveals who you are

By Craig Regan

You are what you watch, apparently. The New York Times carries “news” (termed applied loosely) about market research claiming your choice of movie reveals your personality.

“Fans of ‘The Avengers,’ for instance, are 18 percent more likely than the general public to…try new experiences,” research company Meebo says.

Then again, they might be fans of Marvel Comics.

“People looking forward to…’The Amazing Spider-Man’ are 34 percent more likely to be optimistic than the general public.”

Who makes up the “general public” and why they’re so down on the world remains a mystery.  

Meebo has even compiled its research into a pretty picture (they are called Infograms these days and they’re the hot online PR trend in the US) to make it easy to digest.

A couple of things to note here: Meebo isn’t really a research company. It’s another social media platform that pulls together a number of channel feeds in one place.

Apart from some cursory media reportage, there’s scarcely any information available about how Meebo reached its conclusions other than it conducted a survey.

Going on these lines, fans of 'Titanic' probably have a liking for holidaying in West Africa (there's no ice there) and people queing for 'The Hunger Games' need to go on a diet. 

While all this makes a Today Tonight phone poll look like an admission exam for Mensa, you have to question how it's going to sell movie tickets - if that was ever the intention.

More likely, it's a stunt to get people talking about Meebo. Getting them to join the platform is goign to need a whole different script.

 

Why the Olympic social media police won't come knocking

By Craig Regan

Lawmakers often overlook the unintended consequences of their actions. Take the London Olympics for example, where the self-declared “first social media Games” could turn decidedly anti-social.

The Brits have pushed an Act through Parliament to ensure the intellectual property rights of the London Olympics are protected.

Nothing unusual about that – it happened in Australia long before Cathy Freeman went anywhere near a naked flame. It’s just part of the price countries pay to hand over a city for a fortnight to the private company called the International Olympics Committee.

The Guardian newspaper reports that the British legislation goes much further than existing copyright protection. Legal opinion is that someone in the London crowd uploading a photo or footage to Facebook could be prosecuted for breaching criminal law.

The Guardian says using “2012” in connection with terms like “London”, “medals”, “sponsors”, “summer”, “gold”, “silver” or “bronze” is another likely breach. An event called the "Great Exhibition 2012" was threatened with legal action over its use of "2012" but it was later withdrawn.

With ambush marketing in mind, Twitter has agreed to work with the London organisers to ban non-sponsors from buying promoted ads with hashtags like #London2012

Back in the years BS (Before Social), the Australian Government was so sensitive to its own legislation that it referred to the 2000 event as “the Sydney Games” and avoided using The O Word in official communications.

Owners of the Olympic Hotel in Sydney’s Moore Park, located a short stumble across the road from a Games venue, were threatened with prosecution unless they changed its name, despite having long known by the O name.

Common sense prevailed and the dogs were called off.

Much of the same will probably apply in London, even if the draconian law looks, sounds and smells like an ass.

It might say on your ticket that you agree not to “license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet".

But does anyone think the Olympic Police are going to knock on the door after you go home and confiscate your smartphone?

Unless you’re working for a non-Olympic sponsor, the PR consequences would be dire.

More on the games and social media here if you're interested (and that's where we borrowed the image.) 

When porkies and dodgy research combine to do a brand in

By Craig Regan

Mark Twain wrote: "Everybody lies—every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning." Bearing that in mind, you have to wonder about the sense, or lack of, behind some PR campaigns.

An academic blogging for The Guardian in the UK recently laid bare an agency’s use of silly research to gain its client some media space.

Online insurance company einsurancegroup.co.uk paid for an online poll to ask people how often they lied.

Its PR company used the results to tell the world that the Welsh were the UK’s biggest liars, averaging 47 fibs a month.

You can imagine the brainstorm that came up with that gem – and how many policies the company’s now selling in Wales.

Besides the fact that what a fib is to one person is an abominable lie to another, there's the possibility that the answers respondents gave were in fact lies.

A cursory Google search shows 3600+ online stories about the campaign, most of which use the terms “dodgy science” and “cynical bid for publicity”.

That puts a “lie” to the myth that all publicity is good publicity. Any PR company worth its salt would have told the client as much and warned them about trashing their own brand. 

Anyway, everyone knows the UK’s (and world’s) biggest bullshitters come from Cumbria in north-west England.

 

 

Wiggling away from trouble: Three lessons for reputation management

By Craig Regan

As odd as it might be to devote double-page spreads in daily newspapers to a changing of the guard in The Wiggles, it’s still the silly season in Australia. The Wiggles are the country’s highest-earning entertainers and stories like these do sell papers.

There are some great take-outs for guardians of brand reputation. Cutting through the PR-speak, they are:

Never do a media interview inadequately prepared.

There’s a link to the Today Show interview with three of The Wiggles here. They also did Sunrise.

Not to have an answer when asked how a freshly-unemployed Sam Moran felt when your media release stressed he was fine was a stumble that sent the wrong message.

So was Blue Wiggle Anthony Field saying he and Sam hadn’t spoken. It was at odds with the public position that this was an amicable departure.

Anthony  agreed with an on-air statement that Sam had been a hired hand. It might have been factual but it looked insensitive and if well prepared he could have easily sidestepped it.  

You can’t take it back.

If you make a mistake, fix it as soon as possible.

The Wiggles’ Facebook page has 86,000 people liking it. The announcement about Sam’s departure attracted 6000 comments in two days - many of them furious.

Anthony made an apologetic and measured clarification of the ”hired hand” issue. It has so far attracted 1800+ comments and the tone seems much more positive.

Correctly responding to social media is a judgement game. Respond too late or at all, sometimes, and you can keep an issue alive. In this instance it was the right step.

Build the story, own the narrative.

The Wiggles have great access to media. They need not to have been on the back foot.

It would have been far better to have selectively released the news that Sam Moran was leaving to pursue other opportunities and create some positive PR about the hunt to find someone to replace him.  

Manage the story. Run an online campaign and then drop the bombshell that Greg was back. He could have wished Sam well and set the agenda on the group’s future.

There needed to be some distance put between Sam’s departure and Greg’s return. A joint media conference with all five Wiggles would have been a good look.  

The turn of events that occurred led some to compare the situation to the coup that installed Julia Gillard for Kevin Rudd. Ouch!

 

While on the Wiggles, can you identify the member of the Lighthouse
Communications team who appears in this clip? 

Most hated lists and the art of reputation management

On a list of America’s most hated companies, is it surprising to find the world’s largest social networking site?

It’s no shock to see a couple of banks (one facing fraud action), a bankrupt airline and a troubled telco in the rankings, published by equity markets news site 247wallst.com.

But is Facebook really that on the nose?

The 247wallst.com rankings are judged on financials, profits and brand perceptions, so there’s a high degree of interpretation involved. They do say a lot, however, about how big businesses impact on the public.

Facebook has 800 million users whose interactions with it, and each other, reach into the billions each week.  It would be strange if something that ubiquitous didn’t rub a significant proportion of the globe’s population the wrong way.

Constant privacy issues and relentless format changes, however, have conspired to upset users and cement Facebook’s place on the hated scale.

The real bolter on the list is Johnson & Johnson, an iconic brand best known in Australia for its trusted range of baby products. By comparison, its pharmaceutical arm, Janssen-Cilag, barely has a profile here.

In the US, J&J has taken a battering from a string of recent product recalls and quality control issues that resulted in the FDA moving in on three of its plants.

Those woes really stem as far back as the Tylenol poisoning issue of 1986, which is now viewed as a
watershed for pharma industry anti-tampering measures and a PR text book case study.    

The PR lessons are obvious: You’re never too big to take a fall and if you take your eye off your reputation and fail to invest strategically in your brand, major damage is only one crisis away.

The list (not in order) is below and the 247wallst.com commentary is here.

Facebook
American Airlines
AT&T
Nokia
Goldman Sachs
Best Buy
Bank of America
Johnson & Johnson
Sears
Netflix