The PR In Front Is Not Toyota

It's one of the basic rules of PR that if you’ve got a problem you admit everything, apologise and get on with fixing it preferably with generous compensation. Excuses, delays or, perish the thought, cover ups are always a mistake. Hard to believe then that a company as clever and experienced as Toyota could make such a mess of dealing with the technical problems with their cars.

At Your Life Your Style we needed to make some apologies just before Christmas. A couple of our deliveries went astray in the great freeze. As soon as customers informed us of the problem, we apologised and sent replacements along with a refund of the carriage cost and a small gift.

I like the way shops like Waitrose and M&S give you a refund and a replacement if you find something wrong with their food. Not so good was the service at Boots in Romsey last Sunday when I was waiting at the medicines counter. A pharmacist was busy nearby sorting prescriptions which I assumed he couldn’t leave unattended. An assistant at the next counter was involved in a long transaction. When she’d finished she came over only to say she wasn’t authorised to sell medicines. She went to get another assistant.

When I complained that I’d been waiting over five minutes, the new assistant said ‘You could have shouted or told the pharmacist.’ An astonishing response that assumed I knew the first assistant couldn’t serve me, that the pharmacist wouldn’t call someone without needing to be nudged and that I would want to be shouting ‘Shop!’ ‘Sorry’ was the one thing she wasn’t.

We Need Some Old Fashioned Banking

Today Your Life Your Style changes banks. We've given up on HSBC after feeling distinctly uncared for. What surprises me is that HSBC have never asked why we're leaving. You would think every business would want to improve its customer service yet, despite describing themselves as 'the world's local bank', HSBC appear to be just another global bank who are more bothered with big investments than small customers.

Jade Goody and a PR Landmark

The story of Jade Goody's death was terribly sad. It was also a landmark in the march of PR.

Since ancient times, people have made up stories about the lives of famous people- Roman generals, catholic saints, Renaissance artists- in order to increase their standing and influence. For example, King Alfred the Great allegedly burnt some cakes whilst dreaming of uniting England. Only it wasn’t called PR in hose days. We have gobbled them up because we have an insatiable appetite to know the ‘real’ people behind the achievement.

In the last century, as documented in the book The Fame Formula, Hollywood flacks and others turned making up fame-enhancing stories about people into a fine art. In the second half of the 20th century, the best publicists stopped being employees and became a power in their own right, using their contacts and knowledge of the media to bring fame to whoever paid them. The media thrives on our interest in the real lives of our heroes. PR exploits this, although it now also has to control the media monster it has unleashed.

Still, at this point, people’s fame was based on some product (be it, acting, music or sporting prowess) the sale of which would be helped by the media coverage gained from PR. Occasionally someone would gain fame by being involved in something high profile- they might marry a footballer or appear in a reality TV show- but these were exceptional and their fame didn't last without some inherent talent to back it up.

Not any more. The trouble is, real stars don't want to reveal their ordinary lives, except via the contrived reality of a photoshoot for Hell. This is because either it devalues their mystique or they simply don’t want the intrusion. Some don’t want celebrity at all (check out the number of actors that haven’t supplied a photo to the Internet Movie Data Base.)

Jade Goody fed the public appetite. She perpetuated her fame because she was willing to allow the media into every corner of an ordinary life, including her deathbed. By definition, she was famous for being famous, in that she was famous for nothing else than simply being Jade Goody, an ordinary person that the rest of us could either identify with or mock.

However she was clever enough not to waste the opportunity- she made money for her children and raised awareness of cervical cancer. I admire her for that. Nevertheless, for me, the real story is that PR is now so powerful it can keep someone with no discernible talent on the front pages longer than any celebrity in recent memory.

How To Become Famous

The current media coverage of Jade Goody is a masterpiece in the art of PR. You wouldn't expect the imminent demise of a person, who participated in a reality TV show and was likeable and inadvertently amusing but has little discernible talent, to attract such attention, however sad her story. However she and her PR team have handled her media career brilliantly from the moment she came to national attention and, in effect, have made her famous for being famous, continually renewing the interest.

Mark Borkowski is a PR agent, who specialises in arts and entertainment, has worked out a formula for achieving this kind of celebrity. His book The Fame Formula (Sidgwick & Jackson), explains how modern PR became such a powerful tool by telling the fascinating story of the development of Hollywood publicists or ‘flacks’. It starts with the outrageous stunts of the silent movie era, moves through the sanitising control by studio fixers in the mid-centuryand ends with today’s powerful agents who fence with the devils of the media on behalf of would-be celebrities.

There are some great examples of stunts which were carried out from town to town in the early 20th century by publicists who followed in the large footsteps of P T Barnum. To publicise The Return Of Tarzan, Harry Reichenbach sneaked a tame lion into a hotel room, resulting in a major news story. Its human companion told the newspapers he wanted to be like the Apeman.

Invention on that scale is less common nowadays because it’s more easily exposed as a stunt by mass communication but there is still plenty of scope for stories that use gimmicks to gain attention. I’ve had Cannon and Ball planting a tree to launch Babes In The Wood and soaked the local TV weatherman when Singin’ In The Rain was in town.

The greatest publicity stunt of all time is probably the three year search for someone to play Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind. The saga is retold in detail from the point-of-view of the studio’s publicist Russell Birdwell. We recreate a small scale version every time we get coverage from auditioning children to play The Babes In The Wood.

Although the publicity said it was a chance arrival of Vivien Leigh on the set that led to her getting the part, it seems the decision had already been made. The point is, the story may be fictitious but it tells a truth that people want to believe about the person or event. When I was involved in publicising Snow White, a story about Sneezy being the only dwarf not to get a cold caught the public imagination. It even became the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question.

The Secret Of Lasting Fame

There are a number of heartfelt references in the book to the way even the best publicists are frequently dumped by their employers, something to which I can attest. The trouble is, people believe their own publicity and don’t like to acknowledge that their achievements are not entirely due to their own talent. An example quoted is the disastrous period Tom Cruise went through after he ditched Pat Kingsley. In the rough seas of today’s media, the ship of fame requires a steady hand on the tiller.

The importance of celebrity to today’s media means that ‘superflacks’ like Kingsley are more powerful than journalists. She controls all aspects of her clients’ interfaces with the outside world, even down to telling them to leave a small gap when they cross their legs so the top leg doesn’t look fat.

Whilst acknowledging that nowadays some people like Jade Goody are simply famous for being famous, nevertheless Borkowski insists, “Fame still, on the whole, relies on someone being possessed of an extraordinary talent.” Andy Warhol, whose portraits of famous people are currently on display at the Hayward Gallery, would agree. Despite suggesting everyone could be famous for 15 minutes, he also (less famously) said, “You should always have a product that’s not just you.” In other words, lasting fame should be the result of producing something of worth.

Borkowski rambles and repeats himself a bit and I found the story he tells somewhat disjointed. I suspect it needed more editing. Nevertheless it is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in PR. The formula for fame that the book promises is revealed at the very end. And it really is a mathematical formula. Studying a number of celebrities, Borkowski concluded that any boost to fame lasts 15 months (not Warhol's minutes) after which it needs to be renewed or the celebrity will slip into obscurity. I'm afraid I got lost at F(T)=

A version of this piece appeared in the December edition of Encore magazine

Faking It

Does authenticity matter, asks Seth Godin. If the fake Rembrandt has fooled the experts, if Shakespeare didn’t write parts of his plays, if Churchill put his historic speeches on record after the event, if some of The Beatles’ songs weren’t recorded by all four of the Fabs, does it matter?

If the effect of the fake on you is the same as the ‘authentic’ version, it probably doesn’t. It is, if you like, all in the mind, and we should all trust our own feelings not what we’re told to feel. In business, it does matter though, because, if someone deliberately sells a fake Rolex, no matter how authentic looking, as the real thing, and they therefore charge a much higher price than justified- that’s fraud. And if you tell a customer something that isn’t true, you’ll be found out eventually, seriously damage your reputation- and may even be prosecuted.

Turn 20% into 80%

Thanks to Gary Bencivenga for reminding us about The Pareto Principle, which states that 20% of your customers give you 80% of your business. He tells us that it also applies to other aspects of your life. For example, you probably wear 20% of the clothes in your wardrobe 80% of the time. Most people find that they only spend 20% of their working week doing that which gives them 80% of their satisfaction. When I was a manager, I spent most of my time doing tedious admin. Now, as a freelance marketer, I spend nearly all my time on writing and PR, make a bit more money and- most importantly- am much happier.

No News Is Bad PR

It’s great to get publicity for a stunt- even better when you don’t actually do the stunt. Well, unless you’re found out.

The Southampton Daily Echo reported that the city’s major shopping centre West Quay would be turning its lights off for Earth Hour. This was excellent publicity for a centre that’s closed on a Saturday night. Even better, the Echo ranked it alongside Sydney Harbour Bridge as a world landmark!

All well and good, except unfortunately their lights didn’t actually go off. Which turned a good story into bad publicity. The lesson is, when you try to get publicity on the back of an external event, make sure you’ve told the people on the ground.

Alarming Nipple- How Not To React To Bad Publicity

Jeanne Bliss on the website Marketing Profs Daily Fix brings our attention to a great example of how not to react to bad publicity. In Lubbock Texas recently, a woman’s nipple ring was detected by the security system. She was forced to go through a humiliating procedure during which she had to remove the ring in front of officers. Naturally this made the Transportation Security Administration look very bad.

The situation could have been saved at this point. They could have accepted they did wrong, but no, “It appears that the Transportation Security Officers involved properly followed procedures.” They could have explained what they had done to ensure this sort of thing never happens. Instead they offered a woolly “we are changing the procedures”.

Most important of all, they could have said ‘sorry’. Instead, when you wade through all the flummery, here’s their ‘apology’: “TSA acknowledges that our procedures caused difficulty for the passenger involved and regrets the situation in which she found herself.” In other words, sorry but you’ve only yourself to blame.

A commentator invents a new motto for the TSA, “You fly… we pry.”

Sex Sells Theatre Tickets

An article in the Daily Telegraph explains in fascinating detail how David Pugh and his partner Daffyd Rogers financed Equus and their many other theatrical successes and occasional failures. However it says little about the part David’s marketing skill has played in his achievements. I have met no other producer who combines theatrical knowledge with marketing flair in quite the way David does.


David’s decision to change the cast of Art every twelve weeks was a clever way of keeping the show in the news, as was the special celebrity guest each night in The Play What I Wrote. When he brought Rebecca starring Nigel Havers to my then theatre, he marketed it with a brilliant black and white photo (by Lord Lichfield) of Havers looking wistful on a beach. David gave me a framed version of the poster when we broke the British box office record for a play. It’s the only theatre poster I have in my office.



The image used for Equus was just as striking, featuring a bare chested Daniel Radcliffe whose lower body morphed into a horse’s head. The announcement of the West End run was accompanied by studio photos of a nearly naked Daniel. They were entirely in keeping with the sexual themes in the play but the image of a sexy Harry Potter gained coverage in virtually every national paper.

Harry Triumphs- in PR at least

I guess like half the world's population, I've spent the last few days reading Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. I know it's ultimately just another PR event- just like the book is just another adventure story but the plot is clever and the action gripping and so was the PR.
It's sometimes hard to believe anyone was paid to market the book since there was already such global interest but the way the build-up was handled with little leaks and PR events was brilliant. It was great to get to the final battle and to find out the fate of all our favourite characters (and whether the publishers could prevent the outcome being revealed).
There's a bit too much exposition (a bit like when Poirot explains whodunit) and occasionally I got fed up with the 'with a bound they were free' solutions to the fixes our heroes were in (in the manner of the old Saturday morning kids' films) but these are minor quibbles.
Well done, JK and your PR people, you brought everything to a very satisfactory conclusion. Not sure whether the epilogue (19 years later) was really in keeping- but perhaps this was the bit that she famously wrote all those years ago, so she couldn't really abandon it now. Time to get on with the rest of our lives.

Say No To 0870

If I phone you up to buy something from you, is it good customer service to make me listen to an advertisement and to charge me at a premium rate for the privilege? Obviously not, yet that’s exactly what Airmiles did when I phoned their 0870 number to book some Eurostar tickets (which you can’t do online). If they want to sell me a credit card, that’s fine but they should do it on a freefone number. After holding for a couple of minutes, I decided to go to saynoto0870.com to get the lower cost number local exchange number which incidentally is 01925 866000.

I started getting my Tesco Clubcard points converted to Airmiles because they seemed like better value and so it has proved. I booked flights to Paris because Eurostar was too expensive. For just over 2500 miles, I saved £150 on flights. This values the Airmiles at 6p each. For every £2.50 in Clubcard vouchers, you get 60 miles or £3.60 at the rate I got, so that is good value unless you use up all your extra value in 0870 charges.

How To Write

While I was preparing some advice for a client on writing press releases, I came across these words from the nineteenth century writer John Ruskin. The points he makes apply to any kind of writing- press releases, blogs, direct mail, novels:

"Say all you have to say in the fewest words possible, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will be sure to misunderstand them."

If you're going to do it, do it properly

Last Monday saw the launch of Celebratio, an event management and ticketing system from SecureTicket for which The Lewis Experience has been providing PR and marketing support. What I like about the people at SecureTicket (apart from the fact that they're very nice) is that they realise the danger of the false economy.

So they chose the Cafe Royal for the launch- a top class, sophisticated venue right in the heart of London, not some anonymous hotel on the fringes. They got a well known celebrity (Maggie Philbin, the BBC's Face Of Technology, pictured with Rashid Qajar, chief executive of SecureTicket) to host it instead of relying on their excellent but unknown selves. They served champagne not cheap sparkling wine. They commissioned a short comedy film and hired a live band, rather than simply offering a power point presentation.

The result was a well-attended evening and potential clients going away with an image of a company that doesn't just promise great things but actually delivers.

If you want to know more about Celebratio, which by the way is Latin for 'audience', visit the website secureticket.biz.

Who Wins The Big Brother PR Battle- You Decide!

What japes in the Big Brother house!

From a marketing point of view, who are the winners and losers?

Channel 4, worried that BB is losing its lustre, brought in Jade Goody, BB’s most famous housemate, and family to liven up the programme. It began to backfire when she so alienated Ken Russell that he walked out. Then there was a predictable argument over food (we regular BB viewers know food is always a flash point). Faced with declining viewing figures, C4 exploited the row for all it’s worth. However they probably didn’t expect the slanging match and bullying that have been a regular feature on BB through the years to turn into a global controversy on racism. As a result, BB is back on the front pages and they have gained viewing figures. These are probably short term gains. On the other hand, they've lost their £3 million sponsor and they've been condemned by politicians and other more sincere people. Storm in a teacup perhaps. Still, they have lived on the edge with this programme for some time, using controversy as their main PR weapon. This time they got their comeuppance.

Jade has exploited her persona for all it’s worth. She’s become a tabloid favourite, featured in minor TV programmes and sold a successful perfume. She might have thought that re-entering the house would put her back on the front pages and mainstream TV, and set the seal on her celebrity. Unfortunately for her, the ignorance and naivety that made her so appealing showed their dark side in the charged atmosphere of the BB house, when she was seen bullying Shilpa. (Though not a racist, I think. Given her uncontrolled language generally, I am sure that, if she was, racist pejoratives would have slipped out of her mouth.) She's been evicted with 82% of the vote, her scent is off the shelves at Debenhams, her apology appears forced and she is a hate figure.

Shilpa Shetty, unheard of outside of India and the Bollywood fanbase, decided to gain exposure in the UK by appearing on BB. She was calm and dignified in the face of bullying from Jade. She got sympathy from a British public that is fair-minded and likes underdogs and she has become a household name in the UK. Western film contracts will no doubt follow. Mission accomplished beyond her wildest dreams.

The winner is Shilpa Shetty.