What Joey Barton tells us about PR

Oh he was so close. If there’s one thing the English love, it’s our national game. And if there’s another, it’s tales of redemption. Put the two together and you have tabloid (and, it appears, broadsheet) bliss.

 

In the past year Joey Barton has climbed his way up the ladder from the vilest man in football (and there are A LOT of competitors for that title) to Renaissance Man, by way of Nietzsche, Aristotle and Paxman. Never mind that while he climbed, his club were routed in the relegation mire: QPR’s captain was performing one of the greatest transformations in public perception since Cheryl Cole stepped out of a nightclub toilet and onto the set of the X Factor.

 

His story is a lesson for all of us who spend our days building, shaping, managing and protecting the reputation of our companies and clients. For while @joey7barton gave us a masterclass in the use of Twitter to transform his public’s opinion of him, he forgot one key rule: your actions have got to live up to your PR.

 

Without poring over his pre-renaissance rap sheet, let’s not forget that this was a man who served 74 days in prison for – according to The Times – clubbing one man on the ground 19 times with his fists then breaking a 16 year old’s teeth; burnt a team mate in the eye with a cigar; was involved with altercations with an opposition’s 15 year old fan during a pre-season tour of Thailand; and had a fight with a team mate on the training ground which sent the team mate to hospital. This is not mentioning his poor on-pitch disciplinary record.

 

Yet some point in 2011 a transformation started. Using what Alexis Petridis in The Guardian described as, “an improbable stream of socio-political invective, decrying the US as a ‘fascist regime’ and calling upon the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist oligarchy”, Barton’s Twitter feed also quoted authors (Orwell), musicians (The Smiths) and even ancient philosophers (Aristotle, Seneca, Virgil). Used to seeing footballers use Twitter to decry selection, promote Snickers and criticise refereeing decisions, it was baffling to find out that the most intelligent footballer in the Premiership could very possibly be bad boy Barton. As many pundits commented, Twitter revealed a personality to Joey Barton. And it was such a shock that some questioned whether this was the work of some very smart, very hidden PR expert – was the ‘personality’ his real one or a constructed version?

 

The renaissance continued. His Twitter followers rose to 1.5 million and although he got into a confrontation with another player during his first game for new club QPR, picked up a red card for a head butt at the start of January this year and got into a public spat with outgoing manager Neil Warnock, the media and public lapped up the two sides of Joey Barton, his metamorphosis complete when he appeared on Newsnight two weeks ago to talk about the state of the modern game.

 

And there could end our story of redemption. Whether by his own means or those of a PR advisor, Joey Barton’s image had been transformed from thug to footballing philosopher. What awaited? There were even murmurs (very, very muted murmurs and even then from only his most staunch of supporters) of a place in the England squad for the upcoming European Championships. But if not that, perhaps a place on the BBC couch or the ITV sofa analysing his fellow pros’ performances. On that Newsnight appearance Jeremy Paxman even asked him if he fancied the England manager job at some point in the future.

 

But…after the rise came the fall. The last game of the season. A game that would decide the winners of the Premiership and could have sent his own club QPR down. Manchester City’s Carlos Tevez (himself a contender for vilest man in football) punches Barton and the red mist descends.

 

Barton was later to receive two charges of violent conduct – an apparent elbow on Tevez and then a kneeing on Sergio Aguero and an attempted head butt on Vincent Kompany (both the last two being after Barton had received a red card). The well-read articulate philosopher had turned back into the 3am kebab-stand brawler. Our anti-hero’s actions were suddenly very guilty of not living up to his constructed image.

 

How does this relate to our work in organisational positioning and reputation management?

 

Firstly, our positioning and our messages have to be credible. They have to be representative of our company’s actual actions. It’s no point us saying that we have an exemplary record of corporate responsibility if our products are made in a sweatshop by 5 year old children getting paid 3p a day. It’s no point saying that our health food brand is healthy if it contains 25% fat. And it’s no point creating a carefully constructed image of our CEO if he is then found to not have the experience that he has listed on his CV.

 

At it’s most effective, communications can actually have a transformative effect on the culture and actions of a company. PR and Communications departments can bring those actions up a few bars on the moral barometer through demonstrating the benefits a more positive image will have to the bottom line and through identifying the problem areas and lobbying internally to rectify them. But if those changes cannot be made, it’s a risky strategy to cover actions up with unrepresentative messaging and positioning. It’s always best to assume that at some point the mask will slip and our true behaviour and personality will be revealed – the gap between our positioning and the reality should not be too wide that this poses a problem.

 

Secondly, following his on-field behaviour against Manchester City, was Barton beyond saving? What about the rule of crisis comms that says admit culpability, apologise and shut the issue down early? What if Barton had quickly come out, said sorry, admitted he was at fault and said he was lucky that QPR avoided relegation?

 

Well in fact he did show remorse, tweeting “Can do nothing but apologise to the players and the fans”. And perhaps that could have been that. Barton could have served his ban and in the meantime tweeted his opinions on Shakespeare, Wilde and Homer. After all, Eric Cantona – that other philosopher of football – came back after kung fu kicking a spectator. But then Barton ruined it all, following up the apology by going back to Twitter to:

  • Say that he didn’t think it was a sending off
  • Say that after he’d been sent off he tried to “take 1 of theirs with me” (presumably by aggravating them into a fight)
  • Abusing and threatening BBC pundits Gary Linekar and Alan Shearer for their comments on that night’s Match of the Day, including the playground criticism of Shearer’s hair, shirts and personality - it’s unlikely that he will be offered a spot on that BBC sofa now.

 

Hardly actions of remorse. And hardly shutting the issue down early.

 

Of course this has all resulted in Barton receiving more Twitter followers and there is a school of thought that says all of this is building his profile and will leave him with an array of opportunities post-football. But he may need those opportunities sooner rather than later. The consensus is that QPR will now offload him: which club would be brave enough to take him on now? And Gordon Taylor, Chief Executive of the Professional Footballers Association and a man never scared to defend one of his union members, has said that he fears for Barton’s career.

 

And so a rise became a fall that could – from a footballing point of view at least – prove too far down to come back from. Maybe he doesn’t have a PR advisor after all.

Monsieur Lazhar.

One of the best films I’ve seen for a long time, Monsieur Lazhar is a touching portrayal of guilt, loss and grief. The performances are excellent especially considering it was such a child-centric cast and (without giving too much away) whilst showing the transformative effects that a teacher can have on his pupils and pupils can have on their teacher, it didn’t ever fall into over sentimentality. 

Have You Heard The One About…

The hungry businessman who was flying home and jokingly tweeted how great it would be if his favourite restaurant met him on arrival with a steak dinner – and when he landed he was greeted by a tuxedo-dressed waiter holding a 24oz steak and side orders of shrimp and potatoes?

What great customer service. And not just great customer service – great money-couldn’t-buy PR. The businessman in question happened to be Peter Shankman, a social media consultant with 100,000 Twitter followers. One of the many retweets was read by a journalist for Time who published the story (http://tinyurl.com/chjtmortons)leading to more social media chatter and thousands of dollars of publicity value – all for the cost of a steak dinner.

Aside from the benefits to the brand of good customer service there are two lessons that can be learnt from this. Firstly, the story is a demonstration of what companies have to gain if they can harness the power of social media and use it to interact, to open up dialogues, to talk one-on-one with customers, and to use those interactions to generate positive stories about their brands. Was the free steak a stunt? It’s unlikely that it will become a regular occurrence for Morton’s to deliver a free dinner to every tweeter asking them to do so. But somebody was on the ball enough to see the tweet and recognise it as an opportunity to demonstrate Morton’s commitment to customer service. It may have just resulted in one happy customer but as it turned out it resulted in a story that was retweeted around the world and made the pages of Time.

The second lesson comes from looking at why this story caught the imagination. Recently re-reading ‘Made To Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck’, the story of The Business Traveller And The Steak Dinner came to mind. Written by Chip & Dan Heath, ‘Made To Stick’ outlines six principles of effective communication which help ensure a message and its meaning ‘sticks’ in the minds of an intended audience – and they use the ‘stickable’ acronym SUCCESs to do so (see the bottom of this post for a brief explanation of each of the principles). If you clicked through on the link to the Time story, you may have noted that it was published in August 2011 – yet I still remember it nine months on. The story had ‘stuck’. Using the SUCCESs principles it’s easy to see why: it’s a Simple story with an Unexpected ending; there are lots of Concrete images (a businessman on a plane / a waiter in a tuxedo / a steak dinner); it’s Credible, having appeared in Time magazine and including quotes from Peter Shankman himself; it’s Emotional as we can easily imagine the surprise on Peter’s face and we smile at the thought of a waiter in a tuxedo waiting for him at Arrivals; and it has all the essential elements of a Story including a beginning, middle and end and a character with a problem that is then resolved.

As well as being a great example of a company using social media to interact with its customers and to create a unique customer experience that led to a PR-able story, The Business Traveller And The Steak Dinner is a perfect demonstration of medium and message working in harmony. Granted, nobody at Morton’s sat down and planned it out that way but we can learn from the success of the end result. As we develop our strategies across social media channels we should remember that – as with all other channels – the message is just as important as the medium and the principles of SUCCESs can provide a useful framework to help us in crafting that message.

The Six Principles of Effective Communication


- Simple – strip the idea down to its core. Prioritise what is important – what is the one ‘takeway’ you want your audience to have.

- Unexpected – grab people’s attention by surprising them. But for this to last you must generate interest and curiosity

- Concreteness – make sure an idea can be grasped and remembered later. Use concrete images

- Credible – your audience must perceive you and your message to be credible

- Emotional – help people care about your idea but making them feel something. Humans are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions

- Stories – communicate your idea through a narrative. Humans think in narrative structures and remember facts in story form – thousands of years ago Aesop realised this and turned relatively complex ideas into easy to understand proverbs.

A boy, some boxes and a flashmob - how social media can be used to bring a little bit of happiness to the world. Take 10 mins out of your day to watch

Inspiring a generation while paving over paradise

As Lord Coe has today announced the 2012 motto is ‘Inspire A Generation’, it’s a good opportunity to reblog a post I wrote at the end of last year when an additional £41m was allocated for the opening and closing ceremonies at the same time that it was announced that participation in sport was dropping and also when budgets for grassroots sport are being slashed (apologies for the use of a Daily Mail adjective) and sports fields (the paradise of my youth) are continuing to disappear.

 

As I state in the initial blog post, I am by no means an Olympic basher and believe that Lord Coe should be given some kind of higher accolade – High Lord? Lord of Lords? Supreme Lord? But I do question what happens when that generation is inspired, only to find they paved paradise to put up a parking lot (of a Tescos) and that consequently there is nowhere to turn that inspiration into perspiration.

 

Catherine Wheels or Football Fields?

Let me just start by saying I am not an Olympics basher. Having the five rings plastered on billboards, buses and the walls of tube stations throughout London and indeed the country will be one of the most exciting sporting events to happen in my lifetime (ranking alongside Wilko’s drop goal, Freddie’s Ashes and Gloucester beating Leicester by 3 points on a freezing Wednesday Kingsholm night some 15 years ago). The world’s best athletes playing out the most important moments of their careers within the sound of the Bow Bells (assuming a favourable headwind) has been mouth watering ever since the bid was won way back when. I never have understood the Scrooges, Grinches and Clarksons who bemoan our hosting of the world’s biggest sporting event.

            And as a PR professional who has been involved in some quite frankly ridiculous money-blowing events and campaigns (I worked in Dubai during the Boom Years), I understand the desire to put on a spectacular event.

            But doubling the budget of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies? Really?

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