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Bankers in PR Masterplan to Court Public Opinion

November 26, 2009

The scene: early morning in an office in the inner sanctum of a major bank. Gathered at an antique oak table worth £7.2m are the bank’s CEO, its lawyer and PR executive.

CEO: Hurray! Common sense has prevailed. The Supreme Court proves that we rule supreme. We can charge what we like and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Lawyer: The Supreme Court’s ruling in our long-running battle against miscreant money-grabbing consumers is indeed a fillip.

PR Exec: I agree. However, we must be careful how we handle this. The public don’t like us at the moment and we don’t want our stock to sink any lower.

CEO: What do you mean, they don’t like us?

Lawyer: Yes, what do you mean? I like to think that I’m in touch with the pulse of public feeling but that’s the first I’ve heard of such a sentiment. Please explain.

PR Exec: Well, the public think that we’re fat cats whose gravy train continues undiluted by the recession, which is unfair because we caused it in the first place – by engaging in ludicrously risky hedge fund trading and awarding ourselves massive bonuses for achieving nothing but the country’s ruin – and they’re all the more upset by the Walker Report.

CEO: My word, do they really think that?

PR Exec: I’m afraid so.

Lawyer: Extraordinary. Are they not grateful for the money we lend them? And what’s the Walker Report?

PR Exec: They should be grateful, of course. I think that’s what Walker must have concluded because instead of condemning our monopolistic oligarchial practices and poor standards of corporate governance, as many expected, he says we’re OK really and, better yet, that nothing must be done to drive us abroad.

CEO: Why would we want to go abroad in the first place? Granted, it’s always nice to get away to the villas but if he thinks we might go and work overseas he must be mad!

Lawyer: Quite so. The money’s just not there. And the rules and regulations would drive anyone round the bend.

PR Exec: Well, that’s what he must have decided because his report changes nothing. Indeed, allied with the Supreme Court’s ruling against the consumers who said our overdraft charges were unfair and unreasonable we certainly have cause for good cheer.

CEO: Excellent news. Let’s crack open the champagne.

A pause while a butler enters the room and opens a bottle of Louis Roederer Cristal Rose 1995, the bankers’ breakfast tipple of choice. They clink glasses and, for a moment, quietly reflect on their good fortune, one aptly enhanced by a Titian hanging on the wall.

PR Exec (coughing): But gentlemen, we do need to keep an eye on public opinion. As I say, bizarre though it may be our stock has never been lower.

CEO: What do you recommend?

PR Exec: We must devise a subtle and nuanced PR strategy to persuade the public that we are angels.

CEO: Do you have any ideas?

PR Exec: Yes. Let’s hold a raffle giving the winner an afternoon in a corporate box at Chelsea football club. It’s where all the rich people go to eat prawn sandwiches and watch Jose Mourinho’s team as they vanquish all. It’ll be a real vote-winner.

CEO: Won’t that be expensive?

Lawyer: Not if we utilise cunning legal jargon in the small print to the effect that the precise date on which the prawn sandwiches can be eaten is uncertain. That way we can take the winner there on a day when there’s no football.

CEO: Brilliant. Draft the jargon and start the campaign. Good work.

PR Exec: Thank you, Excellency. There’s just one thing…

CEO: Yes?

Lawyer: The small but not inconsiderable matter of our bonuses.

CEO: How could I forget! Forgive me. Give yourselves £3.75m each.

They leave, laughing all the way to the bank while outside on the streets of London, public opinion awaits its mollification. The image of a renegade banker (or is it a member of the public?) is courtesy of Flickr user jameshill.

Social Media and the Demise of Compassion

November 25, 2009

There’s some good stuff over at the Guardian today on that age-old question: what next for social media? We note, in particular, two views from a star-studded debate at Oxford’s Said Business School:

1. Ram Shriram, a founding board member of Google, believes that Facebook will replace e-mail for the next generation; and

2. Biz Stone, the CEO of Twitter, avows that the open exchange of information facilitated by social media can have a positive global impact (cf., Twitter’s role in the recent Iranian election protests).

Few people would argue with either contention, save that anyone with teenage children might insist that Facebook’s usurption of e-mail is not a future event but a present reality. But as we reflect on social media and where it’s going, some things don’t change. A glance amid the Guardian’s pages reveals that Stephen Fry almost committed ‘Twitticide’ a month ago following a barrage of vituperative online comment. He has Swordplay’s sympathy, for social media’s ability to spawn viciously ad hominem attacks remains its abiding downside.

Perhaps, though, this problem merely mirrors that in society at large, one which has prompted one artist to engage in a series of works exploring ‘the demise of compassion’. As the excellent figurative artist Nicholas Charles Williams puts it: “We’re becoming inured to news of atrocities. We tolerate TV shows which, in the name of entertainment, make fools of participants. Even high-brow presenters such as Louis Theroux use a disarming technique which results in the viewer watching subjects hang themselves.”

Williams’ subjects are often depicted in an almost hyper realist, certainly naturalistic style clutching worn and battered brown briefcases. For him they are custodians of compassion, their cases repositories of something precious and increasingly rare (and barely ever seen on online comment boards). Hence, indeed, the anxious, careful and even haunted looks on their faces.

Pictured: Williams’ studio and ‘Stored’, one of a series of works in ‘The Demise of Compassion’.

Wikipedia on the wane?

November 25, 2009

The Times tells us today that swathes of Wikipedia’s editors are going ‘dead’ – i.e., abandoning the site. Worse, they’re not being replaced, for it seems that the Wikipedia bubble may have burst. As the Times puts it: “Research reveals that the volunteers who create the pages, check facts and adapt the site are abandoning the site in unprecedented numbers.”

Do Wikipedia’s troubles herald a new phase for the interent? Will the free online encyclopaedia live to fight another day? No one can say, for social media changes in the blink of an eye, but here at Swordplay we’ve always been fans of Wikipedia. We are heartened to note, again from the Times, that a “recent study suggested that its pieces were just as accurate as those in the Encyclopaedia Britannica“, and will continue to commend Wikipedia. Its collaborative, democratic essence still speaks of all that is estimable in the Web 2.0 world.

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