Be careful with that ad: you might get locked up

May 7, 2009

clouseau.jpg

The thieves of today are no better than those of 15 years ago. Not even the darkest art of the darkest spin-meister can save them. They are lost, even to the most Machiavellian of PRs.

That is Blade’s conclusion after a comparative analysis of two superb examples of criminal incompetence.

In the red corner, we have Stephen Bell, a robber who stole a bike worth £1,000. He then advertised it in his local paper. Uncannily, rather than receive a cheque he was visited by the local constabulary. He pleaded guilty, was given an eight-month prison sentence (suspended for two years) and placed under supervision for two years.

In the blue corner, a case that came Blade’s way in his tender, all-but-forgotten years as a solicitor. Blade was confronted by an individual accused of shoplifting. He flatly denied any involvement, but the CCTV evidence was his undoing. As it played, in front of members of another local constabulary, the accused could be seen pocketing sundry goods. Case closed, but the man in the frame made it even worse. “Look! That’s me, that is!” he exclaimed. “On TV!” Blade knows not whether he went on to become a master criminal, but he rather doubts it.

But wait, who’s this? It’s a former government employee from the world of PR. He says that actually, both cases can be shown in a positive light.

“The man on CCTV clearly only went shoplifting so that he could be filmed and then make the police laugh,” he says. “After all, they have a tough job and, suitably empathetic with their woes, this individual felt duty-bound to bring a bit of levity to their lives. As for the 25-year-old Mr Bell from Mansfield, he was drunk when he stole the bike and in advertising it, knew full well that he would be identified. In a sense, both men behaved selflessly. They should not be unnecessarily smeared.”

Pictured courtesy of Flaming Fun: Inspector Clouseau, who is trying to discover the identity of the former government PR referred to by Blade.

 

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If you’re Joey Barton, attack is not the best form of defence

May 17, 2012

Interesting times, these, in the life of Joey Barton.

If the violence displayed by the QPR captain at Manchester City last Sunday was remarkable, his subsequent conduct on Twitter has been astonishing. Barton appears to have radically reinterpreted the notion that attack is the best form of defence, lashing out at all and sundry via a series of tweets whose ultimate effect is entirely self-destructive.

In the past 24 hours, Barton has accepted one charge of violent conduct at the Etihad Stadium but denied another. The FA seems set to throw the book at him, and his club has declared that it will deal with the matter after the result of the FA investigation. Conspiracy theorists might conclude that QPR’s management team and board hope that the FA ban Barton for so long a period (four months and more) that their reported desire to rip up his contract can only be bolstered.

What, then, should Barton do? Should he:

(a) Keep his head down and say nothing, or

(b) Issue a sensible statement in which he acknowledges that both his conduct at the Etihad and subsequent tweets have brought QPR into disrepute, and

(c) Add an apology to said statement, or

(d) Go to Portugal, log onto Twitter and tweet that the world is against him but that he doesn’t care because everyone is a moron and he’s worked really hard to get where he is and if anyone is nasty to him again he is going to expose their secrets.

The answer is not (d).

The moral of the story is that if you’re a loose cannon, when you turn attack into defence there is a danger that you will blow yourself up.

Gunning foglessly for clarity

May 15, 2012

A fine piece, this, on Winston Churchill’s gift for language and the obscurantism that goes with so much corporate communication.

But wait, what’s this? Could this injunction have been phrased rather more successfully:

Be concrete, not abstract. Use metaphors to get your message across.

Metaphors are, by definition, not exactly concrete. But be that as it may: there is a lot of sound advice in Clare Lynch’s piece and a revelation, too. We had never heard of the Gunning Fog Index.  But it exists, and reveals the age at which someone would have to leave full-time education to understand given text.

We’re pleased to display our own Gunning Fog rating for the above words. That of the Churchill speech cited by Ms Lynch was 9.698.

The Gunning Fog index is 9.585

Spin at the Leveson Inquiry

May 9, 2012
Leveson witch hunt

The idea that Lord Justice Leveson and his Inquiry’s QC, Robert Jay, are in need of PR advice is intriguing.

Surely their respective tasks ought to be immune from spin? Then again, perhaps the way in which they execute them is deserving of some communications advice. Either way, times have changed. A similar inquiry from yesteryear (and such do exist) would surely not have been accompanied, albeit informally, by communications advice.

Pictured courtesy of this Flickr user: a portrait of the Leveson Inquiry.