Jobs steps down, Fergie steps up

August 26, 2011
Think Different

Along with just about everyone else (not least the ubiquitous Stephen Fry), we celebrate the career of Steve Jobs, who yesterday announced that he was stepping down as Apple CEO. As veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Walt Mossberg has it:

“Most people are lucky if they can change the world in one important way, but Jobs, in multiple stages of his business career, changed global technology, media and lifestyles in multiple ways on multiple occasions.

“He did it because he was willing to take big risks on new ideas, and not be satisfied with small innovations fed by market research. He also insisted on high quality and had the guts to leave out features others found essential and to kill technologies, like the floppy drive and the removable battery, he decided were no longer needed. And he has been a brilliant marketer, personally passionate about his products.”

Indeed. What’s not to like about Apple PCs, and innovations such as iPods and iPads, iTunes and the iPhone? Jobs reminds us somewhat of Miles Davis, so frequently was he able to reinvent himself (or rather, his products). His successor, Tim Cook, sure does have a tough job to keep Apple sweet (though we’re not so sure about the Guardian’s punning here).

No less momentous is the news that the Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, has ended has his seven-year feud with the BBC. Ferguson declared that he would no longer speak to the BBC after a 2004 documentary made allegations about his son, Jason. The impasse appeared irrevocable, but credit must go to Gary Lineker, the former England striker turned Match of the Day frontman, who last year said:

“It’s a shame. We would like him to speak to us because we respect him and his teams, and always have done.

“It makes no difference to the programme because it’s action-led. But it does make a difference to the Manchester United fans. They are the ones missing out. I get letters saying: ‘We never hear from Sir Alex’, and I have to explain. It’s something he feels very strongly about, so what can you do?”

A canny statement which perhaps played on Ferguson’s conscience, possibly enough to make him Think Different; we await Ferguson’s first post-match interview, and Lineker’s take on it, with interest.

 

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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.