Brandjack News

News and commentary around the concept of brandjacking

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  • Media Ethics and age discrimination

    By Quentin Langley

    Here is Section 12 of the Press Complaints' Commission Code of Practice:

    i) The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.

    ii) Details of an individual's race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story.

    Notice, there is no reference to age. Not only is age excluded from subsection ii – it is absolutely the norm to include references to the age of people in stories, whether it is relevant or not – but it is even excluded from subsection i. Apparently, pejorative references to a person's age are okay.

    Journalists plainly believe that age is almost always relevant to a story. Take this paragraph from a Telegraph story about the feud between BBC presenters Eddie Mair and Robert Peston:

    Mair, 46, had earlier written about his hopes of a peace on Radio 4’s blog, saying: “I wondered whether we could use this special day as an opportunity.

    We are not treated to the knowledge of Peston's age. One could argue that both these journalists are behaving childishly, so knowing their age is of relevance. Except that I am not sure anyone would have imagined either Mair (46) or Peston (51, since you ask) was a child. Would this story have been different if Mair had been 36 and Peston 71?

    Here is a cutting from a BBC story about a robbery:

    Winful Taylor, 27, of Streatham, south London, has been charged with robbery and will appear at South Western Magistrates' Court later.

    Of what relevance is it that Taylor is 27? Recall that with regard to other areas of discrimination the Code only bars mention of race, sexual orientation, etc. where the factor is not relevant to the story. In a story about, for example, rape it would plainly be relevant to the story if the victim was only nine or was as old as ninety-nine. But is the difference between twenty-nine and thirty-nine worth mentioning? 

    The UK is in the midst of a major discussion about media ethics. Let us not overlook this glaring omission from the PCC's Code.

  • McDonalds and the power of storytelling

    by Quentin Langley

    It is all about storytelling. In a sense, it always is. Stories help us to make sense of the disparate data that surrounds us. As PR professional and author, Jim Holtje, puts it, we are "hardwired" to understand and remember stories. 

    McDonalds understood that when they started a Twitter campaign called #meetthefarmers. It was inspired. It told the story of suppliers to the famous golden arches. We are used to the fact that the product is carefully controlled and identical whereever we go.* But this was all about the very different stories of the farmers who supply one of the world's biggest companies. The first hand testimony of Steve Foglesong Raising Cattle and a Family is beautiful. It is a story. McDonalds is peripheral, but Foglesong reiterates their key messages about controlling quality. People believe people. People don't believe brands.

    Where McDonalds went wrong was to try to insert themselves more overtly into the stories. Once they started using the hashtag #McDstories, they were inviting other people to join in with their own stories about McDonalds. The company must have known that their brand is controversial. Yes, obviously, many, many people choose to purchase food there. But they know very well that many other people regard the brand as toxic. Yet, the company's second tweet on this hashtag was "tell us what you think of us". The response was predictable.

    People who buy Big Macs are engaged in a transaction, not a lifestyle choice. There are other controversial brands for whom this is not the case. Think of car manufacturers, for example. But cars are enduring products and public statements. A burger is to eat. No matter how frequently people eat at McDonalds, they don't tend to think of themselves as McDonalds people. Now, that is not a problem. But McDonalds probably should have anticipated that the large majority of their customers would not bother to tweet about eating a burger. Buy. Eat. Forget. The enemies of McDonalds, on the other hand, are always up for a scrap Ronald McDonald.

    While McDonalds claims that only 2% of the responses to its hashtag were negative, that has to be only part of the story. Who really wants to share or retweet someone else's gratitude for a successful sixth birthday party? It really isn't that interesting to the Twitterati. By contrast the nasty, the vulgar, the gross and the hilarious, well, they are worth sharing. Here are a few for your enjoyment:

               Man Allegedly Knifes Brother Over McDonald's Brownie huff.to/zklOau (via @huffingtonpost)             #McDStories

    “Watching a classmate projectile vomit his food all over the restaurant during a 6th grade trip. #McDStories 

    I once worked at McDonalds. I have never eaten there since. #McDStories

     

    The strength and weakness of social media is that they are uncontrolled. Other people can tell your story. Before handing them that sort of control, you need to anticipate where they are likely to take it.

     

    *Full disclosure: this author is not all that used to it from personal experience, as he is vegetarian.

  • Time for Beyoncé to apologise

    By Quentin Langley

    What do you do if you are a major global star with huge earnings and you find out that a substantial proportion of the choreography in your video was plagiarised from a much less famous choreographer?

    It seems that if you are Beyoncé, you issue a new version of the video without the ‘borrowed’ choreography. Doing this might be considered a step in the right direction, especially if it is combined with acknowledging ‘influence’. But it does imply that Beyoncé is fully aware of the scale of the ‘influence’ – even if many of the original decisions were made by her team of choreographers. And, yet, we await both the apology and compensation.


    I don’t know Anne Terese de Keersmaeker (and nor does my choreographer wife, Julia K Gleich of GleichDances.org). But my guess is that if Beyoncé had approached her in advance, she would have been delighted to see her art recycled in this way. The acknowledgement would probably have been more important to her than the money – though some recompense would also have been reasonable.


    To this lay critic, the most persuasive of the several videos on Youtube that address this controversy is the one below which shows just how much of Beyoncé’s video was redacted following the global social media fire storm. There are also videos which show Beyoncé’s Countdown alongside the two de Keersmaeker films which influenced it. The parallels are striking, reflecting not just movement, but costume design, setting and camera angles.



    Not only is some 40% of the film redacted, there are two sections of 25 seconds plus that have been removed. In musical composition, a guideline for copyright infringement and plagiarism is seven consecutive notes. Even three notes has been considered copyright infringement. In dance or video, 25 seconds is a very considerable segment. Though this will vary, seven notes would be likely to represent less than seven seconds.


    The alternate video is plainly much less choreographically complex. Much of the remaining material and much of the alternate material focuses on close ups of Beyoncé’s face. She is a beautiful woman, but clearly this was not the original artistic intent.


    Right now, Beyoncé needs a crisis communications plan. This starts with an apology. She needs to accept that her choreographic team – for whom she must accept full responsibility – stepped beyond the line of fair use. The size of the financial settlement – and there needs to be one, probably much larger than it would have been if the agreement had been reached in advance – is not exactly the point.


    To salvage her reputation in the artistic community, and to be a positive role model to the young audiences where she has a cult following, Beyoncé needs to move beyond the issue of legal liability. De Keersmaeker has not brought a legal action. This has become a matter of an established global mega-star being gracious.


    Every star depends of teams of people around them, and on numerous influences. The gracious star acknowledges this. It is time for Beyoncé to step forward and start behaving decently.

  • What is the meaning of Public Relations? #prdefined

    By Quentin Langley

    The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)* has decided to review its definition of PR, partly in the light of way PR practice has developed in the digital and social age. It has to be worth reviewing PRSA's current definition:

    Public relations helps an organization and its publics mutually adapt to each other.

    That seems pretty good. It makes no reference to specific technologies or channels, so there is no particular reason why it should become out of date. I might query the grammer, since 'public relations' is a plural noun, but many people use it as a singular.

    The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR)** has its own definition:

    Public relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.

    Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.

    Same grammatical problem with this one. Again, though, it is pretty clear and sufficiently broad. It is not tied to any particular technology.

    Both definitions get a few things right: they both use the word 'publics' in the plural. This is perhaps, a bit jargony. People outside PR and the study of PR don't do that. There is a more recent word, accepted as being plural, which covers the same territory, 'stakeholders', but this is ideological, arising from American management theory and British political debates. It deliberately echoes the word 'shareholder' and, even more so, the American word 'stockholder', and is designed to communicate an ideological statement about how some people think companies ought to be run. Such a loaded – or, in academic parlance, normative – word has  no place in a neutral definition of PR. 'Publics' it is, and your publics are always plural.

    There is an acceptance in both definitions that public relations include communications with all publics through any channels. In academia, the marketers have generally taken over, and try to restrict PR to being about media relations and only in support of marketing objectives. Actually, PR departments often include investor relations, public affairs, internal communications, and relations with local communities and business partners. Customers form a public, and usually a very important one. I have worked in environments where marketing was 90% of the PR mix, but it should never be all of it, and can be less important than relationships with staff or regulators.

    As is typical, the American definition focusses on relationships and the British on reputation.

    PRSA's definition is particularly clear that communication is two-way, and that the relationship is, or at least can be, symmetrical. The organization needs to adapt too: to make what it can sell, not sell what it can make.

    In the same vein I offer the following:

    Public relations negotiate relationships between an organization and its publics.

    It has the advantage – at least over CIPR's definition – of brevity. The word 'negotiate' (aside from being a plural verb) reflects a core PR skill, and makes clear that there is a mutuality to the relationships. It makes it clear what the words 'public' and 'relations' are both doing in the name of the discipline.

    So this is the definition I offer. Comments, please.

    *Full disclosure: this author is PRSA's International Delegate at Large.

    **Fuller disclosure: this author is a Fellow of CIPR, and a member of its Council.

  • Social media for cult brands: Manchester United

    By Quentin Langley

    Apparently some 660 million people worldwide have an allegiance to Manchester United. That is at least three times more than the Shia branch of Islam and around eight times more than the Anglican Communion, the largest Protestant denomination and double the number of Orthodox Christians. If football is a religion, Manchester United comes in as the third biggest brand in the world, after Roman Catholicism and Sunni Islam.

    Sports clubs are not the only cult brands – think Apple, or Harley-Davidson – but they are the grand masters of managing cult status. Sports fans are tribes – affiliated, usually from birth, as much by their hostilitly to a rival brand as by their love for the tribe.

    At one point, of course, sports teams drew their support from a locality. The big global brands are well beyond that, with Man U's tribe not only dwarfing the population of Manchester, but amounting to some ten times the population of the entire UK. 

    Social media are obvious weapons in the armoury of this reputation management. But presently the club is only beginning to exploit its assets. There are only 20 million fans signed up to the club's Facebook page.

    Once the network is fully operational, it will be very powerful. A football club is not like a cola brand. A 'like' is rather more meaningful. People are actually interested in the club and its news. A good Facebook page for Manchester United will be very 'sticky', keeping fans engaged on the page.

    The agency, SapieNitro, recently engaged to develop Man U's social media presence has taken on a dream account. If handled well, this is going to set new standards in social media management.

  • Berlusconi threatens the Euro’s survival

    By Quentin Langley

    I should begin with a confession. I used to be a supporter of Silvio Berlusconi, and was probably a little slow in realising that he was awful. The logic seemed clear. Italian politics, prior to Berlusconi's consolidation of conservative forces, had been wholly disfunctional. More than anything, Italy needed to confront corruption. To do this required someone who understood the nature of corruption, and this could only be eitehr a politician or a business leader. Politicians were trousering the money, and business was the victim of all this extortion. It seemed perfectly rational for Italians to turn to one of its most successful entrepreneurs to sort out the mess. However, it turned out that Berlusconi was not the man to do this.

    For one thing, Berlusconi does not seem to be motivated to deal with corruption. He doesn't seem to want it to stop. The main benefit he seems to have derived from being engaged in politics is immunity from prosecution. 

    Italy's financial situation is not as serious as that of Greece, but the government doesn't even seem to be trying to do anything about it. This has been the normal Italian approach to EU rules all along. Italy is a founder member of the European Communities and was traditionally very pro-Europe. Unfortunately, this generally manifested as Italy agreeing to any regulation that was proposed, but then not implementing it. This seems to be the Italian attitude to fiscal reform: agree, but do nothing.

    That Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel are openly laughing at the idea of taking Berlusconi's assurances seriously is a very bad sign. It means they do not believe that Italy will confront its problems, and suggests they do no take seriously their own assurances that the Euro can be saved in its current form.

    That Italian politics is dominated is dominated by a philandering grandfather, barely able to stay ahead of corruption allegations, with alleged links to the mafia who makes buffoonish remarks about other political leaders is a major branding issue for the country. It implies that every negative stereotype about Italians is true, at least in the case of the country's Prime Minister.

    This situation leaves little room for a credible plan to save the Euro.

  • Vlog for Brandjack News from #prsaicon 2011 in Orlando

  • Is this the last generation of politicians which will face gay rumours?

    By Quentin Langley

    Like William Hague, Liam Fox was single when he entered the House of Commons, and only married some years later. In the case of Fox he married at 44*, after being publicly seen in the company of some very glamorous women, including the singer-songwriter and actress, Natalie Imbruglia. The marriage was supposed to put to rest rumours that he was secretly gay and had used Imbruglia as cover. As William Hague was last year, Fox is now in trouble over allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a much younger man. In Fox's case the allegation is of business improprieties, and at the time of writing the full story is unknown. None of this stopped Labour Defence spokesperson, Kevan Jones, from accusing Fox of "living in denial". Hague had to put up with much less subtle commentary from Guido Fawkes.

    But such innuendo is only relevant because they are part of a generation in which some gay people have lived in denial. In the Liberal Democrat Party – which one might expect to be more open to gay people than either Labour or the Conservatives – David Laws chose to keep his private life private, and Simon Hughes actively denied being gay while contesting the party leadership. Hypocritically, Hughes added that he didn't think it would matter if he was.

    It is difficult to imagine that aspiring politicians presently in their 20s would choose to hide being gay. If so then straight politicians will probably not have to put up with the innuendo. The whole concept of being in the closet is likely to seem very dated, very soon.

     

    *Full disclosure, this blogger married at 41.

  • Howard Baker’s question lives on #foxhunting #foxgate

    By Quentin Langley

    What are the questions for Liam Fox?

    Patrick Hennessy suggests that one is has Adam Werritty "ever had access to any classified MoD information?" Okay, reasonable question, but we haven't any reason to suppose that he might have. What we do know that is Werritty has been claiming to be an advisor to Liam Fox and using the House of Commons portcullis on his business cards. This is not, of itself, something that Liam Fox has done wrong. It is something that Adam Werritty has done wrong. Which bring us to former Senator Howard Baker.

    Baker's question during the Watergate hearings was "what did the President know and when did he know it?" This is the question that Fox needs to answer. Did he know that Werritty was promoting his business as a lobbyist for the defence industry by claiming to be an advisor to the Defence Secretary? 

  • The Missing ‘D’ #huhne #chrishuhne #weinergate

    By Quentin Langley

    I have done it. Rep Weiner did it. Now it looks as though Chris Huhne has done it. 'It' is sending a message that was intended as a Twitter DM – direct message to one person only – as a public tweet. Rep Weiner's was a particularly embarrassing one: a link to a picture of him in his underpants. Naturally, the scandal became known as 'Weiner's wiener'.

    Chris Huhne's is not so immediately embarrassing:

    @ChrisHuhne: From someone else fine but I do not want my fingerprints on the story. C

    Politicians plant stories all the time, and often don't want their fingerprints on them. Perhaps the Energy and Climate Change Secretary wants to promote a story about carbon offsetting but doesn't want it to be seen as coming from the Nanny State. It seems more likely it is a hit on a rival. This could be career ending or something rather minor.

    If it is an attack on an opposition politician, it would probably only be career ending if the story he doesn't want his fingerprints on is deeply personal and known to be false. Obvious examples would be the false stories that Damian McBride concocted about the families of leading Conservatives in 2009.

    Huhne is an ambitious politician in a coalition cabinet. It is far from inconceivable that he is planning a nasty hit job on a cabinet or party colleague. That could be career ending even if the story is not as spiteful or as fabricated as McBride's efforts.

    Huhne is already in a bit of a jam, waiting for the conclusion of a police enquiry into allegations that he persuaded his then wife to (illegally) take some speeding points onto her licence instead of his. In these circumstances supporters might have been putting to a nasty story about his former wife.

    It will be interesting to see how this develops.