A Media Person's Musings

The Big Brother Fall-out Continues

Along with millions of people I watched the final Big Brother eviction night with my feet up on Sunday. I had been disgusted by the behaviour of some of the people in the house. Then horrified by some of the vox pop pieces done in the streets of London where people were actually agreeing with Jade and saying that she was well within her rights to behave that way. Then after Jade was evicted we watched as her publicity machine rolled her out onto countless daytime TV shows to cry in public and say she was disgusted in herself. Brilliantly media trained, she gave all her Big Brother earnings to charity.

But what concerns me is the completely over-the-top reaction of the general public who have been whipped up into a frenzy by the media and are now taking it out on the lesser celebrities who were featured on the show. Jade's 'gang' of Jo (a C-List pop singer) and Danielle (a former Miss England who had been stripped of her crown) had joined her in her bullying of Shilpa and had egged her on. But both girls were very much following the pack and watching their evictions was absolutely toe-curling as you saw the enormity of the consequences of their behaviour slowly dawn on them.

Now there are death threats! Jade has had to stay in a safe house. Jo was on morning television yesterday, also in hiding, and absolutely inconsolable and distraught. Danielle is also holed up somewhere, dumped unceremoniously by her footballer boyfriend and her 'career' (as it was) in tatters.

The most ironic thing is that now the public, stirred up into high dudgeon about such obvious bullying on our TV screens, is now bullying these girls. They were silly, mean, stupid and at some times just plain nasty. They were also extremely naive, swept away by the excitement of being one of the celebrities on Celebrity Big Brother. That doesn't mean they deserve death threats for God's sake. The media, that has created this climate has a responsibility to call this to a halt. I hope we see the editors of the red-tops do something about this before it goes too far. And I hope Channel 4 and Endemol take stock of how they have handled this whole debacle and think very carefully in future about what they do and do not screen.

Something nice and unusual happened today...

A colleague of mine took a call today that changed the way this office perceives a certain publication (which will remain nameless).

He had pitched a story in to the News Editor the week before and had been snapped at and told that if he had sent the press release then they would look at it and decide whether they wanted to pursue it.

Now we all know that a major part of our job is getting on the telephone and pitching a story. It is quicker for a journalist to hear a quick 'phoner' than to have to read a press release and calling is more effective than email pitching. BUT as we all know if journalists were to take all the calls they get from PROs then they wouldn't have any time to write. This is our spiky co-existence so my colleague, like all experienced PROs, is used to getting an occasionally cranky soul on the other end of the line so he just made a mental note of this journalists preferences and got on with the next call.

Today the same journalist phoned him up to apologise for being rude and to explain. He didn't have to and it was completely applauded in the office.It just goes to show that a few manners go a long way!

Dying for publicity?

The bones of the whale that took a wrong turn into the Thames and eventually died, after a televised plight, are now on display in the Natural History Museum. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6283695.stm

I am surprised that Lewis PR hasn't sponsored the exhibit - after they 'virtually' picked the bones clean before the poor thing was dead by claiming to have the first live blog on the creature's ill-fated progress and getting the company a lot of publicity on Sky News etc in the progress.

My question to you Lewis is this: What good did it really do you or your company to dine out on the suffering of an innocent creature? Granted - if you were just trying to get airplay you did well. But you came across to me (and a number of our contemporaries) as self-serving headline grabbers. Did you get any credibility, respect...business out of it? I'd like to know...

I, for one, want to get on with the job of publicising my clients and not myself.  If one of my clients had asked me if they should try to publicise themselves on the back of being able to view a dying whale out of their swanky office block then I would advise them to steer clear.

For the record I have oodles of respect for all of the staff at Lewis (one of the best agencies in the industry)… but I think their call on the whale was a wrong'un.

Big Brother - The saga continues....

So  how did everything pan out after the Celebrity Big Brother controversy? Well first of all Channel 4 put together a hasty and ill-advised press conference with a polo-shirted chief executive Andy Duncan refusing to accept any responsibilty for some pretty excruciating TV - which a lot of young and easily influenceable people would be watching. (Andy Duncan - you need some serious media training and you need to sack whatever numpty was advising you - you came across as ill-advised, disrespectful, defensive and arrogant). And I think the media agrees with me -

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/story/0,,1994094,00.html

Then came the inevitable feeding frenzy of tabloid criticism - Jade Goody was renamed Jade Baddy etc.etc. Politicians banded together and called on the general public not to watch the show and yes..unfortunately it did become an international talking point.

Even more excruciating was the next night's programme (after 23,000 complaints to Offcom) where it became clear that Endemol (the production company behind the show) had intervened off-camera and all of a sudden the nasty poisonous bullying atmosphere had totally gone and everyone was being more reasonable - unbelievably reasonable..and that led to quite a boring night's viewing. But Channel 4 and Endemol are sitting pretty aren't they? They have 1000s more phoning in to evict Jade and they are making 100s of £1000s in the phone revenues - nice score C4.

Now I am watching 'eviction night' when Jade and Shilpa are up against eachother and they have jointly come into the diary room (the house forum) all pretend and sweet and best of friends and just loving eachother. It is disgustingly staged and reeks of briefings from the station and the production company to 'keep the national peace'. Well done. I am sure that people who dont understand how propaganda works will now be happy that there was no racism or bullying and now think that it was just a little spat that was over-hyped.

Jade subsequently made a plea to leave and cried about 'being hated' when it became blindingly obvious that she was going to be kicked out. It stinks. She bleats about being scared and yet she was an abominable bully and a lot of people will think that she deserves all the flak she is going to get.

But is it all her fault? When she first went into the big brother house she was an ill-educated dental nurse who could barely speak English properly. She was exploited then and (fair play to her) she got herself paid well out of that exploitation. Now she is being exploited again because she is a 'common, uncouth bully' (not my words!).

Don't get me wrong - I have no sympathy for her - I actually admire her ability to get herself out of her bad situations by pleading the 'thick' card when really she is a lot more clever and manipulative than she comes across. The ones that have really benefitted out of this are:

• Channel 4 : Unprecedented viewing numbers and telephone revenues (only after they were publicly asked did they decide to donate some to charity).

• Carphone Warehouse: The sponsors who withdrew their sponsorship and got more media value and credibility than they ever would have done without this incident.

• India: The British love an underdog ..I  predict a rise in Shilpa's career, more interest in Bollywood and a huge appreciation of our Indian-origin communities.

The one big question is will Jade survive? I think she will because she represents a very naive part of our society who thought Shilpa was a 'stuck up bitch' because she was well educated and aloof. She was a bit 'stuck-up' actally but she didnt deserve the bullying she was subjected to. Jade's represents a part of our society is prejudiced, judgemental and unforgiving and I find that very sad. That is why Jade's media career will continue - fuelled by people who see her as the girl who came out of the slums and made good. Sadly in this instance, in my opinion she made bad - very bad.

A call-out to PR Week

Today I received my usual copy of PR Week. Before I even tear off the plastic cover the sigh comes...why oh why am I so uninspired by the trade title for my industry? Because I can predict that only big brands and big agencies will be covered in any detail and that it will just be a mish mash of new appointments (of a big-wig to a big agency or a big brand) or new client wins (of a big client by a big agency). All the also-rans, the little people, will be very lucky if they get a nib down the side of the page.

OK, so I run a small agency (although it is part of a much more significantly sized US firm) and naturally I am biased but I genuinely am interested in what other small agency owners and managers are doing. I want to learn about how they met and faced challenges. I really don’t see any value in long articles about why Cadbury's chose Big Agency A.

I also despair at the lack of content or reviews of the plethora of services that are out there for the PR industry. All PR Week can be bothered to do is run the odd feature on measurement or broadcast. I want to know who provides these services, how they have benefited clients and how much they cost so I can keep up to date with all the new developments.

Yesterday I wrote an opinion piece about how PR agencies are going to have to reinvent themselves with the rise of the power of the consumer as indicated by the rapid growth of social media. How on earth are we to be able to do this when our own trade paper refuses to acknowledge that we need to know what tools and services are out there to help us do our jobs better? PR week should take a leaf out of NMA's (New Media Age) book and really embrace everyone in the industry and not single out the powerful few.

Has reality TV gone too far?

The reality TV show ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ is so sensational in the UK this year that it has caused a major breakdown in international relations between the UK and India. A host of ‘stars' of stage and screen’ including well known Bollywoood actress Shilpa Shetty ,Jermaine Jackson, Dirk Benedict (A Team's 'Face') and other people more well known in the UK from pop bands and other reality TV shows have been locked in a house for 3 weeks.

One of these 'celebs' is a previous Big Brother contestant called Jade Goody who made a name for herself through her absolute lack of education and resulting various funny sayings including "Rio De Janeiro - that's the name of a footballer isn't it?" Unfortunately Jade's lack of education and intelligence has also led her to be exposed on this show as a bully, a bigot and as an alleged racist. Her bullying of Shilpa is unprecedented viewing on our TV screens every night.

In a strange twist the show brought Jade, her mum Jackiey (a one armed lesbian) and her toyboy boyfriend into the house and instructed all of the other contestants to be their servants and wait on them hand on foot. Her mother refused to even call Shilpa by her name saying that she didn't understand the language and referred to her as 'The Indian'.

This 'social experiment' has led to an unprecedented number of complaints, and effigies of Big Brother producers being burned in the streets in India where Shilpa is as revered as The Beckhams are here in the UK. It has even been the subject of discussion at Government level and it threatened to overshadow Gordon Brown’s week-long fact-finding mission to India by spilling over into today’s private meeting with PM Manmohan Singh. India’s trade minister Kamal Nath warned the Chancellor that the spat was damaging relations.

Now there are worries that the programme is causing not only a breakdown in international relations but also wider racial unrest. The climate is almost hysterical.

Why do people expose themselves in this way? Will this help or harm Jade's future ‘career’ as a professional celebrity? Only time will tell. What is not up for question is the extraordinary impact such programmes can have and that television producers need to think very carefully about the kind of content they decide to make public. As we see the increasing backlash we have to ask have the producers at Endemol gone too far this time with what they have allowed to be screened?