A Media Person's Musings

Silver Skies

I am writing from my US office having travelled over here at the weekend for the week. We have a significant new global pitch and also a strategic offsite meeting so I had a lot to prepare for the trip. Coincidentally I had been contacted by SilverJet (having filled in one of their online surveys in the hope of winning a free flight). I didn't win a flight but I did get a special offer. So when I was planning this trip I figured I would give them a try. Silver Jet is an 'all business class' airline. Customers pay a premium but the costs are no way near as much as First Class and the overall package is better than Premium Economy package from the other airlines

Normally I fly Virgin - I am a fiercely loyal Virgin customer and I really like how I can use my loyalty points with them. As I fly so often I am usually able to get Premium Economy flights for Economy fares. On this occasion the Premium Economy ticket was the same cost as the Silver Jet ticket so after some considerable humming and awwing about missing out on my precious Virgin miles I opted for Silver Jet.

What I fail to mention is that I am not a very good flyer...in fact every time before I fly there is usually a major air disaster. This time my trip was prefaced by the air crash in Phuket. So I wasn't over pleased to see the remodelled old jet that we were to fly in!

Overall I had a really good experience. The airline lounge was the big winner for me. I like to work at airports and get really frustrated about finding a hotspot near a power socket in crowds of tourists. The Silver Jet lounge was nice and the staff couldn't have been more friendly. The wireless access was also free.

The flight was great. I worked and then slept so that I could be ready for my 'appointment' with my colleague that night (more on that later). The inflight entertainment was fine and I was working so that didn't really matter. However the food sucked! And that did matter! The only other real drawback was that because the airline had its own private lounge and also its own departure gate I didn't get to do any duty free shopping. That really really mattered ;-).

Overall though, the lack of stress coupled with excellent service made it really make sense for business travellers and I would definitely fly Silver Jet again.

McCann Media Dilemma

Yesterday I was interviewed by a Finnish newspaper about the PR machine that is behind the campaign to find Madeleine McCann, the toddler who was abducted in May from her holiday villa in Portugal. Immediately it was front page news and since that time her parents and their helpers have managed to keep her disappearance at the top of the news agenda. They have managed to raise millions for a marketing fund and they have met with world leaders and even the Pope. I have been totally impressed and frankly stunned with the speed and efficiency of this campaign. Children all over the world go missing every day and yet the McCanns have managed to create a news story that just runs and runs. It is impressively slick, there has been no Madeleine 'fatigue' and the McCanns have been totally 'on message'.

The campaign also provided them with a great buffer when they were named as suspects by the Portuguese police and all of a sudden there was a smidgen of doubt about their claims of innocence. However, they had been so accessible, so media friendly, that the media didn't turn on them as badly as they could. The media had been on their side from day 1 and I wrote on this blog that they were lucky that they hadn't been villified for leaving 3 kids under four alone in the first place.

How have they managed to achieve all this? Well as it turns out they have had a media machine behind then from the start. And, maybe it is all a bit too much as now I can detect a slight turn against the McCanns as the campaign seems to have become all about them. A couple of days ago they appointed a new spokesperson (ex BBC man Clarence Mitchell). Today Max Clifford ('PR GURU' - NOT) backed this move saying they had to do it to protect their reputations. I am not so sure. PR also involves deciding if the timing is right. I think in this case they run the risk of turning the public against them. At the very least this 'Mousetrap of a media production" (as Ian Monk refers to it as in PR Week) runs the risk of a few eyebrows being raised and at worse of distracting people from its original purpose - that of finding Madeleine.