Richards How to Be a Spin Doctor

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78590-077-8
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten

Spin doctors are seldom out of the news for long. But who really understands what 'spin' is, or what spin doctors do? The media has moved on from a world where press officers carried piles of newspapers to the office each morning, when Twitter was what birds did and mobile phones were the size of bread loaves. Thank goodness Paul Richards is here to explain spin doctoring in a digital world. Essential reading for anyone who wants a career in communications or is intrigued by what keeps the cogs turning behind Parliament, How to Be a Spin Doctor covers all the essential skills, such as: Snagging positive media coverage Creating eye-catching news releases and photo opportunities Avoiding the endless traps set by journalists Paul Richards challenges the increasingly negative connotations of spin, arguing that it is neither a dishonourable practice nor a new one; it's simply the most practical way to convey information or make a point. The truth of the matter is that the spin doctor's trade secrets can be useful to anyone trying to promote a company, client or cause: to protect reputations, get messages across and win public support. So it's time to start reading and get spinning.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Richards, Paul

Leseproben

Chapter Two

Why Bother?

A good reputation is more valuable than money.

—PUBLIUS SYRUS (FIRST CENTURY BC)

WHY SHOULD ANYONE bother? Hasn’t all this obsession with style, spin and packaging gone too far? If the product you’re selling is decent, or the message you’re telling is authentic, surely people will take you at face value? Isn’t there a thirst for keeping it real? For that most attractive of all attributes, authenticity? Aren’t people intelligent enough to make up their own minds, without a coat of varnish and a load of old blather?

Nope.

YOUR REPUTATION MATTERS

Your reputation matters. It shapes how others perceive you, whether they want to do business with you, or give you their money, or vote for you, or work for you. It determines whether they’ll give you the benefit of the doubt if you do something stupid, and whether they believe you if you say you’re sorry. It’s a valuable asset, and it needs polishing and looking after. You can’t control your reputation, only influence it by what you do and say. On one level, it shouldn’t matter what people say about you, if you are psychologically robust and feel comfortable in your own skin. On another level, it matters a great deal because it determines your social, financial and professional success.

Spin doctors are employed to shape reputations – of individuals and institutions. They do this by understanding public sentiment and by being plugged into the popular mood. They know how information will be received by journalists, and then by the public, and how it shapes their clients’ reputations. They have faith in the public’s good sense, and that people can sniff out a fake or a phoney.

No amount of spin can save you if your reputation crashes and burns. Even the mighty Coca-Cola came a cropper when it tried to introduce Dasani bottled water into the UK market. Dasani is a successful brand in many countries. It is purified water, with some minerals added. But it comes from the tap. When Coke started bottling up tap water and selling it to British consumers for a pound a bottle they might have assumed all would be well. However, The Grocer magazine broke the news that the water had not trickled from an Alpine stream but poured from a tap, and soon the rest of the media joined in the outrage. It wasn’t helped by an episode of Only Fools and Horses, which had shown Del Boy and Rodney flogging ‘Peckham Spring’ water which they’d got from Thames Water. Five weeks after the launch, Dasani disappeared from the shelves, its reputation sunk forever.

If we’re operating in the commercial world, reputation is everything. The growth in online review websites means reputations can be made and broken with the tap of a keyboard. Sites such as TripAdvisor shape the reputations of restaurants, hotels and even whole cities. They change not only the way we think, but the way we behave. It’s a strong-minded person who will knowingly book into a hotel with a string of stinking online reviews.

HOW TO EARN A GOOD REPUTATION

A good reputation is like a reservoir of water, built up over time with every drop of rain. Each transaction you or your organisation undertake, every time you delight someone, rescue a situation or go the extra mile, you add to your store of reputation. To extend the reservoir metaphor, if the water level is high, then if the dam is breached there’s enough water left. If the water level is low to start with, the reservoir runs dry. If something goes wrong, your reputation will hang in the balance. If you’ve protected and nurtured your reputation over the years, people will give you the benefit of the doubt – depending, of course, on the severity of the transgression!

Very few people, with the possible exception of military or sporting heroes, build a reputation on a single act. Most of us build a reputation on the thousand and one things we do well. The same is true of institutions, organisations and companies: every email replied to, every phone call taken, every apology and every ounce of empathy will add to the store of your good reputation.

Reputation is something which needs to be refreshed and replenished. You can’t rely on past glories. In most businesses you’re only as good as your last review.

There’s a story attributed to the American politician Alben William Barkley (1877–1956). Barkley, standing for some office or other, encountered a once-loyal voter who claimed he was contemplating voting for the other candidate.

Barkley reminded him of the many things he had done for him as prosecuting attorney, as county judge, as congressman and as senator.

He recalled how he had helped get an access road built to his farm, how he had visited him in a military hospital in France when he was wounded in the First World War, how he had assisted him in securing his veteran’s benefits, how he had arranged his loan from the Farm Credit Administration, how he had got him a disaster loan when a flood destroyed his home.

‘How can you think of voting for my opponent?’ he exhorted at the end of this long recital. ‘Surely you remember all these things I have done for you?’

‘Yeah,’ said the voter, ‘I remember. But what in hell have you done for me lately?’

A spin doctor knows a reputation must be constantly nourished with new stories and pictures. You can’t rest on your laurels. The public will justifiably ask what have you done for me lately?

HOW TO DESERVE A BAD REPUTATION

There are numerous ways to gain a bad reputation. You can do lots of things badly over time, or one big thing badly all at once. You can be Fawlty Towers, dismaying and disappointing your customers with random acts of incompetence, or you can be BP in the Gulf of Mexico, spilling 4.2 million barrels of oil into the sea, and ending up paying out £12 billion in fines.

Often it is the actions of the leaders in a crisis which determine how the organisation is perceived. Leaders become lightning rods. Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, became the most hated man in America following the oil spill. People weren’t happy with all the oil, but they were even less pleased with the gaffes that followed, such as his claim that the spill was ‘relatively tiny’ compared with the ‘very big ocean’, his remark in an interview that ‘I’d like my life back’ and the fact that he took a day off to go sailing in the middle of the crisis.

During floods in the UK in 2015, the head of the Environment Agency, Sir Philip Dilley, decided to mastermind the response from home, which unfortunately happened to be in Barbados. He ended up resigning. His departure is a great example of the power of perception. To my knowledge, they have phones and Wi-Fi in Barbados. Sir Philip, as part-time chair of the agency, was not expected to turn up to flood-stricken parts of Yorkshire and start diverting rivers. Whatever his role, he could do it from Barbados as easily as Todmorden. But he failed the basic test of public opinion, as any good spin doctor could have warned him.

THE GRANDDADDY OF THEM ALL: DOING A RATNER

The case of Gerald Ratner stands out in the annals of communications cock-ups. It is cited so often for two reasons. First, the reputation-destroying act itself was over in a matter of seconds, and entirely avoidable. Second, the impact was thermo-nuclear, leaving nothing standing in its wake.

The story runs like this. Gerald Ratner was an incredibly successful businessman who started life as a market trader in Petticoat Lane. He built a chain of high-street jewellery shops, using a range of discounts, vouchers and high-powered sales and marketing techniques.

Ratner described his business as making jewellery accessible to the masses, in same way as eating out, or discount long-distance flights had become. When the 42-year-old Ratner stood up to address the annual convention of the Institute of Directors (IoD) in 1991 at the Royal Albert Hall, he was a business leader at the top of his game. He wore a smart dark suit, light striped shirt, and dark grey tie.

He told his story with confidence and humour. His business controlled 34 per cent of the jewellery market, with over 1,000 shops in the UK and 1,000 in the US. The day before his speech, Ratner Group had announced, in the depths of recession, a profit of £120 million. His shops made more money per square foot than any other shops in Europe.

The famous line in the speech concerned one of his best-selling items, a sherry decanter, tray and glasses which retailed at £4.95. Even back in 1991, that wasn’t much money. In a rhetorical flourish, Ratner asked how he could make such profits on goods that cost so little. He answered himself with the line: because it’s ‘total crap’. As his audience laughed and applauded him, he added by way of codicil, ‘There’s no point beating around the bush.’

Total crap.

Never have two words had such a calamitous impact on a business.

The tabloid newspapers leapt on his remarks and asked his customers what they thought. The response was instant. And consider that this was in the analogue days when a news story had a day-long cycle. £500 million was wiped off the value of the company within days. The company was the same company, with the same premises, staff, goods and leadership. Yet the collapse of its reputation meant it was worth £500 million less.

Sales dropped. Profits slumped. Today, there are no Ratners on the high street. They have vanished like the shine...