Winter woes for Briatore, F1 and Team Renault.

Flavio Briatore was once the face of the Renault F1 team, a multi millionaire sports mogul that had everything from the riches to the most beautiful women in the world draped on his arm. He has been the manager of two F1 teams and is the part of owner of Queens Park Rangers football team today. He was the manager of the Renault F1 team from 2000-2009. He had the lot and was known as a very successful business man in motor racing; his public image was of a very high order, until September of this year when he was forced to resign from the Renault F1 team due to his involvement in a race fixing scandal from the 2008 season’s Singapore Grand Prix. Where the story had surfaced, that he alongside, Renault chief engineer Pat Symonds “conspired with Nelson Piquet Jr to cause a deliberate crash at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix with the aim of causing the deployment of the safety car to the advantage of its other driver, Fernando Alonso“.

Briatore has been banned for life indefinitely from the motor sport by the IFA. Personally I feel the ban brought to Briatore is fair, in the sense that what he did was an atrocity to the sport and that others ever considering cheating should learn from this, much like other sports where cheating of any form of professional should not be accepted.

The reputation of the hero of motor racing has been damaged severely in the allegations that arose from the Nelson Piquet Jr crash, in which led to teammate Fernando Alonso winning the race. In the eyes of the public and the rest of the sporting world, he has been labelled a “cheat” and will never be seen in Formula 1 in the same light. As well as the reputation of Briatore being damaged dramatically, the reputation of Renault has taken a beating. Renault initially denied the case put against them but days later said they “would not contest the FIA’s recent allegations concerning the Singapore Grand Prix”.  Proving that something fishy was going on in the French team’s camp.

The reputation of Team Renault amongst the other F1 teams has been ‘shot down’. It will take an extremely strong PR strategy to get the team back to where it was; as one of the trusted F1 teams, that has been part of the sport for the past decade. A new change of vision and image of the team is needed in my view from here on, with a change of management, as well as new drivers being bought in, the next season may not be as bad as expected, depending on the outcome of the IFA investigation to come…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8258987.stm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1213910/Flavio-Briatore-sensationally-quits-Formula-One-race-fixing-scandal.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/sep/22/flavio-briatore-f1-ban

PR in Football, and the Hush from Premiership Managers to the BBC

Public relations within football is a rudimentary part of keeping the celebrity status sports millionaires in touch with the rest of the world, whether it be press conferences, post match interviews or shirt signing days at clubs. It keeps fans of the beloved game up to date on the personal views and feelings of the games managers, players and even the big men upstairs in the boardrooms. It’s a way of communicating with some of the most loyal fans of sport, in the world, for some people football is not just a sport, or ‘their team’ to them, but a religion that they live by; through thick and thin. PR is hugely important to the fans that live their lives by the game, it is their link to the team they love, gaining access to information aplenty, that they would not be able to gain if it wasn’t for a clubs PR capabilities.

Most clubs will give out a lot of their information via interviews, press conferences and releases, usually directly from the managers and top players in most instances, there are a few exceptions however. One high profile manager that will not speak to a large media outlet; is Alex Ferguson of course. Fergie will not speak to the BBC and was furious for some time after a BBC documentary from 2004, titled ‘Father and Son’, which portrayed his agent son, Jason, as somebody who exploited his father’s influence and position within the game. The documentary portrayed Ferguson junior in the ‘wrong light’ and still to this day will not speak to the BBC, the legendary Scottish manager labelled the BBC; “arrogant beyond belief” and that has an “inability to apologise”, these remarks came from back in 2007, but still today he will not be seen talking to the BBC post match, his assistant will always be the one talking.

Ferguson is not the only manager in the game that refuses to communicate with the British media magnate. Blackburn’s Sam Allardyce and Spurs’ Harry Redknapp both, at one stage declined to talk with the broadcaster, following allegations made about them in a Panorama programme into “alleged malpractice in football transfers”. Personally I feel they have taken their stance the ‘Beeb’ but for the good of the supporters who look up to them so much, should break their silence and stop being so petty… Although Redknapp has been seen on MOTD once recently speaking, after the Spurs V Sunderland match.

New rules passed last month in November by the Premier League though; will force all three managers to once again speak to the BBC in post match interviews, as well as interviews with BBC Radio Five Live. The new rules to be brought in next season, could also force Fergie to give interviews to the written press, as he is still today the only manager in the Premiership who refuses to talk with journo’s…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/05_may/25/fergie_son.shtml

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/ferguson-will-never-talk-to-the-bbc-again-401487.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/manutd/6570541/Sir-Alex-Ferguson-will-be-forced-to-speak-to-the-BBC-under-new-Premier-League-rules.html

Millions ‘Demand’ the Paranormal Horrors of the Handheld Cam.

After last night, I finally got round to viewing this year’s most over hyped film, Paranormal Activity.  With media hype surrounding the film since the studio distributing the movie, Paramount pictures; used the buzz of social media to spring board the film to success, making millions out a film, thus far; that cost peanuts to create. Much like the 1999 hit horror film; The Blairwitch Project, which also relied on the pre hype of the film to gain huge gross earnings, both films cost next to nothing, in terms of production, with The Blairwitch costing a meagre $60,000. With Paranormal Activity working on a budget of a mere $15,000, for the entire production of the film, the film was quite in line to make a pot load o’ gold if it were publicized well enough. Steven Spielberg’s comment on the film being the “Scariest film” he had even seen, whether or not this was a stunt it helped to the films cause of becoming a box office hit.

Although the film was actually filmed back in 2006, as well as being shown in a minimal amount of cinemas and theatres across America, it has only come to the big screen worldwide in 2009. This has only been made possible thanks to Paramount creating a buzz around that caused over 1,000,000 people to vote and ‘Demand’ the film to be shown in their town or city stateside. Paramount got what they wanted and people were going wild for it, the film had a number of things going for it; the Trailer released, was a screen shot of an audience at a cinema being truly terrified by the film. Similar as to how 2008’s ‘Cloverfield’ used their trailer of having the statue of liberty’s head sliced off into the middle of the streets of Manhattan to draw in audiences and entice them into wanting to watch the film. Being tricked into watching a film that seemed unwatchable and couldn’t be missed, create a hysteria sense of lust to see the forbidden fruit’s of the films.

http://eventful.com/performers/paranormal-activity-/P0-001-000212499-6/competitions

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/25/paranormal-activity-box-office-profit

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/12/paranormal.activity.movie/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UxLEqd074

Rapid Growth of the Micro Blogging Blue Bird

Love it or hate it; Twitter is one of the social network rudiments of the modern world we live in today. It’s gradually growing in popularity as Facebook and MySpace did; it’s becoming a necessity in the new media culture of social networking. On brands websites where you see external links to their Facebook page, below, or in some instances above, we expect to see Twitter page links. The micro blogging social phenomenon had a suggested 6 Million users back earlier on in the year, with the amount surely grown rapidly. Could the new style of social networking ever reach the 350 million users that Facebook proudly boasts? A whole host of mainstream celebrities use the site to post ‘Tweets’ including, Barack Obama, Britney Spears as well as the ever popular Stephen Fry.

Twitter is used not just by the many celebrities and business entrepreneurs, but UK political parties as well; all three of the leading parties, Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat’s boast a Twitter page. Back in August of this year, Labour MP for Bristol east, Kerry McCarthy, was appointed the parties new media campaign spokeswoman, ahead of an election for the newly formed chair in the party next year. “A recent study for a newspaper voted McCarthy the most “influential MP” on Twitter” McCarthy, now in December 2009; boasts over 4,000 ‘followers’. Twitter is used by the political parties to communicate with its supporters, sharing information on news, events, fund raisers and other important goings on. The parties are benefiting from Twitters public relations skills and of course; it’s free and easy publicity. It doesn’t cost the party a penny to publicize their news to its supporters and of course can be an easy way to attract new younger audiences to their policies.

Another major episode in the life of Twitter so far, was the consolidation of The Guardian, from its print form that it has taken for the past whopping 188 years, back in April the broadsheet newspaper “became the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter”. It saw all Guardian content shrunk down to fit the format of Twitters concise text messages of a minute 140 characters. The revolutionary change has seen the Guardian able to “harness the unprecedented newsgathering power of the service”, the power that it could not possibly possess in the original print form.

Twitter has a large number of positives going for it, and its rapid growth has been showing over 2009, what will the start to the next decade bring for the social micro blogging phenomenon? Only time will tell, comments welcome…

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007059

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/16/labour-appoints-twitter-tsar

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/01/guardian-twitter-media-technology

http://twitter.com/kerrymp

Not so much the Big Cat in the Jungle anymore, for Wood’s.

Over the last week a number of huge changes have occurred in the life of arguably the world’s best golfer; Tiger Woods has been dropped by two of his major sponsors; ‘Gillette’ and ‘Accenture PLC’, respectively. The most recent drop from his sponsors came from Accenture PLC, today, with the organisation stating that the golf hero is “no longer the right representative”. The organisation read in a statement on their website; “Accenture and Tiger Woods have had a very successful sponsorship arrangement and his achievements on the golf course have been a powerful metaphor for business success in Accenture’s advertising”. Numerous stories of Woods private life frolics have surfaced, with numerous affairs with women being dug up throughout the media over the last two weeks, since he crashed his car into a tree, outside his house at 3.00am after a heated argument with his wife.

Woods has not been entirely dropped by ‘Gillette’ yet but has been distanced from the company dramatically, with Woods being “phased out” of all Television and Print advertising. With two of his major big money sponsors leaving his side, it remains to be seen if any of his other sponsors will decide to do part with their once squeaky clean face of their company advertising. ‘Nike’ have come out and said that they will stand by him and support him through this time in his life, along with ‘Tag Heuer’ watches; who have said that their sponsorship relationship will continue. But should both companies stick by a liar and a cheat, as one of the leading iconic faces of their brand, could this cost them money, time will soon tell over the next few years, another question to face is where will Wood’s career go from here after his attempted rekindling of his marriage..

With Woods having been the first professional sports star to earn over $1 billion (£600m) The world’s leading financially successful sports star, has had his previous clean image destroyed by the numerous revelations that have marred his reputation over the last two weeks.  His public image is in tatters and with Woods admitting his “infidelities” and announcing he is taking an “indefinite leave from the sport” to save his marriage, or what he has left of it.

The question is where will his career go from here financially, will anyone support the former trusted face of golf, has he done too much wrong to turn back the clock on what has happened, or in all honesty what he has done.  My personal feelings are that the man was at the height of his career, a man who had everything going for him, the lifestyle, the money, the success, he was a man who had an appearance to keep up, for young golfers who look up to him, young business entrepreneurs who respect his financial mind. He has thrown that away thanks to not being able to keep his ‘club’ in his pants, he jeopardised his family, his livelihood and of course my main point of this blog; his public image, the man should be ashamed, he had everything, and with the amount of shocking stories surfacing in the last fortnight, he doesn’t deserve any of what he had.

http://newsroom.accenture.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=4915

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8411091.stm

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/news?slug=ap-tigerwoods-accenture&prov=ap&type=lgns

http://web.tigerwoods.com/sponsors/sponsors

Raging against the X factor, the Public Phenomenon

This week has seen over 700,000 social network users of the hugely popular Facebook site, join forces in an online campaign for getting ‘Rage against the Machine’s’ – Killing In The Name’ to become the UK Christmas Number One, going up against the X Factor winners song. For the past four years the UKs Christmas number one spot has been occupied by an X factor winner, a group designed to put an end to the cycle of the UK’s publicity machine whirling its way to a record breaking fifth consecutive number one. The fact that the public are coming together, to act against this repeating annoyance of a ‘granny loved’ pop star being played on our airways, over the festive season. The fact that that many people would rather have a song overridden with explicit language anti nostalgia, beat one of the UK’s X factor winner is music to my ears, pardon the palpable pun.

Humorously Simon Cowell has said that the group is ‘cynical’ and ‘stupid’. Well I say screw him and his music machine, bring on the call for overdue change. If the campaign does turn out to be a success then it will certainly highlight the overwhelming power of a social network, showing together of the human race and British public. What would be nice would be that it all goes to plan and the downfall of the X factor begins, getting rid of its annoying and futile glitz. I personally have joined the group; I think the group is a fascinating idea and something new and exciting. I joined it along with many other people, in hope that the X factor will not gain its successive record.

But I personally will not be buying the track again, due to A; already owning the track and B; don’t feel strong enough that the campaign will be a success, I hope to be proved wrong though and show the power of social network in this day and age. Could this be the feeling of many others that are backing the campaign? It will be interesting though to see if the public that have joined the campaign will be putting their money where their mouth is and buying the track or just raising a flag in support of the campaign, we will have to wait and see there though…

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