Borkowski Weekly Media Trends
Revisionist approach undergoes stern Turing Test
The Bank of England have unveiled a new 50 pound note featuring Alan Turing. ‘I guess it’s a nice thing,’ said a friend of the Trends newsletter, a gay man whose equivocal response captures a larger worry within the queer community about the dangers of historical revision.
Long before he was a national treasure, Turing—a mathematician and code breaker who contributed his skills to the war effort during the Second World War—was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 and sentenced to imprisonment or probation dependent on chemical castration. He was convinced by his family to accept the latter.
Conversion therapy—such as that which led Alan Turing to suicide—remains legal in the UK. Many of the hard-won gains of gay men and lesbians are new and continue to feel fragile despite these tokens of recognition. (Adoption by same-sex couples, for example, was only just legalized only here in 2002.)
There is a hesitation on the part of the gay community about becoming the poster boys for the very national institutions that, until so recently, subjected them to torture. In a time when gay men and women are increasingly becoming poster boys for capitalism tout court, it’s easy to understand the worries over the new (literal) pink dollar.
A Good French Protest is Publicity Manifest
Befitting a nation founded on mass dissent, France has protest in its DNA. From the revolution(s) to May ’68, their protests are infamously frequent, visible and effective.
It should go without saying that there is nothing to be admired about this practice when it involves violence, and this has invalidated some of the initially powerful symbolism of the gilets jaunes movement. But, when peaceful, the French have turned protest publicity into a form of performance art.
The key to publicising activism is powerfully symbolic visual storytelling or, to strip away the comms-speak for a second, a cracking image or stunt that makes it obvious what the protest is about.
A stirring example this week was when French farmers arguing for higher prices for their produce drove tractors up to government buildings to dump manure on them.
It’s simple but potent; you know who they are, you know what they want, you understand their strength of feeling about it and you know who the enemy is: ‘We’re here, we’re French, we’re making quite a stench’.
Other examples in recent months include Greenpeace protestors painting an Air France plane green and Paris Opera ballerinas protesting pension reform with a street performance of Swan Lake.
Both are ingenious in their scale, aesthetic sensibilities, symbolism and, above all, simplicity. This is what we’re demanding airlines do, this is what’s threatened by this new legislation. Done well and peacefully, a French protest is publicity in its purest form.
Jack Dorsey and the Revenge of the Rockstar Nerds
This week some of the biggest names in tech appeared before the House as lawmakers blasted tech giants on disinformation and extremism. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey stood out for his proverbial ‘f*ck you’ to the congressional committee. Feverishly tweeting during the hearing because he felt forced to answer complex questions with a simple yes or no, Dorsey mocked proceedings by tweeting a question mark “?” with a yes or no poll, which didn’t go unnoticed by his inquisitors.
Who would’ve thought our modern-day rock star rebels would be high-powered nerds with a smartphone?
He’s no Jagger, but the likes Dorsey and Elon Musk, high on their exclusive access to the futuristic world of NFTs etc, are always pushing the boundaries on what we consider cool. This week, Dorsey sold his first ever tweet for $2.9m – writing himself into NFT history before donating the money to charity.
So what’s next for the CEO-nerd-as-rockstar approach to comms? As we near peak NFT hype, the real question is which high-profile maverick is going to be the first to NFT themself, which would, to be fair, be pretty maverick.
Cocaine: Where do we draw the line?
What’s the worst thing you regularly do? Boris Johnson suspects that its casual cocaine use, and he wants stamp it out with a big PR campaign. The goal is to make people aware of the ravages of the cocaine trade and to make cocaine use as socially unacceptable as drink driving.
But why? Look at it through the lens of the culture wars, and the proposal makes sense. Some months ago we said the following about a similar proposal by Shaun Bailey:
“The Conservatives want to expose the hypocrisy of the middle-class Guardianista, who is happy to talk at rapid and stimulated speeds about their moral purity as they directly finance Mexican drug gangs.”
Bingo. According to the Times, the proposal has delighted police officers, who criticise the hypocrisy of middle-class drug users who act all high-and-mighty about environmental and social issues, but ignore the repercussions of using cannabis and cocaine. Though this policy might do some good, it’s hard to see it as something other than a cynical attempt to establish moral high ground in the war on woke. The lover’s quarrel continues.
Borkowski Weekly Media Trends
This week the boss wrote about Piers Morgan, the man who has perfected the art of getting fired. Read it over on his half of the Substack to find out Mark’s reasons why Piers is in a better position post-Good Morning Britain than ever before.
Coincidentally, the Marmite man himself loves our Substack, and so should you. (Subscribe 😎)
Here are the trends we’ve been following this week:
BBC tells London ‘Thank U Next’
It’s being described as the BBC’s biggest transformation in decades. No, the BBC aren’t turning their whole operation into one massive NFT… they are however, supposedly, relocating thousands of jobs outside of London for “real national service” according to BBC chief Tim Davie, the mastermind behind this move.
Where to start? As Trends regulars know, we are quick to criticise the BBC’s comms tactics and this time is no different sadly. Whilst the rationale behind the move makes sense, it’s caused an uproar from within the organisation—staff aren’t happy with the abruptness of the decision.
Tim Davie is currently facing US tech giants dominating our attention, a licence fee debate threatening to dismantle the whole operation and trying to hit an £80m savings target by 2022. His response? Transition the BBC from its metropolitan roots to different parts of the country, permanently. In this new age of agile working, this feels like a knee-jerk reaction to various factors plaguing the BBC. Instead of meticulously planning this move, it would appear—according to staffers having to relocate—the timing is a bit of a shambles.
Our attention has now shifted on whether significant BBC staff will fall in line. If some of the bigger names refuse to move, it will threaten the integrity of the whole operation. It has been confirmed that Alan Davey (Radio 3 controller) will not be relocating, despite the station’s shift to Salford. Tim Davie himself will maintain his London residency, leaving a sour taste in the mouth for those moving as far afield as Glasgow.
Is pranking your customers the new publicity stunt?
On the 5th March, at about 11am, the phones of thousands of young women around the UK erupted with Whatsapp alerts: ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THE GLOSSIER GLITCH’.
I, one humble Trends writer, was swept up in the frenzy. Within minutes, several friends had messaged me to tell me there was an error on the website of Glossier – a cult beauty brand than can, in part, be credited with the dominance of Millennial Pink 5 years ago – that was allowing shoppers to use a code that would get them 50% off. Moments after that and my housemates and I had coordinated a mass order.
After two hours and a tidal wave of orders, the glitch was ‘fixed’. It was only then that the mist faded and customers released that the glitch might have been a very simple, and completely genius, stunt. Glossier, after all, found fame after tapping into the mood of the moment. It knows its audience; it knew that a Friday in March was the perfect day to target legions of customers daydreaming about the end of lockdown and their need for a Spring ‘glow up’. ‘Leaking’ such a code relied heavily on the ultra-fast spread of information. But knowing how glued to their phones their customers are, it wasn’t much of a gamble.
As someone who was fooled by the prank, I can say how well it worked. The excitement of it was fun enough that I’m not in the least annoyed to think it was a stunt. Instead, I doth my cap to a brand whose relevance had been dwindling for the past year. Meanwhile, my interest in their products is refreshed by the new haul I own.
Testament to its success, two weeks later and the format has been mimicked by Netflix, who has released ‘secret codes’ for users to access ‘hidden series and films’. Whilst it doesn’t have the same urgency as Glossier’s ‘FREE STUFF NOW’ move, it appeals to the same desire of internet-obsessed consumers to find, spread and share information. This is a trend in stunt-pulling that might be here to stay.
Uber’s back-up may cause severe reputational tire damage
In other news, Uber has agreed to pay its drivers national living wage and holiday pay, having previously argued that they were not obliged to do so on the basis that their drivers were self-employed contractors, an assertion rejected by the Supreme Court.
On one hand, the story has become a cause celebre for workers’ rights activists and left-of-centre commentators who perceive a powerful company to be using loopholes to avoid meeting the basic standards of the labour market. On the more pro-market, right-of-centre side, Uber is seen as a dynamic, modernising force, and an enemy of red tape and the hated Unions.
Uber’s strategy today has been to pretend that only the latter side exists, or at least (beyond a cursory nod to their critics) talk exclusively to that audience and spin the notion that they have proactively and progressively ‘turned the page for drivers’ rights’ while—though publicly denying this is the case—appearing to brief that their customers will be footing the bill via fare hikes, as was the case under similar circumstances in California.
This strategy has curried them some favour in the media. The Evening Standard drank of the Kool-Aid to allow Uber’s CEO an unvarnished thousand-word pat-in-the-back (under the thin guise of an op-ed) and some (but not all) commentators in right-leaning titles have used the case as a stick with which to beat their enemies (the Unions and lefties) without exactly garnishing the taxi provider with praise.
These are limited returns, though and fail to take into account two key tenets of crisis communications: firstly, tailor your message to your audience; secondly, nullify your critics by talking to them directly and with respect. Uber has done little to dissuade its opponents that this was anything other than a humiliating legal defeat and climbdown. Even with the Guardian celebrating this as a nail in the coffin of the Gig Economy, the fact remains that some campaigners saw today’s measures as insufficient and, as the FT pointed out, that Uber has always consistently struggled for profitability despite its monstrous market valuation. Uber is vulnerable, and its failure to appease its critics, or at least to demonstrate enough self-assurance and security not to try to spin their way out of this, has done little to dampen the scent of blood on its enemies’ nostrils.
Borkowski Weekly Media Trends
International Women’s Day came on a bad week to be a Woman
It has been a horrible week to be female. Our social media feeds and newspaper headlines had barely paused their attacks on a young woman who dared to speak her truth in order to spout some #InternationalWomensDay platitudes, when a story broke that resonated with every every womxn in the country. Today police have confirmed that the remains of Sarah Everard, the young woman missing from South London, have been found.
It is a tragic, unbearable story. We have all been Sarah at one point. Every woman has walked back late at night, keys clutched between our knuckles, changing our route to make sure we’re not followed, telling ourselves we’re being paranoid. And yet the media narrative and public discourse still insists on focusing on what we, as women, should do to stop men from acting in this way.
To change this rhetoric, we first need to reform our attitudes, our culture, and instead of asking what women should do to make themselves safer, ask what men need to do to stop themselves attacking and intimidating women. As always new and traditional media tell two different stories here.
A popular Twitter thread started by a Clapham local, Stuart Edwards, sought advice on what men can do to help. It received thousands of responses and kickstarted a conversation across the UK, one that in many households was probably happening for the very first time.
THIS is how we change the rhetoric – switching the onus onto men rather than stating that too many women are being attacked without stating who is responsible.
Multiple major media outlets’ response? Hysterical stories misleadingly claiming that men are being threatened with a 6pm curfew. There’s a long way to go until the default is a national newspaper headline reads ‘too many men are attacking women’.
Burger King’s Reverse Trolling Flops
On International Women’s Day, Burger King seems to have taken their luck with risky PR too far. Burger King tweeted ‘Women belong in the kitchen’, with additional copy below announcing that was why they were starting a scholarship program designed to help women follow their culinary dreams. Despite the progressive ambitions of the programme, and their intention of pointing out that only 20% of chefs are women, the stunt fell flat. Some saw it as ‘reverse trolling’, while others saw it as a gratuitous shock tactic, especially inappropriate to the spirit the day.
KFC quickly called on them to delete the tweet, and subsequently Burger King did so with the now de rigueur note of apology ‘we promise to do better’. This flop points out the weakness of the adage that ‘anything that gets your attention and makes you think about a brand for more than 2 seconds is a success’. It also a reminder that content that works on one channel won’t always work on another. In this case, Burger King ran a banner ad in the New York Times which, because of the layout, reads much better than the clickbait version on Twitter.
On Twitter, the grabby headline is isolated from the rest of the copy. They might have assumed that they could ‘generate clickthrough’ by generating outrage, but it was precisely the bad faith with which they took advantage of a sexist trope that made it offensive to many. A good lesson for our profession: PR teams need to tailor content to be channel-specific rather than developing an idea for one format and copy-pasting it into another.
Meanwhile, the IDF celebrated international women’s day with some reverse trolling of their own.
Society of Editors failings exposed by Harry & Meghan Response
The consensus among commentators is that the UK press was the primary target of the artist formerly known as Prince Harry’s invective during the Oprah interview; his family’s principal crime was their failure to protect his wife from what he depicted as an (almost literally) murderous cabal.
This narrative raised valid questions about race as a motivation for the British press’ vendetta against Meghan Markle. Moreover, with even her Maj’s people signalling that they are taking accusations of institutional racism in the interview seriously, one might have expected an earnest response from the media’s governing bodies.
The Society of Editors went in another direction, issuing a particularly dismissive…dismissal of suggestions that the organisations they represent have a racism problem.
Then came the avalanche; beyond the perceived arrogance of the initial statement, virtually all-white organisations are in no position to be making sweeping proclamations about race (we discussed how this weakened the HFPA’s defence of their almost-equally white Golden Globe nominations).
To compound this, it quickly became even clearer that the SoE didn’t represent the unified voice of the UK press community, with over 200 prominent journalists of colour signing an open letter rebutting the initial statement, many elaborating on their position by publicising excoriating critiques of the organisation to their substantial social media following.
Then the formidable Charlene White quit as host of the SoE-organised National Press Awards amid a spate of withdrawn nominations.
The climbdown was all-the-more embarrassing for the SoE’s initial belligerence. Having driven this approach, Executive Director Ian Murray resigned stroppily on Wednesday, with the board having by then released a more conciliatory clarification to undermine his initial statement. Then we learned that the National Press Awards are set to be postponed due to the scandal. A barely-mitigated disaster.
Without intending this as an ‘After School Special’ it’s worth considering some of the rules of crisis comms the SoE broke:
1. Don’t use inflammatory language.
2. Ensure that everyone you speak for is unified and on-message.
3. Ensure that you have support from every audience segment affected by your communications.
4. ‘Read the room’ on every channel through which you are planning to communicate.
This week was a textbook example of what happens when an organisation under fire does none of the above. Harry must be laughing his head off.
Another day in the death of digital media
It’s been a difficult ride for digital media over the past couple of years, and with the recent news that HuffPost UK’s news operation is shutting down, the future is looking bleak for the once booming digital news era. Covid-19 has clearly sped up HuffPost’s decline, but what’s really caught people’s attention is the way the outlet’s owner, BuzzFeed, broke the news to their UK staff. Having also laid off 47 HuffPost workers in the US, CEO Jonah Peretti has faced criticism for his brutal methods.
It’s been poorly managed, with the delivery of the announcement showing a lack of empathy. The UK team’s female staff have been disproportionally affected, particularly mothers. Reportedly “Every mother on the UK editorial staff has been told they face losing their job, including one person on maternity leave”. Informed via email, most are unclear of their futures with the news organisation.
BuzzFeed has clearly taken advantage of a UK employment discourse dominated by NHS wages – announcing cuts to the UK team shortly after a US announcement that was widely criticised. In a callous move, Peretti hosted an international meeting outlining cost cutting measures, setting the password for entry as “spr!ngisH3r3”…
This episode may have been inevitable but sadly BuzzFeed’s thoughtless dismissal of staff will be quickly forgotten in the wider conversation of Covid related job cuts, particularly those in the media.
Borkowski Weekly Media Trends
Life isn’t all beer & Creme Eggs
[after sipping a pint] Hmmm, that’s delicious. Do you know what would compliment this? A Creme Egg….
Yes, you guessed correctly - this is a sentence that has never been said out loud. So, it may shock and appal you that Cadbury’s announced a “Limited Eggdition Creme Egg beer” to mark their 50th anniversary.
The beer is rumoured to taste and smell like a very rich Guinness, but these sorts of collaborations aren’t really about the product’s end result. Popular brands can get away these bizarre collabs, and even thrive off them. Think Travis Scott x McDonald’s or Snoop Dogg x Just Eat, they can work so well that they even become a meme (free publicity).
This collaboration is more Walker’s unusual crisp flavour collection – bizarre over anything else but the stunt generates publicity with ease. They tend to become immediately collectable and incredibly difficult to purchase. Whether it’s a product review, a reaction piece or a standalone feature, it is such an easy win for these household brands. You can’t help but ask yourself, was the strategy to become a meme and win the internet for the day? Who knows, but it’s a trend that will never go away.
The future of the aura?
It was the week we saw an artwork in the form of a
10-second video clip sell for $6.6 million, all thanks to a new blockchain technology that can authenticate digital content as one-of-a-kind.
This development overcomes the issue that the art world has grappled with ever since it became possible to digitally reproduce images, and then latterly to share them online. The ability to mass-reproduce pictures of art-objects has seen the value of those images plummet (whilst the value of the original art objects rise - as their image gets shared and gains fame). This technology means that it is now possible for a digital object to be unique in the way that a physical one is, and amass value in the same way too.
This is major news, although it may only signify a fad for the art world. The unique qualities of physical art (texture, form, presence) cannot be recreated digitally, so it’s a stretch to suggest people might start getting pleasure from digital art in the same way they do physical.
But whoever paid $6.6 million for this video was right to. Its value lies in the fact it represents a new frontier in technology - proof that we are on our way to a future where some digital images and videos might be unreproducible.
This would be revolutionary for meme creators – who have long battled over theft and plagiarism. It could also mark a significant move towards outing deep-fakes, which currently threaten to supercharge the proliferation of fake news.
When you think that this technology could revolutionise the way we see digital content, helping us find truth in the internet's increasingly murky waters, $6.6 million feels pretty modest.
The sugar cane myth and MISRISHFORMATION
Fizzy drink misinformation has penetrated the highest rungs of government. It is now perpetuated not by troll farms and foreign actors, but by regular chancellors with signature signatures. And what better target for an influencer chancellor clearly in chrysalis of primeministerdom than that old chestnut that Mexican coke is the only true coke.
Indeed, it has long been a favourite of online conspiracists and bugbear of Pepsi stans that Mexican Coke is superior to the normal version. Here, we see the minister himself trying out this old myth (that Coca-Cola has neither confirmed nor denied) on some unsuspecting schoolchildren. Are there any lengths his PR machine won’t go to? Is the currency of truth really so inflated that he will sacrifice the powerful high fructose corn syrup industry to secure a favourable trade agreement with Peña Nieto?
Worries about the post-COVID information economy aside, this stumble endears us to Silly Rishi in a way that makes it hard to take him as seriously as his handlers at Clerkenwell Bros intend. His ‘One Man’s Journey to a Budget’ video was so overblown that opposition leader Keir Starmer took the opportunity to rib not just the budget but the expensive production that promoted it, and led others wondering about his fame strategy, just whom he is trying to influence?
And though the dish of a minister is sufficiently PR-aware to catch himself when he hears himself say ‘I’m a Coke addict’, one can’t help but feeling the loss of innocence that comes when—for example—a child excuses himself for making an innuendo about something that you didn’t know he knew about. These cracks in the Rishçade as devised by man-behind-the-brand Cass Horowitz, show a chancellor not, to my ears, more Partridgean, but more thoroughly mediatised than one would guess from the quietly self-effacing figure that—despite the Hollywood gloss—his handlers have been crafting. Farewell to Nova Scotia and all that.
Scotrail takes Trumpian approach to Customer Service
A creative, or even just nice (remember that??) approach to social media community management has improved so many companies’ reputations that a quirky tone of voice has almost become a prerequisite for famous brands.
Occasionally there’s a cringey swing and miss but on the whole the strategy is successful in its aim of humanising these faceless corporations and making them more accessible.
Except, that is, for rail operator Scotrail. In recent weeks the company responsible for all of Scotland’s internal trains has shot to infamy for its unique approach to public-facing customer service, an approach generally perceived as a Trumpian blend of ‘fight fire with fire’, ‘kill or be killed’ and ‘dog eat dog’.
It’s a bold and distinctive strategy. The reason brands without the comfort of a national monopoly on a major utility don’t follow a similar path is that this particular brand of combative defensiveness is seen by many as aggressive, callous and demeaning to its customers.
On the other hand, there’s a bleak logic to it; if you know by reputation that a company’s customer service department is going to angrily bulldoze your complaint, you are probably less likely to pursue a contestable refund than if it’s a company whose warm, cuddly team of wannabe kids’ tv presenters are going to roll over compliantly at the slightest hint of trouble.
Then there are the memes. We’ve talked before about how memes can actually sand the rough edges off quite a serious comms crisis by turning it into a big laugh for everyone. For now, that’s exactly how it’s working out for Scotrail, but in the age of the online mob they are walking a tightrope with their unashamedly condescending approach to their customers.