Thursday, September 10, 2015

When the crisis is about you: PR experts need PR advise too!


As many foreign students already studying in Amsterdam for a year, the end of the summer holidays brought me an important change: moving to a new apartment. After pulling some strings, I found a small but perfectly located apartment with all the basic amenities, including a TV! I know I should call myself fortunate for finding an apartment at all, but having access to the Dutch channels has been an amazing discovery. For instance, the other day I found a show of people that were sent to an island to date other people (basically, a Temptation Island kind of show), only this time they had to do it in the nude. That's right, they are thrown there completely naked. Interesting how the Dutch are always pushing the boundaries of what is and what is not 'extreme'.

Adam zoekt Eve: An extreme dating show. Also interesting to know: where do they hang the contestants microphones? (Source: Reddit)

Then I saw another show of women in a shopping contest. They first had to do a lap running in their high heels through a shopping center, with producers hoping for one or two ankle sprains along the way. Later, the top three contestants raced on who could load faster their cars with tenths of shopping bags, only for afterwards driving the car and make a perfect parallel parking maneuver. Finally, the contestants in the final stage had to do some mathematical calculations regarding things they were buying with discounts, i.e. 'if you buy four items at 15 euros, but you end up paying 36 euros, how much discount did you receive?'. Maybe many of you already know this show, but for me it was a big surprise and left me wandering if such a stereotypical -and somewhat offensive- show would be well received by other countries' audiences. Could this show ever see the light of day in my country (Chile), for instance?

Krijg de Kleren: For sure its tough to park a car with all those packages! (Source: RTLXL.nl)

Anyway, right after that show, the same network aired another reality show called "I can make you a Supermodel", where a supposedly well-known fashion stylist walked around the streets of the Netherlands finding girls that he could "turn" into supermodels overnight (more about the show here). Again, probably most of you are already familiar with this show. But my first thought was 'Sure, finding pretty girls in Holland should not be that hard... this guy should take his show to Chile. Now THAT would be a challenge!". And no, please don't think that I don't think highly of Chilean women... I'm just thinking of the fact that the Chilean women have a height average of 1,60m, you know, not exactly supermodel potential.

All of this -and specially this last thought- reminded me of an interesting and recent PR case that happened back home involving an important PR expert, an example that shows how sometimes even PR people need PR lessons. It's about a guy that took my previous thought and brought it waaaaay more out of line.

Below is a picture of Pablo Courard. He is a PR executive and has his own PR agency specialised in working with well regarded fashion brands, like The North Face, H&M, Corona, Drambuie, and others, all of them interested in building an image linked to glamour or entertainment.

Courard's picture from his Twitter page, with his PR agency staff right behind him. Plenty of people, right? (Source: Twitter)

Well, one of the most read newspaper magazines of the country (Sábado magazine) was writing a story about the rise of fashion bloggers in Chile, and sought for Courard's opinion on the subject, since he works with them constantly. He was asked about the type of followers some of these fashion bloggers had. His answer was:

"If you ask [one of these bloggers] about her followers, she will tell you that they are all middle-low class people, with aspirational feelings. This because Chile is ugly. I mean, you only have to walk on the streets to notice it. We are, in general, an ugly race. From a selection of 10 women, maybe 1 of them is only 'kinda pretty'. The fashion bloggers have a certain aspirational desire of having a certain degree of glamour, of being in events that you couldn't possibly have access to. They have become celebrities". (Sábado magazine, August 22nd, 2015, P. 16; highlights, my own)

Although his statements were published on a Saturday, the Chilean social media flared up with these comments. Fashion bloggers and Chilean women in general, were really upset, calling Courard all kinds of names. The issue was specially delicate for the PR agency owned by Courard, since they work with many of these fashion bloggers to promote the brands they have as clients. Of course then, given the media frenzy that his words generated, and being him a well versed PR guy, he apologised a few days later on his Twitter account:

"Even though what was published in the magazine does not reflect my way of thinking, I was wrong and I apologise to the persons that have felt offended" (post from @pablocourard, Tuesday, August 25th, 2015)

A rather confusing apology coming from a supposedly expert in PR, right? He apparently is saying that what he said in the article is not what he thinks. If that is so, why say it? Does he not think what he says?

Things did not turn for the better after Courard's PR agency sent its own press release about the situation on Thursday, seeing how the media attention was not declining. It read:

"We don't share and we don't feel ourselves represented by the article published by Sábado magazine. We consider that the article was written insidiously. It is important to us to let the public know that as a company we are in complete and total disagreement on how the article came to be and how it was published, since it does not represent our thinking and our working standards in the communication industry. We have always been active in the development of spaces for women in the media, always treating them with respect and admiration". (highlights my own; original can be seen here)

Oh. So they are claiming that the magazine was not truthful on how they reported Courard's statements? Are they really pulling the oldest PR trick of them all, that is, blaming the journalist or writer of the piece?

In fact, the answer from Sábado magazine did not take long:

"After seeing the press release of Mr. Courard's agency that qualifies the article published by our magazine as 'insidious', we want to say: (a) the comments of Mr. Courard in the article are verbatim to the conversation sustained with him under the frame of a taped interview, and (b) the audio file of the conversation between the journalist and Mr. Courard has been at his disposal and now it is also available for the agency in case they wish to hear it".

After receiving no feedback from the agency in the following hours, the magazine uploaded the full quote of Courard's interview in their Twitter account. Hearing the audio, there is no doubt that Courard said what he said, and no 'insidious' attitude could be extracted from the way the article was written. One is left to wonder: what was the point of the press release? Infuriate the masses even more? Reinforce the thought that their executive is a misogynist? It is clear to me that this PR agency needed some urgent PR advise to cope with the crisis. What would have been your advise to Courard?

I guess the old biblical adage is right: "A prophet is not despised, save in his own country". PR people are great in giving advise to others, but when the crisis is about them, how do they fare? And as a final thought, if Chilean women feel so highly of themselves, then who knows? Maybe the "I can make you a Supermodel" TV show may have a chance of airing successfully in Chile.

Fernando Gómez Vial 
        
  

2 comments:

  1. In this case I really like that they ended up wrongfully badmouthing a press outlet that turned to them for their “expert” opinion on the matter. Apart from making them look desperate, it was a rookie move that undermined their symbolic power as an expert as well. For a PR professional relationship building is what you do, and that means not only with the public, but with the media as well, something they overlooked. I bet that Sábado magazine will not be publishing Courard’s firm’s material for a while.

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  2. I think Courard really has underestimated the public of this interview. I guess he might have thought that his public would have been the readers of Sábado magazine only, not considering his statement would end up in the 'Öffentlichkeit', in this case whole Chile and now even beyond. Him denying statements that can be proved with tape recordings are really damaging his credibility and sincerity as a public person. It might be clever for him to check his previous actions and statements well, so he won't create a discrepancy between his actions en how he ought to portray his image..again.

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