Jul
8
Rupert Murdoch knows a thing or two about catastrophe management
Fri, 07/08/2011 - 10:33
Destroy the brand and the story goes down with it
As I write, everyone seems shocked by the 'surprise' announcement yesterday 7th July that Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch – owner of the London Times, Sunday Times, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News to name but a few – is to close its 168 year-old News of the World Sunday tabloid Newspaper (NoTW), from this Sunday 10th July.
I wasn't. I just thought: what a clever chap that Rupert Murdoch is and golly, he must really want to take over the UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB – a deal much criticised because of the broadcasting influence it will give his News International empire.
In the past few days, the NoTW, known for years for hard-hitting investigations, exposure of wrongdoing, campaigning and celeb tittle tattle, has been hit with media revelations of institutionalised telephone hacking by its journalists; not just of celebs because they’re par for the course, but of rape victims, missing/murdered children, war widows…you name it, they hacked it. Then followed rumoured arrests, editors claiming they were away on holiday at the time and 'nothing to do with them', politicians were implicated including UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and even worse for Murdoch, the imminent deal with satellite broadcaster BSkyB looked in serious jeopardy.…where was it going to end chortled our high and mighty media (who obviously never bribed or hacked into anything in their lives – perish the thought).
The inevitable was knocking on the door for the NoTW, until in one fell swoop, done…Murdoch killed it.
In a statement, his son James Murdoch made the announcement – no questions, control the message, perfect PR.
Oh yes, the enquiries will still go on, the stories about the now despicable NoTW will still riddle the media, arrests will be made, payments to police will be uncovered and journalists will be called to account – but their target, the now defunct NoTW, will have long since gone down the pan.
Mr Murdoch has already prepped his weekly Sun tabloid newspaper to produce a Sunday issue to replace the NoTW and his longed-for bid to takeover satellite broadcaster BSkyB will, I’m sure, go ahead, just about untarnished.
As I said at the beginning, clever chap that Mr Murdoch.
Btw1: It’s been done before: some of you may remember in 1987, the European newspapers and TV channels were focused on the Townsend Thoresen ferry boat, the Herald of Free Enterprise, which went down in icy waters killing 193 people. That year P&O, owners of the once famous and now infamous Townsend Thoresen ferryline, rebranded to P&O European Ferries, now P&O Ferries. Perfect brand management. The Townsend Thoresen brand went down with the Herald of Free Enterprise and 193 passengers. See my six rules of catastrophe management.
Btw2: Whilst all this was going on in the UK media, spare a thought for the fragrant Arianna Huffington (nee Stasinopoulos as those of us born in the UK who remember the former Cambridge Union President). She had chosen the day all this broke – 6th July - to launch the UK edition of the highly successful Huffington Post : good day to bury bad news, but not to launch the UK edition of the Huffington Post! Tough timing Arianna.
May
12
PR and propaganda: the Killing of Osama bin Laden versus the Wills and Kate Wedding
Thu, 05/12/2011 - 10:38
So, was he cowardly hiding behind his wife as a human shield or did he frantically fire back, was he living ignominiously in a large but dirty compound, sadly viewing himself on a small TV in a dirty room or was he running Al Qaeda with pinpoint accuracy through an undetectable network of human messengers, was he shot lethally in the head, then in the chest to make certain or did they miss first time?
And were the President and team watching the killing live on TV or was there a blackout and were they watching a replay, will we, won’t we, will we… see the pictures?…..and of course, was it Obama’s 1st of May 'at my direction' speech that got up the nose of the brave Navy Seals that forced the White House five days later (6th May) to offer profuse thanks and decorate the support teams for their courage and send the First Lady to say the same?
It could have been a major international coup. Did Obama just win the 2012 election was the buzz from the Hill. But as events unfolded, it all became much messier.
The military operation was obviously meticulously planned and executed - no off the cuff … hey chaps, let’s go in tonight and see if that’s where bin Laden is in hiding. President Obama and his White House team must have had a heads up, so why the PR gaffes, lack of news agenda management, own goals and missed opportunities?
Gaffe Number One: To say that bin Laden was armed and hiding behind a wife being used as a human shield was unforgivable, but more importantly, completely unnecessary to the White House agenda.
The White House first seemed to want to make bin Laden appear as being unmanly and cowardly in order to justify their actions. It turned out to be incorrect if we can believe later reports. They then seem to have decided it was a mistake to paint him as cowardly and needed to paint him a powerful leader.
It was obviously a kill mission and no one should have been afraid to admit that. The Obama administration should have been straightforward rather than spinning tales about bin Laden having a gun, reaching for a gun (the latest) and resisting (without saying how he resisted). The World’s Number One International Terrorist was dead. No-one was going to cry unfair.
Gaffe number two: Obama tried to claim too much credit – don’t be too desperate to claim credit if it is coming your way anyway in spades - be generous, it gives you stature.
Yes it was at his 'direction' – I would have thought that went without saying from the Commander In Chief of the world’s most powerful nation. We didn’t need the head of the CIA to say how "gutsy" Obama was - the facts spoke for themselves. Far better to have heaped praise on the seriously brave US Navy SEALs. But that didn’t happen until five days later when the White House began to realize their omission.
Failing of News Agenda Management Number One: It took nearly three days to decide to release and then not to release the photographs
Letting the media, bloggers and twitterers debate the issue for so long and then say no, made the administration look indecisive, appear to have something to hide, and it also fueled conspiracy theories.
But what they didn't do quickly and what the world wanted, was proof of death. The administration had DNA evidence, facial recognition evidence and photographic evidence (released or not). Some combination of that evidence should have been collated and released swiftly.
Failing of News Agenda Management Number Two: Too much information released, and a lot of it was wrong.
I quote from journalist Toby Harnden's blog "When it made the administration look good, the information flowed freely. When the tide turned, Jay Carney, Obama’s spokesman, clammed up completely. I'm a journalist; I like it when people talk about things. But from the administration's perspective, it would have been much better to have given a very sparse, accurate description of what happened without going into too much detail, especially about the intelligence that led to the compound (an account which is necessarily suspect)".
Own Goal: Triggering a torture debate was an avoidable own goal.
By discussing the intelligence, the administration walked into the issue of whether enhanced interrogation techniques epitomized by waterboarding, yielded important information. Republicans were delighted.
Missed Opportunity on the international stage
The word on the street is that Pakistan had to have given the green light for the raid in some form - after all it all took place just down the road from the Pakistani military academy who did nothing as helicopters circled overhead. But diplomacy would dictate that Pakistan, for good reasons, would not want this made public. The White House, however, felt on the defensive and chose to encourage criticism of Pakistan. As a result all we saw were the contradictions between the US and Pakistani accounts.
PR and Propaganda
I know the Royal Wedding in the UK was not a patch on the killing of bin Laden in significance, but it was a total PR success, executed with enough pomp not to get up the nose of anti-royalists and royalists alike, showed the UK as not stuffy but with an enviable tradition, epitomized by Wills and Kate as two really nice people – modern but respectful of their elders, respectful of the tradition that they were a part of, and ready to take on duties in the 20th century. Even a change in honeymoon plans for security concerns was handled, not dramatized. But I suppose they had learned the hard way - remember Diana Princess of Wales!
Apr
8
Social Media as a lifeline : exploit with care
Fri, 04/08/2011 - 11:42
PR professionals have a lesson to learn from Microsoft’s tacky twitter
As the seisomometer registered 8.9 as the powerful earthquake struck the coast of Japan, the Tweet-o-Meter registered 1,200 tweets per minute coming out of Japan less than an hour afterwards.
During that week I kept on hearing a compelling phrase: "Social media as a lifeline." I had first heard the phrase before in the Haiti earthquake, just over a year ago. Skype, Twitter and Facebook provided a huge lifeline while the Red Cross raised $1.2million (link below) in donations to help Haitian victims in just one day.
A PR opportunity. Well yes for charities (I have worked for charities and awful as it sounds, they need a good disaster to top up donations to pay for their infrastructure, and of course bring aid to the disaster area). But outside the charity box, it becomes more sensitive, and Bing's recent attempt to promote itself on Twitter using the on-going disaster in Japan was a marketing disaster.
For those who missed it, Microsoft promised to donate $1 for every re-tweet of a message whose only content was, in essence, the invitation to re-tweet it. The PR stunt was just a little obvious to the tweeting groupies, the cap by Microsoft of $100K derisory - frankly, Microsoft must have that sitting in petty cash. Microsoft’s retraction came the same day...
The $100,000 cap on donations just made the whole thing look cheap and nasty. Given the incredible scale of destruction in Japan – the damage estimate is in hundreds of billions – it’s laughable that giant corporation Microsoft was considering chipping in a whole $100,000 and tweeting it like it’s a big deal. They must have more in the petty cash. If they had capped it at $1million, it would have made the offer more acceptable, but still, the Bing promotion is dubious (Btw, Microsoft then pledged $2 million in cash and software, and no re-tweeting!)
PR professionals are always looking for a good peg to hang a PR story on, and crises offer an opportunity. Any charitable effort by a marketer is frankly intended to – in addition to doing good – reflect some positive light on the brand; to suggest otherwise is naïve or disingenuous.
We all do pro-bono work or discounted work for charity – but we don’t advertise the fact that we’re doing it. Some newswires offer free or discounted distributions for charities and certainly did during the Japanese earthquake – quite rightly. They get publicity by their services being used, not by advertising the fact that they are doing it free of charge.
Real-time platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Skype have significantly changed the way the world communicates and are more invaluable for relief efforts than ever before: from posting emergency numbers, to relaying important contact information, identifying shelters, and asking for help.
As Kenneth Cole (who's he?) learned last month when he tweeted: "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online", marketers must tread very carefully when using big news events to promote their brands. (OK, so he has clothes shops).
Mar
9
We need an independent news media but do we have one?
Wed, 03/09/2011 - 12:14
The dramatic rise of Al Jazeera
"Don’t believe those misleading dog stations," Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said last week. And he wasn’t referring to CNN or the BBC, but to Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya.
News outlets rise to prominence during times of war and upheaval. The Arab uprisings are putting Al Jazeera English on the international news scene in much the same way as the then new CNN came to international prominence with its aggressive coverage of the 1991 Gulf War.
Al Jazeera English (though perhaps not its Arabic-language sister service which is known to play favourites in its news perspective), established by the Qatar government in 2006, is now considered a serious source of news, quoted by CNN, BBC and Sky. The channel's coverage of the recent Arab uprisings provided unprecedented local access for a global news organisation, despite its broadcasts being banned in Ben Ali's Tunisia and blocked in Egypt.
It provides consistent coverage of parts of the world that CNN and BBC remember only during crises, and then only for the duration of the news cycle.
The uprisings have cemented Al Jazeera's status as a threat to autocratic regimes - in Tahrir Square, people were even chanting: "Long live Al Jazeera."
The Qatari satellite channel has had more reporters on the ground than the BBC and CNN; its use of social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is unprecedented. Its website posted Live Messages — audio messages recorded from phone calls placed by correspondents — on the ground, and it used a facility called Scribble Live to get these updates online fast.
The company’s English-language website has seen a 2,000 percent increase in visits, with more than 60 percent of that traffic coming from the United States.
As the BBC closes down parts of its world service, Sky plans to open up its Arabic service in 2012, and Al Jazeera English has spring-boarded into prominence – though not yet in the US where the news service is still lobbying for a channel on the Comcast cable news and entertainment service.
Gone are the days when, in April 2004, it was reported that in a White House meeting with then UK PM Tony Blair, President George W. Bush floated the idea of bombing al-Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar! The current White House is reported to have live news feeds from Al Jazeera and CNN.
But it cannot be overlooked that Al Jazeera is run and funded by a state, which itself stifles dissent – a subject Al Jazeera sometimes reports on, but rarely in detail and the exact nature of the relationship between the Qatari state and the TV channel is opaque. But then, Sky and CNN are run by two commercial media giants News Corp and Time Warner respectively each with their own media interests, and the BBC is state funded, albeit from a democratically elected government.
Feb
22
Is Google too big to have a human face?
Tue, 02/22/2011 - 11:57
The bigger and more powerful you are, the more you need to look human
Gord Hotchkiss's piece last week in Mediapost was telling: Google is becoming increasingly brittle and defensive in its public face: "The humility is disappearing and hubris rules the day. It's almost as if, now that Google is the king of the hill and is drawing more than its share of scrutiny, much of it negative, they've gone into defensive mode. They've circled the wagons and drawn more inside."
Most of the media blame the harder PR attitude and increased hubris on the impending arrival of new CEO Larry Page (starts in April 2011), flexing his influence within the organisation. Witness Google’s aggressive attack last week on Microsoft and Bing which I discuss on my other blog this week, whom it accused of stealing its search algorithms.
Google loudly published the findings of an internal investigation that it said proved that Microsoft, using its Internet Explorer browser and Bing toolbar, collected data about its users’ Google search queries and the results they produced.
Google characterised the practice as cheating. Microsoft responded that end users allow it to collect that data, and that the information it collects is one of more than a thousand other "signals" it uses to refine its search results.
What I found particularly interesting was the media reaction to Google’s aggressive positioning. I found no supporters.
Hotchkiss finished off his piece with this telling observation and I quote: "I did a pretty extensive series of posts on where search might be heading. I had open and free-ranging conversations with Microsoft and Yahoo, but Google was "too busy" to have a real interview. I had to submit my questions by email and Google choose simply to ignore some of them because the company disagreed with my premise. Undertones of "how dare you question us?" rang clearly through my communications with the Big G."
Microsoft on the other hand is approachable, been through its dark phases and come through with Bing, and the media is behind it.
PR rule: the media idolise you on the way up, are poised to attack you at the top…and definitely have their ammo ready to attack you on the way down….the media knows that Google has no divine right to search leadership….Google needs to realise it.
See also this week's blog on The SpinBin about the ongoing spat between Google and Microsoft, proving that PR is as much if not more about signal rather than words.
Feb
4
Microphone gaffes
Fri, 02/04/2011 - 11:48
Recent events in the UK only go to remind all PR professionals, never express a personal thought unless you’re happy to see it in print, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Youtube or online.
Last week top UK Sky Sports presenter Richard Keys and football pundit Andy Gray lost their million pound jobs in a sexism row after a microphone apparently caught them making disparaging comments about a female assistant referee.
The media and Sexist Pundits rushed to take their place on the moral high ground – including indeed the UK Red Tops well known for their appreciation of the fairer sex on Page 3.
A few years back an Australian sports commentator Dean Jones said on air "the terrorist has got another wicket" when Hashimn Amla, the first player of Muslim descent to play test cricket for South Africa, made a fine catch to dismiss a batsman. Jones thought the mic was off; he lost his job.
Whatever your view, the cardinal sin remains – never say anything into a microphone (on or off-air), or in fact in any media situation that you are not prepared to see in print.
And never more so than in today’s nanosecond world. Some of you may remember with some amusement when, at the height of the Cold War in 1984 U.S. President Ronald Reagan tested his mic with the memorable lines: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
But remember George W. Bush who called New York Times reporter Adam Clymer, a "major league asshole" to Vice-President Dick Cheney whose response ("big time") was also audible. Broadcast stations feasted on it; the New York Post ran two pages.
Last year, UK PM Gordon Brown was caught on mic describing a female voter as a "bigoted woman". First Twitter, then live TV, then Youtube…the story ran and ran; Gordon Brown was never re-elected.
You might say, sitting at your desk that this only applies to personalities. Then think again. I remember the journalist (yes she was female) who sat chatting with the company execs after a press luncheon when they moved on to personal issues, in fact blue movies being circulated in their company – the journalist wrote the copy; the company brand was sleazed.
Or what about the executive who admitted as an aside that his company’s video technology was not the best and would be superceded next year – the journalist wrote the copy; the company brand un-future-proofed….or the CEO that said his software ‘ran like as dog’…the stories are legion.
Brands are much more delicate in the digital world. So PR professionals and company executives, when you speak, you speak for the company, like it or not.
Dec
20
Julian Assange – a real life Jason Bourne: two lawsuit-proof global citizens?
Mon, 12/20/2010 - 12:39
Don’t know about the multiple passports, but crossing borders – yes; moving assets – yes; escape and evasion – yes...so far; meet Julian Assange and what looks like his role-model Jason Bourne. The commentators are missing the deadly game of public relations in his survival strategy.
Julian Assange has not only become a thorn in the collective diplomatic sides of every country in the world, but his personal PR machine is making it more and more difficult for any of them to lock him up as he adopts the brand of the world’s second lawsuit-proof global citizen – after Jason Bourne that is.
Americans chorused to hunt him down like a Taliban leader (former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin: ''an anti-American operative with blood on his hands''; Republican Mike Huckabee: ''anything less than execution is too kind a penalty''), Interpol issued a ''Red Notice'', Swedish prosecutors sent an international arrest warrant to London’s Metropolitan Police, seeking extradition on allegations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion, the Met Police locked him up, refused bail, then released him on bail.
By this time, Assange had assembled an impressive clutch of supporters-cum-cashpoints: socialite heiress and human rights campaigner Jemima Khan; founder of independent journalism Frontline Club, former grenadier guard and crack shot Vaughan Smith; iconoclastic millionaire publisher Felix Dennis (aka Oz (so accustomed to censorship) and most recently 'The Week'). These three personify Assange’s own personality: charming, pinpoint targeting and iconoclastic.
But not content with Brand Bourne, Assange next set out to emulate Brand Bond. Standing in front of Vaughan's organically-correct Suffolk 'pile' (pic below), Assange conducted his next round of European and US interviews, a martini close by – the analog was not lost on the media...no doubt shaken not stirred, some even remembered Assange had a history of Swedish blonds to complete the picture.
The media circus has momentarily forgotten about Bradley Manning, who turned 23 last week sitting in solitary confinement in Quantico prison, Virginia, for leaking documents to WikiLeaks; or the fate of hacker and un-enigmatic Asperger-sufferer Gary McKinnon whom nobody is currently championing to stop his extradition to the US on a much lesser 'crime' of hacking into military computers.
Whatever your view about the rightness or wrongness of WikiLeaks, by inflating Assange’s importance with claims of "terrorism" and demands to shoot the messenger, politicians are walking into a trap that is being massaged by Assange – I started to explain this in my blog a few weeks back. He is becoming an icon, an ideal. Don’t make him a martyr too. People just won’t accept Jason Bourne disappearing forever into the East River or for that matter, the man with the martini.
Dec
16
2011 – the fallout in the battle of the newspaper paywalls
Thu, 12/16/2010 - 11:35
News comes that the UK’s Telegraph is set to join the New York Times (paywall scheduled 2011), the Financial Times, News of the World, the London Times, and the Wall Street Journal behind a paywall.
This is a prestigious band of top newspapers, and it is probably wrong to trash the idea of paywalls as some commentators are doing.
2011 will surely see the media moguls fight it out in the battle to manage the fine balance between internet readership, print sales and much needed revenues.
Under the heading 'Guido now has more readers than the Times', the political blogger Guido Fawkes quotes research completed by industry analysts Experian Hitwise that suggests that approximately 54,000 people access The Times, with as few as 28,000 being paying customers, and while Guido's blog served 75,233 pages, the average weekday readership is circa 60,000. Whilst the Times does still have paying customers, it now needs to grow its customer base.
Easy for Guido to rubbish this growing trend among the major national newspapers (his heading 'Another One Bites the Dust') and yes, the stats show paper sales are down and website traffic takes a hit once the paywall goes up. Yet as I said a few weeks ago, it’s not that simple, even though Guido rightly points to the healthy trend in advertising on his blog at a time when revenues are falling for the paywalled nationals.
Guido's blog is analogous to the controlled circulation magazines that have always worked in defined vertical markets. They come free to an audited registered list with a well defined editorial interest. Guido’s political blog has a very defined market – free to its audience defined by interest. It becomes an ideal vehicle for an advertiser and for the publisher to sell space to advertisers targeting, in this case, a right wing politicised audience.
But a national newspaper is by definition a horizontal publication and its political section is only one section of many: arts, science, technology....its advertisers are looking for big numbers of readers in a much broader church.
News International is not famous for getting it wrong. There must be a reason for the paywalls to be going up, and it seems to be based on two calculations. First the economics would force other broadsheets to follow them behind the paywall. That seems to be happening.
Second, in the long term when all their competitors have followed them behind the wall, their broad based mainstream audiences will not be satisfied by searching the various pages of the internet for their daily doses of in-depth information and entertainment. It’s easy to forget that national newspapers are carefully constructed and highly sophisticated news machines in which the content is streamed to make life easy for all of their varied audiences.
When, and if, the audiences return, so will the big ticket advertising. And the margins will look so much better when there are no costs for print paper and distribution.
Nov
22
Protecting the Rolls-Royce brand
Mon, 11/22/2010 - 13:38
Thursday 4th November, Rolls-Royce woke up to news of a major blowout of one of its spanking new Trent 900 engines on the world’s biggest passenger plane, the Qantas Airbus A380 superjumbo.
The headlines could have been: "Four hundred and fifty-nine dead in biggest aviation disaster ever."
When the Qantas captain landed Flight QF32 at Changi, he stopped within 120 metres of the end of the tarmac. Forget 'fly by wire'; the captain was undergoing his annual test, so he had a total of five experienced pilots – including three captains – on board to help.
And land Flight QF32 he did. Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines briefly grounded their superjumbos that week, but resumed service after checking/replacing engines. Also that week, China Eastern Airlines signed a £750million deal for Rolls-Royce to supply Sinfin-built Trent 700 engines for 16 Airbus A330s. Only Qantas grounded its Airbus fleet.
That week, investors accepted assurances that the problem with the Rolls-Royce engines for the world's largest airliner was isolated and being resolved, sending Rolls' shares up 27 to 611p, clawing back some of the £1.3bn in value the company lost after the engine failure on November 4, and is still hovering around the 600p.
So all in all, not a bad week for Rolls-Royce; worse for Qantas: its Rolls-Royce powered Airbus fleet grounded and is still grounded as I write.
We can see what the airline captain did, but what did Rolls-Royce do to contain the disaster? Anything? It’s easy to criticise crisis management when it goes wrong: 2010 has been rife with copybook examples: Toyota, BP, Tiger Woods. So let’s look at Rolls-Royce’s so far copybook disaster containment strategy.
Understand the brand
Rolls-Royce: the name is an adjective meaning top-notch; to consumers it means top-notch luxury, meticulous engineering, hand finished – put simply, ‘the best’. In the field of aviation, it means meticulously engineered, very advanced jet engines. And Rolls-Royce is not only building aeroengines; it has a hugely successful marine business based around that Rolls-Royce brand.
Rolls' official response to the Qantas disaster was immediate, brief and to the point. It issued two short written statements to say it was conducting checks and was confident in isolating and resolving the problem.
Sir John Rose, Chief Executive: "Safety is the highest priority of Rolls-Royce. This has been demonstrated by the rapid and prudent action we have taken following the Trent 900 incident. We have instigated a programme of measures in collaboration with Airbus, our Trent 900 customers and the regulators. This will enable our customers progressively to bring the whole fleet back into service. We regret the disruption we have caused."
Investors were happy; the media were fed no scraps to build a story. So disappointed were the press that it prompted some to complain about the 'tight-lipped' and 'terse' reaction of Rolls-Royce. Whatever, RR had stopped media speculation.
Rolls-Royce has been here before
Rolls-Royce was equally minimal on details surrounding the recent failure of a Trent 1000 engine being developed for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner; about the crash-landing of a Rolls-Royce powered British Airways Boeing 777 jetliner at London's Heathrow Airport in January 2008; and about chronic engine problems that almost resulted in the grounding of the Brasilian Embraer jets 10 years ago.
In all cases, there was no loss of life; in all cases, Rolls-Royce pursued intense, management-driven efforts to protect its reputation by swiftly coming up with solid, technical answers. It expects to do the same again.
A competitor makes a timely strike
The week after the Nov. 4. Rolls-Royce engine blow-out, United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney unit (which, btw, also makes aeroengines), filed lawsuits in Connecticut and in London's High Court against the Rolls-Royce Group, accusing it of infringing a patent.
Pratt & Whitney claims the Trent 900 and Trent 1000 engines made by Rolls-Royce are infringing a patent for a swept-fan blade. Now this Trent 900 is the same engine that failed on the Quantas Airbus A380 on Nov. 4. A ruling in favour of Pratt & Whitney would mean Rolls-Royce would be blocked from shipping engines for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, now in the final stages of flight testing.
The complaints escalate a legal battle that started when Rolls-Royce sued Pratt & Whitney in May, claiming the GP7200 Fan Stage infringed a patent for a design that gives the largest part of a jet engine greater resistance to damage by foreign objects, more stability and lower noise levels. So ‘tit for tat’, and I’m sure it’s just everyday life for the management at RR.
Back to those Six Golden Rules: get the facts, accept responsibility, speak from the top, communicate, control the agenda, protect the brand. So far we have ticks in all six boxes for the RR team.
Extraordinary to Rolls-Royce success are two things:
First: Positive brand is like money in the bank - you can use it up. RR has much more than most brands in the bank, but knows it needs to spend it carefully.
Second: Rolls-Royce sells its products to other companies, not to consumers, as airlines do, so the Rolls-Royce problem is less attractive to the consumer media bloodhounds than the plight of Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa (and GAP, Toyota, Tiger Woods and BP).
Btw: Reports suggest that the most detailed account of the incident appeared anonymously on the internet before any news stories or detailed statements from Qantas. It turned out to be accurate - more evidence that the internet is making the world more transparent despite all the disinformation that leaks through cyberspace.
Nov
12
Why I think Murdoch believes in print and in news
Fri, 11/12/2010 - 11:32
Murdoch battles on with the paywall in order to preserve the printed word, while he plans to target the young with a new digital-only national newspaper.
He’s not called a Media Mogul for nothing. And he’s certainly a man with a plan.
While Rupert Murdoch persists with his paywalls for print media, he announced a few months ago plans to roll out a new national digital newspaper by the end of the year, distributed through mobile handsets and connected devices including the iPad. According to a Los Angeles Times story, the News Corp.-owned newspaper would target a general readership and compete with the likes of USA Today and The New York Times.
The business model is low cost: the newsroom for the planned digital news venture will be overseen by New York Post managing editor John Angelo, and rely on the celebrated sensationalist editorial resources of the New York Post and Dow Jones to expand its audience. Consistent with the digital versions of other News Corp. properties like The Wall Street Journal and the Times Online, the company will charge an as yet-to-be disclosed fee for the new digital publication.
Murdoch on his new venture: "It's a real game changer in the presentation of news." And he is bullish on the prospects of luring back young readers through the new newspaper app: "We'll have young people reading newspapers."
But younger consumers are reluctant to pay unless it involves a game or related content, so the jury’s out on whether those under 30 or 40 will be flocking to a paid newspaper app. But never underestimate a media mogul. And apparently the iPhone and iPad owners who would presumably make up a big portion of the subscribers tend to skew older: people 35 to 44 make up the biggest single segment of users of the Apple devices. But Murdoch must know this – he added an iPad and Kindle app for his London Times.
So on to Murdoch’s other venture (other, that is, than his bid to take over Sky TV in the UK) – the paywall at the London Times. Editor James Harding said it had secured 105,000 'sales' since the paywall went up four months ago from people who had paid to access either the Times and Sunday Times websites and/or its iPad and Kindle apps. (Btw, I did suggest a little while ago that one of the ways to attract more readers was to do just this.)
He continued: "If they sign up for a trial they tend to stick with us. Around half of the 105,000 total are monthly subscribers, though it is uncertain whether that applies to website or iPad/Kindle users, and "many of the rest" are single transaction pay-as-you-go customers (they could be the £1 trial users).”
Certainly traffic has fallen dramatically, from 21 million to 2.7 million pageviews per month, as we blogged earlier.
But to get the bigger picture of what’s going on, it’s worth looking at the papers’ print circulation. The Times sold just 486,868 copies a day in September, down 15% on last year, while the Sunday Times is down 10% on last year to a circulation of 1,091,869. But Murdoch believes this will now grow.
Here’s the model Murdoch is using according to editor Harding, who described it as “a revelation as well as a revolution in journalism”: First, “the digital edition works as a huge echo chamber so The Times' stories get picked up across other media”; second, "most importantly we are able to say something that very few papers can say, which is that we are growing – the number of people buying The Times is on the rise.”
His conclusion: “Giving away our journalism for free is suicidal, and if we continued to do that we couldn't really invest in reporting."
The paywall then becomes a way of maintaining and starting to grow print circulation, to stop the ‘perceived’ bleeding of readers from print to the web.