PR/Media Week in Review 10-11-2009

Letterman started the week on a guilt-trip with his wife about all the creepy things he has been doing, including ‘the women’ - not just ‘woman’ -  he has been sleeping with. His on air confession/campfire funny story was widely seen as a PR masterpiece but it was his subsequent stumbling and bumbling and fear - will I lose my job? Lose my marriage? - that played like a real life serial drama, fueled by media speculation, that boosted ratings and kept advertisers in place. Remember Johnny Carson also had brief - very brief - moments of on air intimacy, a breaching of the late night show game face, that played well.  It doesn’t help Letterman that the protagonist in this story, the would-be extortionist, has a pit-bull media hungry attorney who is avery aggressive about spinning ‘the rest of the story.’ Meanwhile,  Letterman is virtually muzzled by his position and, presumably, his wife. How many times can you say you’re sorry?  It’s been reported that Rubenstein is representing Letterman, of course. It’s now in the stage of PR for a highly-public legal case. Maureen Dowd nailed it in her op-ed column Men Behaving Madly.

So much of baseball is PR. On field quick interviews. Long, post-game press conferences. Crisis communication - the latest steroid story, moving a team to another city. New York is the media capital of the world and the Yankees are the #1 sports franchise in history and they have been supplying drama, making news, all season long and now big-time in the post season. Manager Joe Girardi calls Yankee Stadium, and by extension any ballpark the Yankees play in, ”the big stage.” We’ve been waiting for A-Rod take take his star turn on the big stage and this could be the year.

This year A-Rod has learned that despite the $25 million a year he gets to work, his pimary obligation is to HAVE FUN. He learned that from Mark Texeira, who is an aw-shucks, hard running, uncomplicated, un-pretty home run banger who is also a dazzling fielder - a guy who full-throttle loves playing baseball. And Texeira does all this for a measly $180 million over eight years, $2.5 million a year less than A-Rod. As long as the Yankees play like this, nobody will quibble over those salaries.

The real story is that you can now Twitter the Yankee game right from the MLB site. Always be Twittering, pitch to pitch, that great swell of Yankee tweets if you can’t pay $1,000 a ticket to be there in person.

This week we launched Who is Worth Following, a continuing PRBlogNews series based on random scans of intelligence, original thinking and personality in the PR blogosphere: #1 tomforemski - batting cleanup | #2 occamsrazr - the Leonard Cohen of PR bloggers | #3 #4 and #5 coming next week.

P.S. - There in no truth to the rumor that Barack Obama is up for the Cy Young Award, based on the pitch he threw out opening day.

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A-Rod Set to Return to Yanks Amidst PR Blitz

When you have a $250 million property, you go to great lengths to protect it.

Alex Rodriguez, who many admit is the best player in baseball, has a battery of lawyers, agents, and flacks who seek to protect and further the image and career that A-Rod himself assiduously seeks to diminish. The New York Yankees, the most successful and drama-laden sports franchise, occasionally spawn tell-all/shock books like Sparky Lyle’s Bronx Zoo, and Joe Torre’s Yankee Years, along with endless news stories, sports columns and blog posts.

When you’re A-Rod, secretly cavorting with Madonna, or Joe DiMaggio, marrying Marilyn Monroe, the stories spill from the sports section to gossip and celebrity - every word is dissected and analyzed, even silence becomes a statement.

A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez by Selena Roberts was released recently. It is the catalyst for the latest A-Rod mania, following his admission of steroid use (a story that Roberts broke). Selena Roberts is obsessed with Alex Rodriguez and she is no fan. As a sports reporter for The New York Times before she jumped to Sports Illustrated, she wrote probing, elegant, albeit negative pieces insinuating that the Yankees would be better off without A-Rod, the preening, self-aggrandizing, over paid diva. These days you can become a pseudo celebrity just by writing about A-Rod.

Yankee manager Joe Girardi lashed out against the A-Rod book  with an aw-shucks if you can’t say something good about somebody, why say anything at all attitude, thereby cementing his legacy as the anti-Billy Martin. Other sports bloggers have come to A-Rod’s defense: Why I’m skeptical of Selena Roberts’ new book, from SysterBall |  Selena Roberts’ Poison Pen, from the Yankees Republic | In defense of Public Enemy No. 1 , from Sports-Illustrated writer Jim Caple | Roberts’ book on A-Rod should be questioned, from KansasCity.com.

All this falls in the ’any publicity is good publicity’ category as A-Rod returns to the team this week, maybe as early as Friday.  The Yankees are slumping along without him.  Can he lift the team by way of his awesome talent and unfortunate personality? Nothing like the heated glare of the avaricious New York media to pump some life into a listless sports franchise - or drive it further down.

A-Rod Archives:

• A-Rod Bunts in PR Press Conference, PRBlogNews, 02/18/2009
• Rubenstein PR Fingerprints on A-Rod’s Ass, PRBlogNews, 02/13/2009
• A-Rod Slams Media in PR Home Run, PRBlogNews, 02/10/2009
• A-Rod Needs Good PR Bad, PRBlogNews, 02/09/2009
• BorAss Reamed in the Bronx, PRBlogNews 11/04/2007
• PR Drives A-Rod & BorAss Money Show, PRBlogNews, 11/01/2007
• BorAss PR Stunt Spits on Baseball, PRBlogNews, 10/29/2007

PR/Media Week in Review 05-03-2009

New York is the great stage and the Yankees are the most dramatic sports team on that stage. On that stage  there is always one, and only one, player who is the big star, the media magnet, the conflicted soul who demands attention and is tortured by the public scrutiny and vilification that inevitably comes with it.

Alex Rodriquez - A-Rod - is the guaranteed modern-day Yankee Adonis of controversy, even when he is recovering from surgery and not on the field (although A-Rod is always present in some form, always  playing some angle).

A-Rod is a huge PR issue for baseball and the Yankees, and constant fodder for the mercenary New York press. The new book by the A-Rod obsessed Sports Illustrated reporter Selena Roberts has amped up the A-Rod gag-o-meter to a new level. Roberts portrays A-Rod as a crass, womanizing, steroid-using, ego-maniacal douche-bag who is a bad tipper at Hooters, a liar and a cheat. None of this is particularly shocking or entirely unexpected but it has left Yankee manager Joe Girardi walking a tightrope.

The A-Rod show would be a lot more entertaining if the Yankees were having a terrific season. Instead, they are once again running hot and cold, failing to coalesce all that monied talent into a winning team. Now, of course, the perfect scenario is set for A-Rod to return and carry the team to the playoffs. This is precisely the sort of pressured situation he usually fails at.  All of it leaves some fans to wonder - is all this A-Rod agita worth it? Can his talent overcome all the bad PR baggage that comes with it?

Time for Yankees to Say Goodbye to A-Rod, Huffington Post |  Alex Rodriguez: Wiping His Butt With the Fabric of America - great post from Bleacher Report | Rubenstein PR Fingerprints On A-Rod’s Ass - PRBlogNews

CONNECTING

Mandy Stadtmiller (right), that ultra funny NY Post columnist, stand up comedian (although she often sits), and general gal about town and country is desperate for fans, like she wants to everybody in NYC to be her fan. So fan Mandy on Facebook here http://tinyurl.com/cto7lq and Twitter her here http://twitter.com/mandystadt so you can become a peep of Mandy’s and get the inside skinny when she needs a source for a story or asses on seats for a gig.

 blog: edit30, insight for business communicators - Richard Miles takes this stuff seriously| blog: Silicon Valley Watcher: Every company is a media company - I couldn’t have said it better|  Twitter: @serena - she has a clue, she’s fun and she streams useful biz/PR connections | Reading | MediaWeek Is Twitter the next Second Life? A mere 40 percent of new visitors return to site … A new study by Nielson Online found that 60 percent of people who sign-up for Twitter do not return after one month. That means only 40 percent of new visitors return, which is up from 30 percent, Nielson reported. MediaWeek suggested these numbers make Twitter similar to the over-hyped virtual world Second Life, which enjoyed much press attention a couple years ago. |  chaimhaasRT @JohnAByrnePRWeek media survey data: 58% of media pros are now on Facebook, 51% LinkedIn, 28% MySpace, & 22% on Twitter. Only 22%? | White House new Flickr photo stream:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/ | Matthew Bishop, The Economist, enjoys his Twitter: @MattBish |  Reasons to reconsider the social media release; tips for getting there

A-Rod Bunts in PR Press Conference

In his anti-climactic press conference yesterday at Yankee spring training camp in Tampa, Florida, Alex Rodriguez released some new information and hedged and maneuvered to put this all behind him. He chose to bunt instead of swinging for the fences - another lost opportunity for a high profile athlete to come clean and set a real example for contrition and re-birth.

The New York tabs have not been kind. See He Must Think We’re All Fools and The Truth Be Told, A-Roid Just Can’t (NY Post - graphic below right) — Alex Rodriguez Needs Dose of Truth Serum and A-Rod’s presser a laugher that wasn’t funny (NY Daily News - graphic left)

The tone of the press conference was set by Yankee media relations director Jason Zillo who would not allow follow-up questions from reporters. The press conference lasted a little over a half hour, far less than the 55 minutes Andy Pettitte was grilled at last year’s Yankee steroid shame-fest.

According to Tyler Kepner, The New York Times:  “Ben Porritt, a former spokesman for John McCain’s presidential campaign and a partner in the crisis-management firm Outside Eyes, sat off camera as Rodriguez explained and apologized.”  Add one more to the A-Rod coterie of PR consultants/image makers/handlers and agents. You wonder if Alex Rodriguez is capable of an honest emotion or thought that is not filtered through consultants.

The press conference was streamed live from several sources such as ESPN, MLB, and YES. What was the point, then, of the live blogging from many news organizations that amounted to a blow-by-blow of what we saw live?  The best live blogging on the event came from Alan Schwarz at The New York Times Bats blog. Schwarz added bemused color commentary that portrayed the event as a highly manipulated media circus.

1:52 p.m.
Yankees PR chief Jason Zillo just announced, “There will not be any follow-up questions … to keep this as efficient as possible.” That does not bode well for any revelations, folks. A lot more Q than A.

2:13 p.m.
Freudian Slip of the Decade: “I’m here to take my medicine.” Alex Rodriguez, Feb. 17, 2009

2:19 p.m.
First really good question (and a form of follow-up) came from Mike Vaccaro of The New York Post, who asked Rodriguez why, if he didn’t think what he was taking was wrong, was he so secretive and so reluctant to ask about proper procedure during the 2001-3 seasons. Rodriguez paused for a while, clearly cornered, and said: “That’s a good question. I knew what we were taking weren’t Tic Tacs. I knew that it was, potentially could be something that perhaps was wrong.”

I guess it all depends on what your definition of “was” was. 

2:27 p.m.
Joel Sherman of The New York Post tried to tie Rodriguez down on the matter of how in the world a $252 million athlete who otherwise takes great care of his body could be, if Rodriguez’s account is accurate, so foolhardy as to not know what he was taking or how to take it. Rodriguez repeated his “young and stupid” defense.

And what is this ‘bole’ that A-Rod said he injected into his body? From Brian’s blog:  “Bole” is clearly the Dominican slang for Primobolan.” A-Rod repeatedly said that his cousin secured the drug and they were both young and foolish. I guarantee that several reporters are in the Dominican Republic right now hunting for that cousin who A-Rod would not name.

This story will go on and on, and the damage will continue. A-Rod stepped up to the plate yesterday and struck out. I have a horrible feeling that for all their talent and all their money the Yankees are in for a miserable season, to the delight of baseball fans outside of New York. 

A-Rod Show Continues Today

The pumped up Alex Rodriguez show kicks into high gear at 1:30 PM today at the Yankees spring training camp in Tampa, Florida. A-Rod will face the media en masse after his one-on-one with ESPN’s Peter Gammons last week left a lot of questions. In that interview A-Rod falsely accused Sports Illustrated writer Selena Roberts of stalking him and breaking into his home. A-Rod subsequently apologized to Roberts.

Expect a lot of hardball questions - Exactly what drugs did he take? Where did he get them? What did they do for him? - and some serious deflection and containment by A-Rod.

It is hard to keep up with all of A-Rod’s handlers, managers and advisors (Scott Boras, Guy Oseary, William Morris Agency, Richard Rubenstein). Plus, he supposedly has two therapists to keep his head on straight. Initial reports are that he will not be as open and contrite as Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte was at last year’s Yankee steroid media confession. That would be a mistake.

What A-Rod and the Yankees want is for this to recede into the background as quickly as possible. Hundreds of baseball players took performance enhancing drugs. Because this is A-Rod - he has assiduously polished his squeaky clean image and he flat out denied taking PED’s before he was caught - he will be hounded and the Yankees will suffer if he does not get it all out at once.

As if A-Rod is not getting enough advice, here is some more: don’t say ‘to be perfectly honest’ and then say you can’t remember what drugs you took, as he did with Gammons. A-Rod is meticulous about his body, his image and his work out regimen. He can only get away with that once.

(top left, Barry Blitt, cover of The New Yorker, Feb. 23, 2009)

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PR/Media Week in Review 02-15-2009

News You Can Lose. Every industry deserves the trade press it gets but can’t even lowly PR do better than PRNews? I deleted at least 10 emails from PRNews last week imploring me to buy their books, go to their conferences, attend webinars on media relations, media training, digital whatever… and I am constantly telemarketed to buy the print publication.  This despite my blog post 2/5 titled PRNews Stuck in Abacus Land that should have elicited some PR maneuvers or at least notified someone that I am not a good prospect for their stuff .

PRNews obviously knows nothing about PR - anybody who buys their dreck is either naive or over stimulated with stimulus funds. Still, repackaging the same PR ‘intelligence’ in a variety of formats and pushing it out to a resistant audience is apparently paying someone’s bills so we officially launch into that business today with the First Annual Media Relations Guide for PRummies (PR Dummies). We employ our own time-tested, field proven three step approach:

#1: Know your client’s business
#2: Know the media you are pitching
#3: Marry #1 & #2

We will send this ‘intelligence’ out in mass emails, conduct webinars, print books, and hold conferences all around the country. Stay tuned.

A-Rod’s Ass. A-Rod was all over the news last week, including several posts here. This Tuesday he is expected to face the press in the Yankees spring training camp. That should spark another round of A-Rod fueled stories that will only feed his already bloated celebrity. Will Selena Roberts, the Sports Illustrated ’stalker,’ be allowed to participate?

Shrinking Media. Bloomberg announced its first ever layoffs last week. Dozens of staffers are facing the axe. Bloomberg always seemed immune to the pressure of traditional media. Now, with financial services in turmoil and media shrinking rapidly, Bloomberg is joining the rest of the world. Fret not, Mike Bloomberg himself is not hurting. He is able to scrape together $80 million or so for his next campaign to stay Mayor of New York.

Eight is Enough. The Killeen Furtney Group, a west coast PR firm, probably thought it was a good idea to represent octuplets mother Nadya Suleman pro bono. Then they started getting death threats. “They’d put me in the wood chipper and throw me in the bottom of the ocean and hope I die,” Killeen said. The Group decided last week that they will consider other ways to spend their non-billable time.

A-Rod Slams Media in PR Home Run

Alex Rodriguez’s interview yesterday with ESPN (see video below) was a masterstroke of PR message and obfuscation. A-Rod was clear that his use of PEDs  (performance enhancing drugs) was contained to a “naive, stupid” time of his career with Texas when the culture of baseball was “loosey goosey.” He has been clean since he joined the Yankees and he implored us to look at the consistency and longevity of his career and not judge him harshly for an anomaly he regrets.

Since this is A-Rod he always appears to be holding back more than he is revealing and he is jockeying to enhance and protect an image clean enough for a Wheaties box (at least he didn’t get caught smoking pot like Michael Phelps). New Yorkers like honesty and they like winners, A-Rod said. All true enough, but what’s this bit about Selena Roberts (top,left) , the Sports Illustrated reporter who broke the A-Rod PED story, stalking him and spreading lies?

Selena Roberts is a highly accomplished sports reporter. When she was with The New York Times she wrote insightful stories about A-Rod and his damaged psyche hurting the team. She is coming out with a book on A-Rod in May that apparently he will not like since he consistently referred to her as something of a journalistic svengali. 

Sports Illustrated published a Q & A with Roberts, in which the reporter talks about the process of breaking the story and her efforts to speak with Rodriguez. She also calls the slugger’s claims “absurd” in an interview with MLB Network.

“”I’ve never set foot in the lobby of Alex’s New York apartment. I’ve never set foot on his property. It’s pure fabrication,” said Roberts, who did say she drove by Rodriguez’s house after receiving permission from Miami Beach police to drive on public property near A-Rod’s house. The Miami Beach police have a “miscellaneous incident” report of that conversation, but Roberts was not cited for anything.

Roberts also asked for and received permission from security at the University of Miami to enter the school’s workout facilities and talk to Rodriguez on Thursday. “I think it’s a diversion, a shoot-the-messenger type of thing,” Roberts said.

 

A-Rod Comes Clean

Alex Rodriguez admitted to ESPN today that he took PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) in 2003 when he was with the Texas Rangers. Quote from the interview:

“Back then, [baseball] was a different culture,” Rodriguez said. “It was very loose. I was young, I was stupid, I was naïve. I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time.

“I did take a banned substance. For that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful.”

Rodriguez, who joined the Yankees for the 2004 season after a trade from Texas, said “all my years in New York have been clean.”

Rodriguez also said of his 2007 interview with Katie Couric on “60 Minutes,” when he denied ever using steroids, that “at the time, I wasn’t being truthful with myself. How could I be truthful with Katie Couric or CBS?”

Good PR move, A-Rod. Now, let’s win a championship.

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