Posts Tagged ‘air new zealand’

1. Has our media diet become unhealthy or are we being fed what we are asking for?

   Published on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

   Is there a disturbing trend towards tabloid style news items taking precedence over the real news?  Just a few weeks ago the possibility that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had broken up was in our six pm news bulletins.  Don’t get me wrong I have been known to read the odd gossip magazine but a good diet is all about balance, variety and moderation. 

   Dee Dee Myers’ piece in Vanity Fair discusses trivialisation of news as she examines the Tiger Woods story.

   The entire country stops for Tiger yet when President Obama makes more important announcements the country barely pauses for breath. Her article concludes with the fact that finally the National Enquirer has been deemed eligible for a Pulitzer Prize. Now that is real news.

   The Tiger Woods saga highlights the potential crisis we are facing in the world of news – that of tabloid style stories stopping the real news stories taking center stage. Rosemary McLeod’s column in the Sunday Star Times was right on the money.   

   Today’s Toyota story relating to their faulty vehicle accelerators is as important as the collapse of Enron, yet was second or third in the morning news items.  The bigger story was a claim that Air New Zealand has a culture of excess drinking despite facts to the contrary being communicated clearly by their CEO. (Declaration of interest here, we do provide PR support to Air New Zealand.)

   Given Tiger’s speech and Robin Brooke’s Close Up interview, is Performance Media a new art form?  For audiences this is something we can watch and critique more easily than substantive news? In Tiger’s case we seem entirely focused on how he, and his team, is handling this crisis and how genuine the apology is.  All know his speech was scripted, rehearsed and stage managed. 

   If the media and public know this, then who is to blame – why did the media cover it?  For the simple reason they knew they could get an audience because it is just the sort of thing we love to watch.  In today’s commercially competitive environment what will sell is what will make the news.

   How can we make sure our media diet is balanced without it being so boring we simply gorge on junk or become undernourished and miss out on essential news and information that could be more relevant to our lives?

   

2. Put your money where your mouth is

   Published on Thursday, May 14th, 2009

   As consumers, we are much accustomed to the use of a celebrity endorsement to sell us things.  In the early days it was athletes, war heroes pushing product, then with the advent of television in came a whole new host of celebrities paid to play as endorsers of everyday items.  It’s a simple trade really; the famous and beautiful lend their shiny allure or values to influence the purchaser to buy stuff.  The hook-up equals brand.

   Maybe it’s a recession-chic thing but increasingly ‘brand stories’ are being told by the people that work in the organisation themselves.  We’ve just seen Air New Zealand’s much-feted CEO Rob Fyfe putting his own butt on the line by getting undressed in the airline’s latest TVC.  But he was not alone, other Air New Zealand staff got naked for the cause as well.

   What about the ethical endorser?  Recently in the US, an ordinary, everyday CEO of a not-for-profit became the face of Doritos chips. Doritos are a Pepsi product and Kjerstin Erickson is the CEO of Forge, a US-based non-profit organisation that works with displaced communities in Africa. At first the marriage seems unlikely until ones thinks of the mutual benefit; the Doritos get a leg up in terms of ethical reputation and Forge gets all over the place.

   This is clever, because using a super-famous celebrity endorser can sometimes be overpowering. As lessons learned from the recent ‘Great-Free-Chicken Fiasco’ will bare witness.  Oprah Winfrey kindly treated ‘the entire internet’ to two pieces of KFC by suggesting people get on ine and download a coupon. It was mayhem. Fervent with the idea of free stuff, servers were crashed, participating stores were slammed and the end result was a near riot, as KFC was not able to deliver on the mass demand. A generous concept became a PR *fail* because the offer way outstripped the ability of the Fried Chicken seller to deliver.  Back to our stripping CEO Rob Fyfe; the trick here is to keep it simple, if the front-end makes a promise, do ensure the back-end can make good on it. Delivering on a promise has got to be the best brand story ever.