Posts Tagged ‘Geoff Robinson’

1. Spilling the beans becomes inevitable

   Published on Thursday, July 29th, 2010

   It wasn’t the Australian Leaders’ Debate that sparked a major controversy on Monday morning radio. Nor was it the Leaders’ debate timeslot being moved to give preference to the hotly contested final of Australian Masterchef on Sunday night. No, it was Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report inadvertently disclosing the winner of said cooking show.

   In an apparent slip of the tongue, host Geoff Robinson told listeners the name of the winner, later defending himself by saying it was all over the papers. Yes, the Australian papers. New Zealand viewers  are just two weeks into Aussie Masterchef, so many listeners of Morning Report were incensed.

   However, Robinson makes a good point in today’s global media space. It’s near impossible to keep such ‘news’ a secret and really; shouldn’t the cries of anguish and displeasure be levelled at TVNZ for airing the show so many weeks behind the Aussies?  Why not do what they did for American Idol, playing the finale a mere hours after it aired in America?

   We can expect there will be financial reasons for the delay, but as punters, more than ever before, we expect media connectivity, (including entertainment), to be ‘current’

   Thank you Morning Report, for highlighting the heavy feet of our state broadcaster.

   

2. Media training lessons from Jetstar

   Published on Friday, June 26th, 2009

   While the saga of Jetstars’ stranded All Black fans became a communications quagmire, with
   claim and counter-claim, there is one particular element we would like to reflect upon. It is the way Jetstar’s spokesperson responded to questions about the incident during an interview with Radio NZ’s Morning Report last Monday.

   Jetstar’s spokeman Simon Westaway was not prepared to give any ground, let alone apologise.  The key messages were:  These people were late; we will debate this any time anywhere; we carry 12 million people a year.

   To paraphrase: No ifs or buts, we were right; these people were wrong.

   This approach even seemed to ruffle Morning Report’s nice guy Geoff Robinson, and was almost certainly the reason for on-going criticisms of the airline, some of which became quite toxic in the online space.

   Jetstar seems to have seriously misread the New Zealand culture as, in all likelihood, a local company and a local spokesperson would have been more conciliatory with messages like:
   We take all complaints seriously; we will review the matter thoroughly and examine our processes; and If we are wrong, we’ll take it on the chin and talk to these customers about making it right. (Apparently there was CCTV footage that could be reviewed).

   Such an approach would have de-escalated the situation which quickly went from simmering to boiling.

   If you are going to adopt this staunch, brash approach – no nonsense, no vacillation, let’s move on – just be sure you’re bulletproof… Today (Friday), Jetstar’s own reported actions suggest the airline did make some errors.  They are apologising to some customers, offering discount vouchers and reviewing their check-in performance.

   Public 1, Jetstar 0