The tale of the Barefoot Bandit in today’s Times (currently locked behind a paywall, otherwise I would of course have encouraged you to click here) is, on the surface, a ripping yarn, a boy’s own adventure. A seventeen-year-old escapes juvenile detention and goes on the run across America for two years: stealing cars and yachts and using them to cross America; caught in people’s houses, naked, before escaping into the woods; leaving semi-anonymous donations to animal charities. The Barefoot Bandit, so called because a footprint was found at the scene of one of his thefts, has now apparently topped it all by stealing a plane and crash-landing it in the Bahamas. Hmmm.

If all this sounds too good to be true, that’s surely because it is; this tale strikes me as a PR scam. Face it, even the Times, revelling in every second of the story, can’t help but pitch it as if it’s a high concept movie: “Part Huckleberry Finn, part Catch Me if You Can” is how they describe the Barefoot Bandit’s escapades, whilst the inevitable Facebook Fan Page describes him as “Western Washington’s new Jesse James (without the murders)”.

The crash landing of the plane is a stunt too far, however, as is the gobsmacked but supportive mother, who apparently said: “I hope to hell he stole those airplanes – I would be so proud!” If there isn’t a canny movie publicist brewing up a long-term publicity campaign for a blockbuster film somewhere behind the scenes, I’d be amazed.

If you ask me, someone’s taken the sort of stunts Harry Reichenbach used to pull about 95 years ago and run with them. Take Reichenbach’s campaign for The Virgin of Stamboul, just after World War One, which I wrote about in detail in The Fame Formula. To promote the movie, about a runaway bride who flees Istanbul, Reichenbach hired a bunch of Turkish waiters and dressed them as a sheik and his entourage. He then announced to the press that said ‘sheik’ had come to America to find his runaway bride, the virgin of Stamboul, and would appreciate the American public’s help finding her in New York.

There followed a feeding frenzy in the press, who drank up the story and portrayed it in lavish detail to an equally attentive public. Only one journalist noticed the ‘sheik’s’ frayed cuffs and picked apart the story to find it wasn’t true – but by that point no one else in the press or the public cared. It was exposed as a hoax and still people lapped up every carefully staged detail. Then, when the movie came out a few weeks later, they went to see it in their droves.

All this resonates deeply with the Barefoot Bandit’s alleged two-year-long spree of relatively harmless crime. It’s like the Virgin of Stamboul campaign, being played under deeper cover to hide the frayed cuffs a little better. There’s the mother, who wants him to flee the States and continue his spree abroad; the cross and concerned FBI special agent who worries that people are making a hero of the Bandit; the Bandit himself, a geeky looking everykid, who finds time to be charitable even as he rips of aeroplanes, but who only really hurts the insurance companies. These characters, and the harmless crimes, are so generic-yet-quirky that major stars would surely be knocking over each other to play them.

There have to be some frayed cuffs somewhere in the Bandit’s story; there’s nothing new under the sun after all and in these Twitter-obsessed times, where copy permanently needs to be filed two minutes ago, this is the sort of story that could run and run. The article reads like a movie synopsis for a family adventure movie that will doubtless have an inspiring moral tacked on at the end, and that’s probably what it is. It’s just that the journalists don’t have time to check their facts anymore.

Not that it really matters if the Bandit’s story is fact or fiction, just so long as you want to see the film version, coming in 3D to a multiplex near you soon…

It’s been a good week for stunts – the Barefoot Bandit’s a classy effort, but a little over-complicated. More gloriously simple is Island’s approach to promoting Tom Jones’s new album of hymns, Praise and Blame.

Leaving the praise to the critics, who see it as an equivalent to Johnny Cash’s late bid for credibility, Island’s VP, David Sharpe, seems to have taken it upon himself to do the blaming, in an accusatory leaked email that suggests he would rather not have spent millions on a church album and wanted a repeat of Jones’s Sex Bomb stylings.

This was written in May, but leaked only now, in the week of release, just in time for the Sunday Times, the Telegraph and pretty much every other media outlet to get all hot under the collar about it and puff the album’s arrival in spectacular fashion in news and reviews pages.

Stunt of the week, without a doubt. But that’s not unusual, given that it was also the conversation of the week.

If any politician was going to pull off the greatest stunt of a generation, it really had to be Tony Blair. And, by committing all the proceeds from his memoirs (as well as the £4 million advance) to the Royal British Legion’s Battle Back challenge centre, a project that will provide state-of-the-art rehabilitation services for seriously injured troops returning from the frontline, he has done exactly that.

The book can now be read guilt free, knowing that the proceeds will not be lining Blair’s pockets but helping soldiers returning from the frontline. It’s got all the talkability that Mandelson’s book lacked, it’s released in a season when most politicians are on holiday and the only serious competition it has for the front pages are Kelly Brook celebrating naked month by dyeing herself orange and parading in a series of ever-skimpier frocks and Joe McElderry coming out of the closet in the hope that it’ll shift a few more units of his debut album.

Tony Blair may have had support in the past, but this proves he’s learned how to keep his name in the public eye, and his reputation safe, all by himself – if the book tanks, he won’t suffer and he’ll be seen to have tried. He’s protected himself in a hermetically sealed aura of ‘nice guy’ once again and it’ll be interesting to see what happens next with his memoirs – and how the people who have wanted to see him accused of war crimes will react.

The more I think about Lady Gaga’s meaty costume worn at her appearance at the MTV Awards, the less sure I am about the intentions behind it.

Is it 1) a controlled and thoughtful satire in meat couture about the plight of women in the pop industry, who are oiled up, lubed up, dressed in schoolgirl attire and presented in an assortment of cheesily provocative poses for the pleasure of older men all over the planet, MTV being the spiritual home of this meat market? Given that Gaga has come out on the side of the outsider in a number of interviews, this is perfectly possible.

Or is it 2), a huge, desperate mistake, concocted in the back rooms of her PR company by giggling rejects from a Chris Morris media satire determined to multiply the outrage Gaga generates every time she goes out?

Given Gaga’s wardrobe people have been vying to outdo their previous creations (cigarette sunglasses, playing a piano sat on a toilet for the X Factor etc) each time they come up with a new one, it would be forgivable to suspect the latter. But that would mean ignoring the Gaga that let herself be seen in an interview with Caitlin Moran in the Times over the summer – one who was interested, approachable, gleefully outrageous, grateful to her fans and clearly bright enough to know that outrageous media manipulation had to have a point if it was going to be of any value whatsoever, even if the point was just to get people wondering what was meant by it.

The meat dress is the big divider, the sort of thing that will get petitions raised against Gaga by PETA and devout Hindus. But it will also upset all those people who like their meat (and their pop music) neatly packaged in clingfilm so they can’t tell that it was once alive.

That Gaga has said it could mean many things is a good sign, but even if it was carefully thought out stunt the fact remains that it could still fail thanks to the weight of angry complaint.

As the nights draw in faster and faster, it’s worth remembering that, 50 years ago, Alfred Hitchcock dreamed up two things that have defined the horror film industry ever since. The first was the film Psycho. The second was a publicity stunt for the film that was so successful that it has come back time and time again, in one form or another, to open other films. Because of its ubiquity, it doesn’t appear to be revolutionary anymore, but it was.

The stunt was simple; Hitchcock simply demanded that the audience be barred from entering the cinema after the film had started. Back then, people tended to wander into the cinema half way through a film and stay for the first reels of the next showing if they liked what they saw.

Cinema owners weren’t happy, but changed their tune rapidly when audiences, thrilling to Hitchcock’s reputation and the demands he put in them, queued around the blocks to see the film in the correct order. The exhibitors soon perked up, too – when the low budget slasher pic turned in a cool $50 million worldwide. Sometimes the stunt really can be as big as the film.

And so the day has come! Prince William is to marry Kate Middleton. Be of good cheer, Britain, there’s new blood being drafted into the old firm!

It really is fabulous news, in such tough economic times, that the cuts will not affect everything. In 2011 there will be something for the whole nation to celebrate, especially the merchandise sellers, caterers and makers of bunting. It’s really an early Christmas present for them all.

And better still, it’ll take place 30 years after Charles and Diana’s wedding. We will have a new Princess of Hearts – and the same sort of economic straits then as now. Perhaps we’ll get anniversary riots in Brixton and Toxteth too, only to have the wedding calm them down.

And if this exceptional and fabulous stunt doesn’t calm the angrily beating heart of Britain, then there will be a second pageant the following year when the Olympics comes to town. All this should make up for the fact that we probably won’t get the World Cup, shouldn’t it?

And if this pump priming of the economy still doesn’t work, we could always celebrate another anniversary in the Falklands in 2013, couldn’t we? There’s nothing quite like a war for stimulating economic revival, after all!

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Cynicism aside, it’ll be interesting to see how the royal couple cope. It is to be hoped that the couple – and the a Royal PR – have learned lessons from Princess Diana’s trials and tribulations, but the media has changed beyond recognition in the past thirty years. How will Kate Middleton learn to cope with the pressure?

As I noted yesterday, the Palace used to shut its doors at 5pm daily. Now it is proactive and on call to respond to anything, anytime. The couple need to be well prepared for the onslaught of interest a Royal wedding inevitably brings, what with the digital explosion and easy, instantaneous access to information. I expect they will be being drilled in the ways of dealing with the media over the coming months.

They’ve got to be perfect if they’re going to act as a fillip for the economy, after all.

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This is a one fact story – “they’re getting married” sums it up – and yet, as the day goes on, it is elongating out of all control. It’s all over the news channels and I can’t help but suspect that all sorts of brands and celebrities will be getting in on the act, hoping a little of the stardust will rub off on them. After all, David Cameron is already proudly announcing that he slept on the Mall aged 15 for the 1981 wedding…

Football’s back in the news, but this time it’s not about vast sums being splurged on footballers in the transfer market, it’s a stunt that raises awareness about the quality of food at your average sports match.

My local team, Forest Green, have a new chairman, CEO of Ecotricity Dale Vince. Vince is vegan – and he has just abolished all red meat products from being sold to punters during the match.

Out go meat pies, chips, curry sauce, sausages. In comes healthier food – though what exactly has yet to be announced. It’s likely to open up debate about the strange imbalance between watching men at peak fitness playing football whilst gorging on artery-clogging fast foods, positioning Dale Vince as the Jamie Oliver of the footballing world.

It’ll be interesting to see what vegetarian and vegan alternatives come in – veggie burgers never will quite cut the mustard in the eyes of hardcore footie fans. But the fight could well make for an interesting debate on the way people approach food in the football stands. Let’s wait and see if this makes its way up into the canteens of the Premier League.

Vince has lots of local interest and is building his brand locally. It’s fascinating to see the way Vince has taken his core values and woven them seamlessly into everything he does, from his green electricity company to a meat-free Forest Green Rovers. It has become a brand truth that instantly allows an audience to recognise what he and his companies stand for. It will be interesting to see how far he can take them.

Radiohead are back with a new album, The King of Limbs, and a development of the original stunt for their last album, In Rainbows, which was for sale on a ‘pay what you can afford’ basis.

Excitement has been amping up and up since the band announced the early digital download release of the album to the point where the media is saturated with information – the Guardian have been running live updates about it and even the Daily Mail ran a long piece about these ‘Industry Rebels‘ shunning their record label. Radiohead have certainly played this well.

The Mail are right to call them rebels – Radiohead have stepped out of the major label industry by selling the album online, although they will be releasing it in traditional formats with indie label XL later in the year. But by releasing it at the height of the bloated awards season and making headlines just as effectively as ever, they have proved that they have the emotional intelligence to connect with both media and, more importantly, their fan base. It is almost certainly no coincidence that they released it at the same time as the Brit Awards – it certainly smacks of a two fingered salute to the industry.

This is a band at the height of their ability to stir up conversation, who are bending the art of the stunt out of its traditional shapes and using it to their own ends.

Now, let’s hope the album is as good as their ability to stir up conversation. If it’s as good or better than In Rainbows it will only compound their ability to sell albums in any format in future.

For those who’ve not heard, a Saatchi & Saatchi campaign for client Toyota has led to a $10m suit being filed against the ad firm and the car company, as well as various individuals connected with the campaign.

The campaign, which allowed people to sign up their friends to be ‘pranked’ with a serious of worrying emails from one of 5 colourful fictional characters, was a bungled attempt by the Saatchi suits to make the world’s most boring car company look radical. This is a textbook example of why forging the brand narrative is best left to the publicists: the creative excellence of Ad Agencies does not extend to long form narrative content.

In other words, it was a textbook example of advertising as insular and irrelevant communication. Instead of seeking to connect with any true brand narrative or profile, the Saatchi & Saatchi team betrayed their arrogance and remained convinced of their idea of what the brand needed, irrespective of what people actually wanted.

Ad folk lack understanding of the psyche of the news agenda: unlike PRs, they aren’t programmed to anticipate the downside, to work the worst case scenario into the fibre of their strategy.

Amanda Duik, the woman suing the company, was apparently targeted over a week long period with emails- genuine, for all she knew- from a football hooligan character called ‘Sebastian Bowler’, who came complete with his own S&S-created myspace profile and other web-based proofs of existence. She reckons she experienced sufficient mental distress over the terrifying period to sue for massive damages from all involved.

Those who don’t follow my thoughts closely might be surprised that I’m condemning S&S for this: what differentiates it from the kind of stunts perpetrated by myself and my influences? It’s certainly not because I’ve decided to clamber onto my high horse.

When classic Hollywood movie publicist Jim Moran placed a lion in a motel room under the name ‘TR Zan’ to promote the release of a strikingly similarly named movie, he caused a good deal more distress than S&S have here.

However, his stunt did what good PR does: it tapped into the popular conversation and interwove the brand narrative with it. It spoke of wilderness and adventure, which was exactly right at a time when movies were reflecting the increasingly adventurous spirit of the American public. It had also involved significant calculation of risk, and understood that inevitable bad press would be absorbed by the whole daring nature of the thing.

In part it’s a question of money: ad firms, arguably, have too much. Insular ad campaigns are bred when teams have the time and the resources to ponder their angles until they’re warped out of all recognition, over-thought. PRs, by contrast, are fleet footed. Their spatial awareness of the publicity landscape is second to none because careers spent responding to repeated brand events in real-time have honed their instincts and trained them never to slip up.

It also adds weight to a pet theory of mine: of communications professionals, it’s the PRs who skew furthest to the right (creative) side of the brain. Rightbrained functions, both numerical and linguistic, are much more involved with the comparative, the contextual, the pragmatic. While the leftbrain has the advantage when rigorously pursuing a clear, single minded idea, it must be difficult to wrap a leftbrained mind around an idea as mutable and intangible as a brand narrative.

While I think that Duik is probably taking this rather too seriously, her lawsuit should come as a warning to ad folk everywhere. In the modern world, the hierarchy of ideas does not flow from the comms professionals to the public. Communications must be discursive, responsive, and above all, narrative. Nobody understands this better than a good PR.

It’s a great story for anyone who’s obsessed by the showmanship of selling:  Arch West, the great Frito-Lay marketing exec and inventor of Doritos, has been covered with his beloved chips in his final resting place. West came from a long line of great retail mavericks who had the fire and the guts to tap into the popular consciousness and then harness it instantly and recklessly, with scarcely a thought for the opinions of shareholders and other boring considerations. I know my banging on about the golden age of showmanship is something you see a lot on this blog, but I’m increasingly worried that we’re not going to see his like again.

What is it with snack moguls? First Fredrich Baur, retail genius and inventor of the iconic ‘Pringles’ can, had his ashes buried in one of his beloved crisp receptacles back in 2008, and now this fantastic news item from West, presumably a sight that roughly resembled Doritos’ stoner student target customer after a big night in. The real genius of the retail surpremo is represented by these almost mythic funerals: these were guys who truly lived the brand, who integrated their lives and their behaviour into what they were communicating. There is something unimaginably inspirational about these two men, who know who to grab column inches even from beyond the grave.

Their heritage is rich. When Gordon Selfridge came to London, he made a fortune out of the women’s lib movement by promoting luxury shopping as a lifestyle choice, a statement of freedom: he was unafraid to be a huge character and to consciously attract huge characters. He encouraged women to look at his freedom, to look at that of his wife, and to demand this for themselves via the medium of their wallets.

Throughout his career, he ran his store less as a business than a story factory. He invented the clapometer, he maintained extraordinary contacts throughout the national media, he orchestrated fabulous window displays with top celebrities. Selfridge, like West and Baur after him, understood that being a true brand ambassador means treating each day as a news item, investing each step you take with narrative flair. He was Selfridges, and he lived by one of his most powerful maxims: “People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.”

Even going back as far as my idol P.T. Barnum, we find the tradition of the showman retailer. Before the FeeJee Mermaid, Tom Thumb and his great travelling roadshow, Barnum was a store clerk, and apparently an excellent salesman. This stuff isn’t coincidence: the retail world represents the beating heart of what all communications and sales industries do. On the shop floor, it’s sale or nothing, and it’s a cradle that has taught some of the best the art of haggling, cajoling, dazzling, even deceiving. What’s more, whole retail brands have been built on those personalities that rise to the top of such a world.

There is nothing more inspiring than having a marketing mind at the top of the tree: when a showman is running an outfit, their communications strategy isn’t something pasted on top of a rigid corporate interior. Their very essence, all of their activity, is informed by the spirit of the big risk and the hard sell.

The question is, where are the inheritors of this tradition? In these days of corporate retail groups, where shareholders reign supreme and ideas often have to pass through so many hands that they’re killed off before delivery, is there room for another Arch West? I see a lot of truly ambitious kids in the course of my work, I only hope some of them resist the pressure, keep the fire, and remember even at the age of 97 that a funeral is just another stage to be mastered. As Ken Campbell, another recently departed showman, once said: “the anagram of funeral is real fun”. Let’s hope that we in the commercial world don’t all now take ourselves too seriously to remember this.

The video of Polish politician Katarzyna Lenart stripping for votes has generated the kind of online buzz that other party political broadcasts (and I use the term in its loosest sense) could only dream of. Shot on what appears to be a pretty low grade camera and featuring a swivel chair that wouldn’t look out of place in the head office of a packaging company in Slough, it looks a bit like something you’d find on Babestation at 3am. Still, at least she doesn’t stoop to airbrushing.

The knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss this out of hand. It’s not just crazy, it’s obvious. Surely even the voyeuristic, big brother guzzling, internet porn fed, fetid mess of a world we live in wouldn’t fall for something so desperate. It may be getting watched, but it won’t win votes.

Having said that, futurology is a tricky discipline, especially in the fad happy world of politics. Perhaps Lenart’s dance is so mad that it works. Lord knows we’ve been waiting for something to kick off the ‘digital elections’ repeatedly promised- and denied- through campaign strategies over the past few years.

Cameron fell foul of the net when his vote for change poster, complete with his staring visage airbrushed to Jordanian levels, was appropriated by a few ingenious trolls who created http://mydavidcameron.com/. The site allowed wannabe satirists to introduce their own accompanying slogans, with often hilarious results. It became one of the few truly concentrated, attention grabbing focal points of leftist criticism.

Across the pond, Boston senator Scott Brown ran into controversy earlier this year after guerrilla online tactics instigated by his communications department majorly backfired. Senior Republican advisor Eric Fehrnstrom attempted to artificially create the kind of satirical bite that grew naturally from the David Cameron affair when he set up a fake twitter account for Democrat Allan Khazei (@crazykhazei).

Apart from being disastrously unfunny (sample tweet: “Just read Scott Brown’s book. He isn’t the only one who had it tough growing up. I once got a splinter.”) the whole affair generated a storm around Brown’s use of public funds- an area of debate more or less untapped prior to the revelations. It was the exact opposite of a political communications campaign’s intended effect.

In short, whatever they say to the contrary, political brand advisors know bugger all about how to harness the internet: Obama’s web success aside, online campaigning is still uncharted territory. So who knows, perhaps in twenty years’ time Lenart will be hailed as the messiah and cabinets the world over will look like the B Team of a home counties branch of Secrets. If Theresa May is looking to try something similar, I hear Vaseline on the camera lens works a treat.

I’ve recently been running around on a kind of UK Tour, delivering a new presentation in Gateshead, Brighton and various locations in London for a range of industry events in between the rigours of my day-to-day duties.

One advantage of the thinking that goes in to this kind of offering is that along with the new ideas I discover and devise, I am reminded of some of my favourite pieces of wisdom. Amazing quotes and thoughts which get pushed to the back of my mind are suddenly thrust back in front of me- and my audiences- a couple of times a week.

One is from the great film-maker Jim Jarmusch, and it informs much of my thinking about modern communications: ‘Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Authenticity is invaluable, originality is non-existent’.

In these times, it’s a good insight to remember. One of the less-observed effects of the rise of the internet is that it has disabused us of the illusion of originality. Before 1996 or so, those everyday snippets of inspiration or bursts of creativity didn’t get stored for later consumption and re-consumption. Nowadays they do.

Too often, people in my business forget that what we do has a proud heritage, carved out by bullshitters, showmen and mavericks. That’s why I couldn’t help but feel a small thrill as PRs working for the stain remover brand Vanish and the “Wear it Pink” Breast Cancer Campaign were firmly reminded that claiming total originality as a point of difference is always a risky business.

For those who didn’t catch it, the campaign launched with a stunt whereby allegedly ‘the world’s largest bra’ was hung across a skyscraper in central London. The news was swiftly responded to by one Joey Skaggs, a conceptual artist and genius of media manipulation of whom I’ve written before, pointing out that he came up with the same idea back in the 60’s, except his was bigger, bolder, and immeasurably more badass. More importantly, his wasn’t touted as ‘world’s biggest bra’ (even though it probably was). The size was pertinent to its underlying feminist agenda.

Skaggs was one of the greats, a true genius. His stunts were always not only attention-grabbing but poignant, judging the zeitgeist and the instincts of the media to perfection. Above all, he was an artist, with the front page of a paper his ever-willing canvass. The best number too many to list here, ranging from his Christmas day 1968 staging of a life size Vietnamese nativity scene to his 1976 ‘cathouse for dogs’ to the more recent 2006 ‘universal bullshit detector watch’.

One group of folk who should have taken a leaf out of Skaggs’s book were PRs at the Guinness Book of Records, who today got a nice slew of coverage for their Guinness World Records Day. They are to be feted for the global dimension of the day, which saw record breakers around the world playing up to ironic stereotype-themed stunts (largest collection of leprechauns in Dublin et al). However, their photo ops still largely came from biggest, tallest, most- the kind of bread and butter offering a creative like Skaggs might have eschewed.

The spirit of Jarmusch’s comment doesn’t require that we constantly bow down and pay homage to our illustrious forebears, but it highlights an important distinction. While originality is impossible, authenticity is not. Don’t claim to be the first, the best, the biggest. Instead find the same seams of genius that others have tapped, and dig deeper to find what is true and right for your project.

Another quote I’ve been using in my presentation sums it up. An old PR friend of mine once remarked to me that ‘what matters is contacts, culture, energy, creativity, bullshit and bollocks. And of course, the last piece of coverage. We succeed because we are scum-sucking, news-junky, urban cosmopolite, ambidextrous grasshoppers’.

A true publicity showman has his nose to ground, his finger on the mouse, and always knows just what to steal and when.

The unmatchable Hollywood publicist, agent and stuntmaker Jay Bernstein has shown us all once again how a true publicity superstar does things with a fitting final stunt. The sadly deceased genius has defied having his inimitable profile smothered even by death himself, and has managed to release his book onto an unsuspecting public from beyond the grave. Anyone who cares at all about the art of truly inspirational PR, from understanding clients to launching groundbreaking stunts, should buy it. Right now.

Being a PR, I just can’t resist a quick plug: those looking to understand Bernstein’s remarkable talents could also do worse than investing in a copy of my book The Fame Formula. In it, I dissect, analyse and celebrate the incredible gift of Bernstein and his ilk for capturing the public, as well as understanding so well the stars they catapulted to fame with apparent ease. Their arts aren’t lost, but they are essential background reading for anyone seeking to make waves in the comparatively anodyne world of modern communications. In these uncertain days in the shadow of a certain Lord L, the lessons of the past have never been more pressing.

Bernstein was one of the absolute greats. Unmistakably, he was a true showman of the kind I’ve always admired. His stunts, which ranged from artificially stoking Tom Jones’s sex bomb reputation with hired pantie-throwers to holding his own-televised- wedding underwater, are now the stuff of legend. Like Jim Moran and other ancient heroes of mine, he was a fabulous ringmaster of publicity and pizazz.

However, for all the hype about him being the ‘inventor of the modern publicity stunt’, his greatest talent was far more subtle. While researching the Fame Formula, he was one of the figures I had the pleasure of interviewing during a stint across the pond. A gent and an enthusiast, he gave up his valuable time without complaint. Upon entering his house- formerly owned by Rita Hayward and site of the first Jacuzzi in Hollywood- my eyes were assailed by a remarkable collection of memorabilia. The place was filled with debris from his remarkable time in the industry.

As a hopeless collector myself I was excited by the sheer volume of it (and I particularly wonder what happened to his incredible collection of stuffed animals), but I was also impressed and touched: these deeply personal items were evidence of the highly developed bonds Bernstein had with his clients. His memories of each and every client were fond, full and nuanced. One particularly memorable moment involved him musing as to what John Wayne might have said if he’d been offered the script for Brokeback Mountain, just released at the time.

He took clients all the way, and each of the crazy stories he launched came from a place of deep thinking, considered strategy and mutual trust.

It strikes me that, while Jay’s stunts place him in the vein of ‘publicist’s publicist’, his relationships with clients offer up lessons to those in any line of work. Brand communications in any field can only work from a basis of deep mutual respect between those working within the brand and those pushing it out. Madness, controversy and conversation spring from narratives mutually developed and sculpted over years- Bernstein knew this, but I fear it’s something we’re starting to forget.

Yesterday’s failed Bayern Munich stunt was an ideal example of what happens when creative energy fails to connect with the reality of the media narrative. For those who didn’t hear, the German football team wrangled a piece of PR trickery which fuelled an horrific backlash.

An announcement on their website that “a spectacular name” was to sign for the club invited fans to watch the name’s unveiling on the team’s Facebook page.

Needless to say, an incredible amount of furore was generated and fans eagerly tuned in at the proposed time in their thousands. However, following a short video clip from FCB’s general manager Christian Nerlinger, fans were treated to a view of their own Facebook profile picture, followed by their own name on the back of a Bayern Munich number 8 shirt.

Cue slow clap. It’s not hard to imagine the brainstorming session behind that one. The scene: a smoky little room, the unearthly glow of a dozen iMacs lending a superhuman sheen to the bearded mugs of the creative team. Who knows what blue sky heights they tapped into to get there, but the point is that when that eureka moment came and someone threw this ‘off the wall’ nugget of media disruption into the ether, everyone was clearly too busy congratulating themselves to think for a second about the fans themselves, and the ongoing, human narrative that would arise.

A football team’s stock in trade is the illogical, desperate and oddly beautiful passion of its fans. Football is not just another consumer product, and its fans are not simply consumers. Like the release of a Morrissey album or the unveiling of a new Pope, the transfer window is something that inspires interest and conversation that transcends the rational and borders on the obsessive.

In order to keep fans onside, buying tickets and following the team after the window has closed, the most important thing that a team’s communications need to do is inspire and retain trust. If the fans trust the team through and through, then no matter what disappointments or controversies come their way, they will stick by the team with religious ardour.

Ironically, of course, this ardour and support is something the stunt was clearly trying to acknowledge, and I’m not claiming that FCB was deliberately sticking two fingers up at its fanbase. However, the main shortcoming of creative is that it gets so wrapped up in its own genius that it forgets how the great unwashed actually think. In the eyes of someone who’s skipped a class or skived off that all important meeting just to watch the announcement of a name this is not a clever stunt- it’s a sick joke.

In short, the team weren’t thinking in narrative terms. They planned meticulously up to an initial moment of shock and disruption, but failed to plan for what would come after. Feeling betrayed and abandoned, fans have lost some of that crucial trust. While 20 years ago this may not have been such an issue, they’ll now whip each other up into a frenzy via social media, and likely leave in significant numbers.

I encourage clever media thinking, but when clever become smartarse, particularly in a supposedly grassroots organisation like a sports team, you’ve got disaster on your hands. Some good may come out of this fiasco if the suits who run modern sport can be made to see that.

It looks like Tupac Shakur’s back on top for the foreseeable future- it was announced today that his frankly rather terrifying hologram will be going on tour following its first outing at Coachella festival.  More than anything else, this is proof of the remarkable power of a great stunt- and is a blow for the great American tradition of stuntsmanship. Just think, Coachella dug up Tupac, Hop Farm dug up Bruce Forsythe.

As the megalithic rapper burst onto the stage with a cry of “What the **** is up Coachella? Throw up a m************ finger!”, a cynic could hear the jingling of thousands of eager pockets as the entire live entertainment industry collectively calculated the potential posthumous income of a galaxy of late stars.

Money aside, though, this was everything a stunt should be: audacious, loud, unexpected, genuinely groundbreaking (Digitial Domain Media Group Inc. reckon this is the first time totally new 3D footage of a star has been used in this way) and, best of all, just a little bit silly. Supposedly, too, the bill behind this wasn’t negligible- most valuations are coming in at around the $1/2m mark.

Whatever Coachella pixies were behind this should be applauded: in the entertainment space, faint heart never won the hearts and minds of the fickle crowd. Let’s hope those with the power on our side of the pond are taking note and getting ready to listen to a few wild ideas. Ones that don’t involve billing Bruce Forsythe alongside Bob Dylan, that is.

A deep collective breath is perhaps needed. Pippa Middleton’s identification with firearms last weel, thanks to the somewhat incautious actions of friend Romain Rabillard, has led many to predict that her fledging career in the public eye is already over. Like her sister, runs the thinking, Middleton’s image relies on propriety- all 3 Middleton siblings have a tidy line in British demureness and easy class (bum jokes aside, that is). Now she’s been seen with a gun-toting aristocrat, speeding down a Paris Rue (or possible Avenue) to what the media must assume was some kind of hedonistic love-fest, we’ll all fall out of love with her. I cannot imagine this being the case.

Unquestionably, she’s damaged a previously untarnished image. However, if recent public opinion surrounding the Royals shows us anything, it’s that this is no longer a family (or extended family) you can write off at the drop of a hat. Besides, whatever becomes of Pippa, it’s highly unlikely that such an affair would do much to worry the custodians of the Royal Brand, who keep their charges in a very different space.

It seems like no time at all since we saw Harry splashed all over the papers, dressed in an SS uniform, stumbling out of a party. I wonder how all the commentators who wrote him off then felt when they saw the almost sickeningly adoring coverage around his recent meeting with Usain Bolt. Probably as gobsmacked as the rest of us, to be fair.

Undoubtedly, Pippa will have learned a hard lesson- when you’re associated with the Royals, you’re damned whatever you do, and you’re judged by the company you keep. However, I’d say this lesson comes at an opportune time. Still in the first flush of fame, this episode should teach Pippa how to begin thinking of herself as a brand. The key now will be for her to think about what she represents, move away from the users and hangers on who inevitably attach themselves to the newly famous and begin considering the serious commercial applications of her brand I’m sure remain just around the corner.

Jeremy Corbyn has always insisted that Labour policy be decided by consultation and debate. With the leaking of a draft of the party’s manifesto, Labour has launched its most ambitious act of policy crowdsourcing.

As a pundit pointed out, leaking the manifesto is probably the surest way of getting the media to seriously read it. Media indifference isn’t just a problem for Corbyn’s Labour. In twenty-first century elections – fuelled by big data, algorithmically-matched messaging and fake news – the manifesto is an increasingly irrelevant form. In times that are less politically tribal and where information is more accessible and independently verifiable, the manifesto emerges as a relic of elections past. Sites like Vote for Policies provide more personalised spaces for the floating voter. Functioning as a kind e-harmony for politics, the site match-makes users to the policy areas of the seven main parties.

To read the rest go to: http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2017/05/11/corbyns-labour-manifesto-when-leak-not-leak

So #Felix is no longer just a brand of cat food or a defunct cartoon character, but embodies a new marque of heroism and maverick adventure.  A stuntman extraordinaire, who last night earned much sort after one word equity.

Felix Baumgartner, a 43-year-old Austrian, former military parachutist,  skydived into the record books. Jumping from 23 miles above the earth, Felix reached a mind numbing maximum speed of 833.9 miles per hour (1,342 kilometres per hour)- amounting to Mach 1.24, faster than the speed of sound.

In the midst of all the furore surrounding our new superstar, I’d like to take a moment to celebrate the brand hero who made it all possible – Red Bull.

Over the past 10 years Red Bull has done its level best to own and invest its central ethos into speed, adventure and heroics . From the Flugtag to Felix,  Red Bull has taken the reins, moving beyond usual corporate sponsorship and creating extraordinary events tailor-made to communicate its values,  in an uncompromising pursuit of brand nirvana.

Back in a land time has forgotten I developed a strategic roll out for a net channel, Network of The World: a challenging brand with a passion to be the first footing web entrepreneurs of the new age of information culture. NOW were looking for a big  idea to kick start the brand across the globe. I found a team of adventurers with a big event idea, and they introduced me to Joe Kittinger.

Until yesterday Mr Kittinger was the parachute record holder. His 1960 record was broken by Felix, who Kittinger coached and mentored throughout the development of the jump. Kittinger was the only person allowed to communicate with Mr Baumgartner while he was inside the capsule which carried him into space.

Kittinger was a scarily impressive action man; a real life super hero whose bravery allowed the development of suits used by the Space crews who ultimately stepped foot on the moon. His primitive jumps 50 years ago did not benefit from the technology which aided Felix in the 21st century. His adventure had all the qualities of great stories that capture imaginations around the world. It was dangerous, it was visually captivating, it was a tale of one man triumphing against the odds, and he was ready to work with us to make it happen again.

We spent months working on a means to bring the event to fruition, but alas NOW did not have the resources to enable a edge of space jump back in 1999. Their loss was Red Bull’s gain, and so naturally I have been watching Red Bull’s methodology of delivering the hype for Felix’s jump keenly.

The brand has paid meticulous attention to detail, drilling down to the heroics and the romance of the story, creating a captivating narrative that will benefit them for years to come. They are one of very few brands with the guts and disruptive forethought to own this type of event, and a number of lessons might be learnt from them.

Many, many brands search for global ubiquity. Many are on the constant look out for big ideas, throwing massive budgets behind half pregnant creatives framed by global advertising support. Few ignite the imagination and match a brand ethos. All too often time is wasted on ill considered, flash-in-the-pan stunts that fail to ignite a relationship with the brand. Few invest in the brain power and few have the culture of patience to work through an idea. In a strict risk averse culture, it is almost impossible to nurture Maverick thought, or to embrace the odd personalities with the best ideas.

Yesterday Felix and Red Bull raised the bar. The challenge is clear: just as Baumgartner took Kittinger’s mantel, the global brand that will claim Red Bull’s throne will be the one that is able to contemplate the true definition of the little word with frightening, but powerful, career implications – risk.

AS the January sales wear on urging us to grab our discounts before they end, we should spare a thought for Harry Gordon Selfridge, born 149 years ago today.

It is only fitting that the week of Selfridge’s birthday has been marked by the launch of two television series celebrating the rise and rise of his adopted brain-child – consumer culture – in the form of ITV’s Mr Selfridge and BBC’s The Paradise (an adaptation of Emile Zola’s 1883 novel Au Bonheur des Dames).

I first came across Selfridge when researching The Fame Formula, exploring the rise of modern PR on the East Coast of industrialist America.

Although he brushed shoulders with the likes of Harry Reichenbach, Selfridge was the first person with the vision and the chutzpah to craft a culture around retail. Selfridge established shopping as an experience, an activity in itself rather than a means to an end.

Where the likes of Andrew Carnegie were able to identify problems in retail, Selfridge came up with innovative solutions, and inspired love and intrigue for his brand in a way in which no other had before.
Selfridge concocted swathes of spectacular creative stunts and used a plethora promotional mechanics to draw in the crowd. Although every generation believes itself to be the inventor of the wheel when it comes to guerrilla publicity, Selfridge did it first.

Selfridge understood the importance of engaging in modernity, embracing technological and social change, and like Baudelaire across the Channel a century before, realised the strength of the powerhouse that is the crowd. He nurtured his personal relationships with everyone from regency to rabble adorning the store front for coronations and jubilees and handing out turkeys to bus drivers at Christmas. He gained endorsement from the celebrities of the day – mixing with stars from George Formby to the Dolly Sisters – and wined and dined the press, developing a thick archive of clippings along the way.

Under Selfridge, artists were given free range and the pioneering technology of the day was given a platform – from the use of modest new printing technologies in the group’s advertising, to the display of Blériot’s Channel-crossing plane and Baird’s television. The public would flock to the store in their thousands to witness the theatrics first hand. The word-of-mouth stories that Selfridge generated spread worldwide, a near-miraculous feat in those days. More than anyone of his time, Selfridge understood the power of memes.

The spirit of the stuntsman remained with the store for some time, and I had the pleasure of working with the previous management developing three glorious campaigns for them which generated global stories. For the Body Craze season in 2003, we used the same hooks that held up Blériot’s plane to suspend S&M artist John Kamikaze from the ceiling. On another, we turned the store into a piece of artwork for Tunick’s Be Consumed, bringing in 500 volunteers to pose naked for a mass photograph.

This month, Selfridges have made another attempt at creating an aesthetic experience for the customer by launching the Silence Room, encouraging shoppers to take time out from the hustle and bustle of the experience.

Unfortunately, it seems that mass consumption has reached a point of satiation and that the kind of creative energy that gave rise to the modern retail experience has been lost. Sales and discounts are ubiquitous – not to mention the white noise of freebies that infiltrates the daily commute. Saturation of information has rendered retailers’ offerings meaningless, and just as Oxford Street was run-down in the days preceding Selfridge, so it is today.

Retail is in a state of stagnation, its sole driver anchored in ‘bargain’ prices. Although on one level global recession inspires frugality, bargain hunting in itself is not enough to sustain a consumer base.

Supermarkets have been blighted by pricing scandals and people are losing faith in the giants who don’t reach out to them. Retail is filled with bean counters who are so obsessed with numbers, and who have forgotten where the numbers come from in the first place.

The crowd is the foundation stone of retail business, and unless retailers are able to build a relationship with the public, their businesses will crumble.

Selfridge transformed retail exchange from piles of dust-covered goods hidden under countertops to an aesthetic experience to be enjoyed by everybody. Today, there are a few retailers who manage to embody this ideal, though the Apple shops spring immediately to mind as they are areas in which customers are able to interact and play with goods as well as receive advice and buy them.

There is a reason why Debenhams has been failing to attract customers despite its huge price cuts, and it is precisely due to their inability to communicate with the crowd. We can only hope that they are able to embody some of the soul of Selfridge in time for his 150th anniversary next year.