Manchester PR agency SKV and the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive and sister Authority body, have felt the wrath of the MEN in a second fake picture fall out in as many months. The battlefield is the proposed congestion charge for Manchester.
John Williams, head of Mason Williams, one of the region’s biggest PR companies, told How-Do that following on from the "earlier Brazen bullshit, this ridiculous behaviour makes all media people in Manchester look like dicks.”
The communications team for the bodies backing the proposed congestion charge for Manchester, issued a series of leaflets featuring four attractive young people, purporting to be residents, in favour of the charge.
Kiki
The leaflets were distributed to every home in the conurbation.
It subsequently emerged that ‘Kiki’, a lawyer from Ashton and the other three ‘Manchester residents’ – Terry, Neil and Rachel - were stock shots of US models.
SKV initially denied that the case studies were manufactured.
The leaflets were created by GMPTE’s agency, Creative Concern, working with Janine Watson, the Town Hall’s communications supremo, John Barbour, head of communications at GMPTE and Andy Spinoza of SKV.
It is understood that the team putting the leaflets together felt that the use of stock shots, common practice for a standard promotional campaign, would suffice on this occasion.
In this case however, it is clear a significant error of judgement occurred. The collective comms team was quite aware of the emotive nature of the debate over congestion charges and to use such self evidently manufactured (and trans Atlantic in feel) images was a cock-up of major proportions. To then try to defend it, clearly points to the need of some communications operations in Manchester to attend a refresher course in crisis management.
The protest that “the intention was not to mislead and these case studies were only ever intended as illustrative examples” is hard to substantiate.
The team backing the proposed congestion charge seems to be finding it increasingly difficult to get its message across despite spending over £500,000 to date on range of communications tools including telephone polls, advertising, PR and focus groups.
Whittaker
The MEN is distinctly unmoved by the prospect of congestion charging.
John Whittaker of Peel Holdings, owner of Liverpool Airport and the Trafford Centre, has thrown the considerable weight of his company/ies behind the “no” campaign. His PR team raised the thorny issue of privatising Manchester Airport as an alternative method of paying for the charges and visitors to the Trafford Centre cannot fail to be impressed by the number of posters railing against the congestion charge.
Peel was at one stage negotiating to have a Metrolink station at the Centre but this plan was dropped some time ago. Ironically, if Manchester does ultimately get its way, the £3bn plus of funding that would accompany a successful bid, would enable the Trafford Centre link to go ahead.
Andy Spinoza, founder and MD of SKV and a former MEN journalist told How-Do that “It’s rare, almost unheard of, for the MEN to reference a PR agency in this way.
“It’s especially disappointing, given that we have been servicing GMG’s (Guardian Media Group) journalists across the MEN, their local newspapers, Channel M and online, with quotes, fact checking and responses for several months, often at very short notice and in challenging circumstances.
“We can see how emotive the debate has become when they feel they have to profile us in this way. Happily however, our relationships with individual journalists within GMG are unaffected.”
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