Tag: marketing

Stepping Up or Standing Down

The first thing to say is that I am not Cristiano Ronaldo.  One of us has better cheek bones than Joni Mitchell, appreciates ice baths more than Wim Hof and turned footballing talent into greatness through application and willpower.  The other writes the viewfromabridge.org blog.

As Ronaldo stepped up to take the first penalty in the shoot-out against Slovenia he encapsulated all the best things about leadership, taking responsibility and nerve.  Having had a penalty saved in the course of the game and shed tears just a few minutes before the shoot out, it may have included an element of egotism but it certainly showed self-belief.  It also reminded me of an important professional lessons from my early career.

Three Strikes

I was in month one at ASDA as a Public Relations Officer and finding life hard.  It felt a million miles away from my first job as Press Officer at Tesco where I had established a network and a successful start to my career.  It was my first time living a long way from family or friends and I had no track record of delivery in the new company.

The buyers were a hard-edged, hard-nosed, hard driven group who bargained for every advantage in a company that based its ASDA Price brand on being low-cost.  Both grocery buying and fresh food buying were led by Liverpudlians1 who took no nonsense and no prisoners from either suppliers or new arrivals from the south.  For those familiar with the Liverpool teams over the years it was more Tommy Smith (the “Anfield Iron”) and Ron Yeats (“the Colossus”) than Virgil Van Dijk and Harvey Elliott. 

Being invited to a fresh food buyer meeting to be briefed on an innovation felt like a good moment to assert my skills and dispense my wisdom on all things media related.  The meeting began and was straight down to business with the announcement that ASDA had worked with suppliers and was launching new cheese packaging that was colour-graded and numbered to show strength of flavour from mild to strong.  All eyes turned to me as I was asked about the coverage would be possible when it was launched.

Mistake one was to believe that this was the moment for a treatise on the way the media worked.  Mistake two was to think that cheese grading was not important news and that a competitor might have already beaten us to a similar scheme.  Mistake three was to verbalize those thoughts.  We all know that three strikes and you’re out.

As I finished my lengthy and patronising explanation of why this was not national news all heads pivoted to the Associate Director at the head of the table for the judgement and sentence.  It was brief and dismissive, “I’ll talk to Iain Tweedie in the morning.”  Iain was my boss, who had all the edginess and steel of an ex-Manchester Evening News reporter alongside the smarts to go on to build a global career in a major bank.

My mouth was flapping as I tried to find a way back but I was cut off as the meeting moved on to the next business.  For another hour I was trapped in the room with nobody looking at me let alone commiserating.  As I prepared my resignation letter that night, I was consumed by my failure to perform well, a sense of public humiliation and the belief that there was no hope of redemption.  I may not be Ronaldo but seeing his despair brought it all back.

Stepping Up

Iain Tweedie arrived early but I had been in the office an hour rehearsing my resignation speech and had already handed the letter over and begun explaining when the phone rang.  It was the Associate Director and I hear Iain’s calm tones as he responded, “Well Alan’s here and has been thinking about it overnight.  He’s on his way over with his ideas.” He put the phone down and gave me a one-minute briefing that stayed with me all my life:

  • Explain that you realise you hadn’t taken time to express your recognition of the work people had put into the grading scheme but that you’ve been thinking about ways of getting publicity.
  • Talk about some very big ideas – projecting the ASDA logo on the moon, floating a barge with a huge cheese on it down the Thames past the Houses of Parliament – and say anything is possible if there is sufficient budget and you want to be on the front pages of the national papers.
  • Then shut up, listen to what the Associate Director says and respond with enthusiasm.

The pep talk was a masterclass in accepting responsibility for your actions, showing appreciation for the client and the brief, demonstrating your creativity and ambition while recognizing budgetary constraints, then showing respect for feedback.  He gave me his absolute backing and confidence but left no doubt that it was my personal responsibility to have the conversation. Duly fortified and directed I walked on slightly wobbly legs down the corridor to the Associate Director’s office.

I don’t remember too much of the discussion but I certainly made good on accepting that I hadn’t done very well in the meeting and borrowed the barge idea before closing my mouth and really concentrating.  He said, “All I was really wanting was to get something in the The Grocer for the team and the suppliers”.  For readers unfamiliar with the UK retail scene, The Grocer, is a major trade magazine that would be more than happy to take an ASDA article with quotes from a senior director announcing an innovative cheese grading scheme.

I realised that I had just been given a brief that clarified the audience and the objective. Had I taken the time to ask questions about these vital aspects of communication in the meeting I wouldn’t have had a night of torment. The PR lesson was to start by understanding the job to be done2. Five minutes later I left the office to continue what turned into a successful six years at ASDA and even got invited back a second time as part of the team rebuilding the company after near bankruptcy. 

Looking back, I smile grimly at the overreaction of writing a resignation letter for something so minor but understand the lack of maturity and experience at play.  Nobody held the incident against me and I learnt that from time to time almost everybody has been in a similar situation. Most of all I learnt that even after something feels like a disaster it is rarely game over unless you decide it is. 

All That Matters

So, there you have it.  People talk about getting back on the horse after being thrown or that “it’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up”3.  My own favourite aphorism is – all that matters is what you do next – whether it is following success or failure.

Cristiano took a deep breath and placed the ball perfectly into the corner of the net as the first step in Portugal winning the penalty shoot-out.  We will all remember him making a clutch play when he was mentally and physically exhausted. Bom trabalho, Cristiano, but good luck to England in Sunday’s European Championship final.

NOTES

  1. Len McCormick (who went on to become Deputy Chairman at Batley’s cash and carry) led grocery buying, the foundation of ASDA’s price leadership, and David Robinson led fresh food buying at the time.  It’s a long time ago but my best recollection is that they both hailed from Liverpool – if anybody knows better I’m happy to correct the record.
  2. Clayton Christensen’s “theory of jobs to be done” is one of the great, all purpose ideas that every communicator should know. It works as much for internal communications and meetings as for product development and branding. It’s also great for helping put a perspective on personal choices.
  3. There are several versions of this saying but the version quoted here is attributed to Vince Lombardi, head coach & general manager of the Green Bay Packers from 1959-1967.  He is also credited with saying “Fatigue makes cowards of us all” which, in the context of a penalty taken at the end of 120 minutes play, suggests the extent of Ronaldo’s self-discipline and will.

FRANKS FOR THE MEMORY

There was a shuffling to my far left and a quick glance revealed only the back of public relations legend Lynne Franks as she rooted in a bag under the table.  The black clad presentation team in the centre of the room was looking apprehensive as she emerged with a handful of tabloid newspapers.  Her voice rang out, ‘Stop Jane, this isn’t us, this is so formal and corporate.  We are not like that.  We know people, we are connected – let’s throw that (the presentation) away and I’ll tell you about what you need to do”

Recovery and Renewal

The story had begun back in July 1992 when I suggested to Allan Leighton that ASDA could half its PR expenditure on agency support.  My view was that the extant agency did not meet the urgent demands of a business that was fighting for recovery after recently staving off bankruptcy.  Saving more than half a million pounds in annual cost (about a million pounds at 2022 rates) was not an insignificant sum.

I had joined ASDA three months earlier as the share price fell to its lowest and only six months after an emergency rights issue had helped stave off bankruptcy.  Archie Norman had been parachuted in by the October to lead a turnaround that would become a Harvard Business School Case Study.  The military metaphor reflects his later comment about crisis situations that when you’re the leader and you’ve landed in the jungle your team expect you to know which way to march.

I shortlisted three agencies after initial discussions around a brief which could have been distilled into two simple lines.  Get one piece of positive national media coverage every week at half the current expenditure.  It was audacious because we were only third in terms of market share, no other retailer was close to achieving coverage that regularly and we wanted focus on the tabloids and TV that reached most of our customers, at a time when competitors were schmoozing the broadsheets.     

Pitch Imperfect

Fast forward to 11 November 1992 as a panel of Archie, Allan, Paul Dowling (Corporate Affairs Director) and I were receiving presentations from the three agencies.  The incumbent had declined to participate but had fought a bloody rearguard action accusing the entire in-house PR team of incompetence.  And the presentations had not started well.

First up was a major PR name of the era who had FMCG and retail experience aplenty and a smooth pitch which featured, for reasons that escape me now, new technology that allowed shoppers to track their expenditure as they went round the store.  It was really just a calculator connected to the trolley and it needed recharging every three hours, but it seemed heady stuff at the time.  It was a terrific presentation up to the point where Archie asked the classic question, “How much?”

The answer of £1.1m went down like the proverbial bucket of sick.  Archie looked to his right which was, unfortunately, my direction with an intensity that spelt real danger for wasting his time.  I was totally gobsmacked that the agency, who had been given a very clear steer on fee and expenses expectations, had been quite so brazen.

Ninja Attack

It was fortunate that the presentations were strictly one hour in duration and there was no time to debate what we had seen before I was shooing them out and scuttling down the corridor to collect Lynne Franks PR.  It was like entering a ninja convention with so many people dressed head to toe in black and grey.  Lynne’s pink coat, plastic shopping bags and bohemian look provided a colourful counterpoint to her colleagues.

The presentation began with the ninjas – led by Jane Boardman the putative account director  – using enormous boards with very few words on them to present.  Big ideas, simple ideas, presented with conviction and style.  It was compelling and controlled until the rustling in the corner started.

Emerging from under the desk Lynne threw a pile of newspapers on the desk and opened The Sun before ripping out a page and throwing it towards the bemused corporate team sitting in judgement on her agency.  “That’s one of ours…,” another rip and the Daily Mirror page was despatched towards the bemused panel judging the presentation.  “And so is that…,” the tearing frenzy continued. 

In the centre of the room two presenters were frozen beside the gigantic boards.  The strategic big picture was wilting under the intensity of a founder who had decided that the way to deal with sceptical suits was to show results here and now.  I learnt later that Lynne had not been directly involved in preparing the pitch and had chosen to embark on a freelance mission of shock and awe with papers picked up at the airport that day.

It was clear that the dramatic intervention had captured Archie’s attention.  Imagine the scene in Heat where De Niro and Pacino, as criminal and detective, discuss their ideologies while trying to psychoanalyze each other.  Their biographies had Archie as Charterhouse, Cambridge, Harvard, McKinsey and FTSE100 while Lynne was Minchenden Grammar, shorthand/typing at Pitman’s College, a regular dancer on Ready Steady Go, journalist and PR company founder. 

But the differences that existed in education, upbringing, gender, and career choices faded under the weight of a principal-to-principal moment and when the frenzied ripping paused Archie moved swiftly to the point. “Why would we believe you’re any different to every other PR agency?”  It seemed obvious enough but Archie had a way of suckering mediocre people into obvious or rehearsed responses which were then flayed for lacking insight or interest.  Being provocative, challenging, unexpected or even slightly crazy was always the better way to go.

Some key words in the response included “leverage”, “Lenny Henry”, “ASDA”.  Lynne turned the world of public relations into a trading proposition where her agency had showbiz collateral and we could benefit.  It was right in the sweet spot of a retail business mindset and bridged the gap to explain why an agency known for fashion and celebrity clients had something unique to offer a grocery store.

Eventually Lynne’s explanation dried up and she looked to the team as if a little shocked at her own intervention.  Without comment, Jane picked up as if nothing had happened. It was a characteristic unflappability and focus on delivery which marked the following years of leading the team that worked with ASDA.

Although attention moved back to the big boards it was like moving from heavy metal to soothing sonatas.  All of the strategies, plans and processes made sense but we were still absorbing the Sturm und Drang.  The good news for me was that the proposed budget came in smack on the nose at half the price of the incumbent.

Aries Rising

After the drama the third agency were competent but not even close.  We discussed the balance between cost, experience, track record and potential and whether Lynne was key or we would even get any of her time.  As it happened, she departed the business shortly after leaving a company where Samantha Royston in her late 20s was Managing Director and Julian Henry, still in his early thirties, was probably the elder amongst the management team.        

The agreement was that Allan should visit their offices to see the operation.  He arrived at least half an hour ahead of the scheduled time but the office desks were filled, as I later found out with many friends and relatives, even further in advance.  It was set on Harrow Road W9 and far away from the bright lights and high costs of the West End – another tick in the box for a client whose operating principles included “we hate waste”.

It was only as Allan was leaving that he passed Lynne sitting with her office door open.  They said hello and she told him that she had been kept out of the way.  When he confirmed he had seen enough to tell her that we would be signing up Lynne told him that she was an Aries and her horoscope had said it would be a good day.  It is unclear if she knew that he was also born under the sign of the ram.   

Outcomes Count

I never met Lynne Franks in person again and can only pay tribute to her extraordinary career as well as her influence as a spokesperson for women’s rights and sustainability.  I am told that she liked to have all her media teams to have had some cold calling or other sales experience in their lives.  It’s always seemed like good advice to me. 

Following the appointment of LFPR, monthly measurement showed that ASDA’s national PR coverage consistently trounced the sector competitors.  The company’s recovery and renewal saw it eventually being sold to WalMart for £6.7bn in 1999. The LFPR and in-house PR team deserve recognition for their part in building a reputation that supported this outcome. 

NOTES

It’s impossible to remember everyone but a few thanks.  

Jane Boardman (now CEO at M&C Saatchi Talk) who led the team and Graham Goodkind (Chairman of Frank PR). The PR powerhouse that is Sue Finnegan (founder of proof PR), who I later recruited to join the in-house team, and other colleagues including Tanya Hughes, Frankie, Lambert, Dorcas Jamieson and Francesca Lee.  LFPR was overseen during the time by Samantha Royston Wainstein (now Chair of the Mark Milsome Foundation), as MD then as CEO and Chair.  Julian Henry went on to found Henry’s House and is now Global Head of Communications for XIX Entertainment.    

LFPR worked with the in-house team including Julie Eaton (later of Hill and Knowlton and recognized in the prestigious World Press Photo Awards 2014), Kathryn Williamson (later head of global PR for British Airways and now Director of Communications for English Rugby),  Jeni Cropper and Victoria Wick, who all helped make the difference.  It’s fair to say it was a talented team.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay