Message from the Chairman

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  • Investment they have made - tick
  • acknowledgment of mistakes - tick
  • reflection and learning from mistakes - tick
  • reference to journey we have been on together - tick
  • affirmation of commitment to continue - tick
  • We will fight back from this together - tick
Bingo. What does he win.

Read them both. Leeds one is a neat little summary of ours.
 
Brown Nose said:
Oh boo hoo poor innocent billionaire baby Aiyawatt.

I've ****ed everything and some people are being mean to me.

Weak as piss. You're supposed to be the boss. **** me, what a loser.
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You're just about the only one here who has this right.

For my sins, I worked in PR for 6 years & I can decode every passage of that ridiculous reverse mission statement.

It's complete flannel & 100% designed to abdicate responsibility. The sort of thing you draft for an AGM when the company has had a shit year & the shareholders aren't going to get their divi.

Also, anyone thinking the references to personal abuse come under the heading of :

" he didn't have to say that , but it was brave of him to do so "

Congratulations. Thats the 8 ball in the corner pocket & high fives all around the room for the PR team. Exactly the response they were looking for. Sympathy gambit nailed.

Trust me on this, far from being something he didn't have to say it was ABSOLUTELY the first thing the team discussed before they'd even poured the coffee. It's the centrepiece of the statement.

Further than that, I guarantee that someone on the team said " should we say that some of the abuse was racist. or maybe just sort of suggest it ? "

There would then have been a pause, some exchanged looks, & then the team lead would have said :

" No. That's a can of worms we don't need to open up.
BUT, if they're in the bottom half of the championship by christmas & we have to do this again we might want to revisit that as an option "

As awful as it sounds, if that DIDN'T happen, then whoever they used isn't very good.

It's not a work of genius but as a piece of copy it's up to industry standard. It's a fluff piece.
 
SilverFox said:
  • Investment they have made - tick
  • acknowledgment of mistakes - tick
  • reflection and learning from mistakes - tick
  • reference to journey we have been on together - tick
  • affirmation of commitment to continue - tick
  • We will fight back from this together - tick
Bingo. What does he win.

Read them both. Leeds one is a neat little summary of ours.
Click to expand...
Where is Top’s acknowledgement of mistakes?

And the Leeds one actually has an apology and no crying about some abuse.

But yes other than that, the same…apparently.
 
Miles Away said:
I don’t know that centering his experience with the fans in this notes is particularly a clever Pr strategy.
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It is though.

Your experience with PR I would guess is within a sporting context. This is written from a corporate business perspective. The writers will know that the vast majority of fans reading it will not be the sort who engage in personal abuse, either verbally or via email or social media etc. Those people will always be a minority. Garnering sympathy from the remaining majority will have been the main goal of the exercise.

It establishes future criticism as abuse. If you can define all criticism as abuse, you stifle any argument.

I'd say that the posters on this forum, in my experience of having been here for almost 2 decades, are as a whole of above average intelligence. & yet a fair few have fallen for it.

It's a bog standard piece of what used to be called " distractioneering " by the bloke who showed me the techniques involved. It's till employed, because it still works.
 
taupe said:
That's if you "decode" it through a PR translator. And If you don't?
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If you don't, then it doesn't exist in this world.

The man is the head of a multi billion pound international business empire. Nothing he says goes into the public domain unless it's through a PR filter.

Not unless it's recorded covertly when he's off his tits in some bar or whatever.

His Dad would have taught him that from day 1.
 
give_us_a_wave said:
If you don't, then it doesn't exist in this world.
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And yet, there it is....

For someone that's worked in PR, you seem to have a somewhat cynical view of it. It's not necessarily 'smoke and mirrors'. Isn't it about effective communication? Identifying what you want to say and saying it. PR needn't always be a metaphor for hoodwinking or bullshit. Even the word spin has now a negative connotation, when the truth is we all present things in a certain manner; have a take on things if you like.

Just as everyone on here will have their take on Top's message (as @Willlow, I think it was, said). If there's a desire or will to parse a message looking for traps, gotchas or general deception then they will be found.

Me, I took it at face value, as I read it. A message from Top (and doubtless a message passed by a PR team) I simply read what he had decided to say. As I said, if it makes me gullible than so be it but I don't feel bought by it. As @mickey says above, forget the words, the important thing is what happens from here on.

Edit: my PR team did some tidying up; spelling corrections, missing words, grammar, etc. And they still probably missed some too!
 
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City Fan said:
Where is Top’s acknowledgement of mistakes?

And the Leeds one actually has an apology and no crying about some abuse.

But yes other than that, the same…apparently.
Click to expand...
Acknowledgement of mistake:-

But relegation is a consequence of 38 games and over that period, we haven’t been good enough. Over the coming days and weeks, we need to reflect on the processes and decisions that have brought us to this point. What we learn from this experience must convert into action that makes us stronger and prevents this happening to us again in the future.

What do you need an apology for? Did they borrow the hundreds of millions they wrote off of their money from you. Come on City Fan, we aren’t Karen United. We don’t need an apology. Action will do. Even if it said, ‘oh I’m so sorry’ like Leeds, it’s just words at the end of the day.

Also who is crying about abuse. The context of the words are, ‘I have been asked if I am selling up. Hell, I have even had dogs abuse from some… despite that I remain resolute. We started with a vision and I’m seeing it through’.

I don’t see any whining in that at all. People will just get offended at whatever they choose to take offence at. In this case affirmation that he isn’t going to cut and run. I’m offended you aren’t just ditching us. How very dare you sir.
 
taupe said:
And yet, there it is....

For someone that's worked in PR, you seem to have a somewhat cynical view of it. It's not necessarily 'smoke and mirrors'. Isn't about effective communication? Identifying what you want to say and saying it. PR needn't always been a metaphor for hoodwinking or bullshit. Even the word 'spin' has now a negative connotation, when the truth is we all present things in a certain manner; have a take on things if you like.

Just as everyone on here will have their take on Top's message (as @Willlow, I think it was, said). If there's a desire or will to parse a message looking for traps, gotchas or general deception then they will be found.

Me, I took it at face value, as I read it. A message from Top (and doubtless a message passed by a PR team) I simply read what he had decided to say. As I said, if it makes me gullible than so be it but I don't feel bought by it. As @mickey says above, forget the words, the important thing is what happens from here on.
Click to expand...
The reason I'm cynical about it is because it starts out as you describe. My early assignments were pretty much just tailoring statements so that communications were sensible & devoid of inconsistencies. Making sure that people & organisations sent out information that was intelligible & made them look as professional as possible. Bland stuff.

Trouble is something awful happened. I got to be good at it.

When you get good at it they move you to other things. I ended up being told to draft press statements & corporate responses on behalf of a company who were the subject of legal action for multiple instances of negligence that put people's health & lives at risk. I was told to rubbish the evidence of the people making the claims, question their character, their honesty & even suggest that what happened was their own fault.

The company in question were guilty as sin in every respect. It was horrific. I couldn't stomach it. So I walked out. I also made sure that the people making the claims came into possession of some interesting information. They won their cases & I felt a bit cleaner.

The point is, the higher up the ladder you go the more it stops being just effective use of information & " spin " & becomes manipulation & out & out lies. Cynical is exactly the right word for how I feel about it. Because I can always see when it's at work. The tricks of the trade haven't changed much over the years.
 
Action. That's all I care about.
 
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