The joy of PR

Tenuous link alert.

Reports that the Duchess of Sussex has allegedly hired a top PR guru to ‘resurrect’ her image in the UK reminds me of another PR-related story.

Six months before I got my first job - as an account exec for a PR firm in London - the company acquired a new client whose name had been tarnished and needed a reboot.

The year was 1980 and the client was an offshore oil company whose subsidiary had just completed a major project - converting a drilling rig into a production platform (or something like that).

It was the first conversion of its kind and a big deal in offshore oil circles.

Unfortunately, thanks to the complexity of the project and a series of industrial disputes, the project was a year or two behind schedule so the brief was to spin the completion as a great success rather than the embarrassment it had become.

What happened next is the stuff of nightmares for any PR exec but thankfully it happened before I joined the company so I wasn’t involved.

To cut a long story short, my colleagues-to-be had arranged a cutting-the-ribbon type event to celebrate the completion of the project.

To make matters a little more complicated, it was to take place on the Isle of Lewis, off the west coast of Scotland, where the work had taken place, and because many of the invited journalists were based in London they had to be flown to Glasgow, and then on to Lewis.

Guest of honour was the Secretary of State for Energy, Hamish Gray, Conservative MP for Ross and Cromarty, and by all accounts everything went really well - apart from one small thing.

Many of the journalists developed food poisoning as a result, I believe, of something they ate at the reception.

As it happens, I don’t think it affected media coverage of the event, which was largely positive, but it taught me an early lesson that however well you prepare, and however good your organisational skills may be, there are some things that are beyond your control.

The client must have agreed because the PR company was retained and the client was one of several accounts I was given to work on when I joined the company a few months later.

Their loyalty was rewarded the following year when I pulled off a bit of a coup after I organised a photo op for a professional golfer the client had agreed to sponsor.

It took place at a golf club in Essex and the aim was to promote both the player and his new apparel that featured the client’s logo and corporate colour.

During the shoot the photographer suggested taking pictures of the golfer hitting some bunker shots.

I don’t know how many photos he took that day, but imagine my surprise (and delight) when, a month or two later, one of the photos appeared on the front cover of a leading golf magazine.

It was a pretty spectacular shot too, with the ball caught mid air in an explosion of sand. Better still, the company logo on the golfer’s corporate coloured jersey was clearly visible!

What does this have to do with the Duchess of Sussex? Nothing, probably. But if I learned anything in PR it’s this: creative ideas and a good strategic plan are all well and good, but what you also need is a fair slice of luck, and good will from third parties (the media in particular).

Without it, you’re stuffed.