Are you serious? Are you serious? Are you nuts? No marks for guessing who asked this. Full marks to the journalist for the ambush. Brilliant Work!!
My blog is about the absolute nightmare that some people would have had gone through after this. The setting was apparently opening up of health club at one of the five star hotels. The organiser's PR consultancy/ In-house team would have invited page 3/ features set of media to attend I presume. Things would have probably have been going on smoothly till the time the journalist decided that it would be good fun to follow up with a question on land scam after a question on importance of Gymming/ health. I didn't see the question on health aspect on any of the channel but guess that was it based on the way the byte was going on till then. I have gone through this nightmare in my PR career a few times when the journalist meeting my client has gone absolutely off-tangent. Guess, these are perils of the career -:) and to be honest quite a few times I have seen spokespersons going completely off-subject.
Coming back to the incident, there was always a danger that a crisis like this would happen when you call someone who is going through a controversy. I am not sure if an expected guest list was shared with media or if the journalist simply was at the right spot at the right time but the damage was done. One school of PR would probably say that this has got additional publicity for an event which was otherwise small. Well, I don't agree.
This incident reminded me of something similar that happened with me about 11 or 12 years back. I was a rookie then working with one of India's top agencies. I don't remember the exact names but one of US's former top government officials was on board of an international Insurance giant and was visiting India. We did some interviews for him with editors of print media, wires and couple of business channels during the day.
The last engagement for him was an interview with a prominent channel in their studio in GK to be aired live at prime time. It was also clear that the discussion would be political and not on business. So there I was sitting with the Spokesperson and company's head in India in the NDTV lounge waiting for the interview to begin.
Suddenly, the Iraqi ambassador to India walked in to the lounge. The spokesperson was all grace and met the Iraqi ambassador very warmly but the moment he was out of eyesight he was livid on the channel for inviting the Iraqi ambassador as well. On top of that the channel was trying to put them both on the same panel. However, some negotiations later things were sorted so that our spokesperson went first and then after a break the Iraqi ambassador. Mind you this was sort of just before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. I was terrified to say the least but ultimately things went
off well and the spokesperson as well as India head were
all praise for our efforts.
Disclaimer: I am not supporting any political party/ person in the incident. This is purely from a communications practitioners perspective.
My blog is about the absolute nightmare that some people would have had gone through after this. The setting was apparently opening up of health club at one of the five star hotels. The organiser's PR consultancy/ In-house team would have invited page 3/ features set of media to attend I presume. Things would have probably have been going on smoothly till the time the journalist decided that it would be good fun to follow up with a question on land scam after a question on importance of Gymming/ health. I didn't see the question on health aspect on any of the channel but guess that was it based on the way the byte was going on till then. I have gone through this nightmare in my PR career a few times when the journalist meeting my client has gone absolutely off-tangent. Guess, these are perils of the career -:) and to be honest quite a few times I have seen spokespersons going completely off-subject.
Coming back to the incident, there was always a danger that a crisis like this would happen when you call someone who is going through a controversy. I am not sure if an expected guest list was shared with media or if the journalist simply was at the right spot at the right time but the damage was done. One school of PR would probably say that this has got additional publicity for an event which was otherwise small. Well, I don't agree. This incident reminded me of something similar that happened with me about 11 or 12 years back. I was a rookie then working with one of India's top agencies. I don't remember the exact names but one of US's former top government officials was on board of an international Insurance giant and was visiting India. We did some interviews for him with editors of print media, wires and couple of business channels during the day.
The last engagement for him was an interview with a prominent channel in their studio in GK to be aired live at prime time. It was also clear that the discussion would be political and not on business. So there I was sitting with the Spokesperson and company's head in India in the NDTV lounge waiting for the interview to begin.
Suddenly, the Iraqi ambassador to India walked in to the lounge. The spokesperson was all grace and met the Iraqi ambassador very warmly but the moment he was out of eyesight he was livid on the channel for inviting the Iraqi ambassador as well. On top of that the channel was trying to put them both on the same panel. However, some negotiations later things were sorted so that our spokesperson went first and then after a break the Iraqi ambassador. Mind you this was sort of just before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. I was terrified to say the least but ultimately things went
off well and the spokesperson as well as India head were
all praise for our efforts.
Disclaimer: I am not supporting any political party/ person in the incident. This is purely from a communications practitioners perspective.
Could the "are you serious" incident have been avoided? I look forward to your comments on this.
