Heather Mills’ PR Prowess

Catching up on my TiVo, so I caught Heather Mills’ interview on Larry King and boy, has she had some good media training.  Non-defensive, states the facts calmly.  When she’s asked about all the ugly stuff that’s come out since she and Paul McCartney separated, she calmly states that it’s all rubbish and how she’s more concerned about saving baby seals and raising money for charity and converting everyone to veganism.  Of course, the British news reports through the past year have displayed quite a different message about Heather’s notorious past, with fellow call girls and former clients coming forward right and left.  But you have to hand it to Heather — she’s going on a dancing show with a prosthetic leg, for heaven’s sake.  Americans love redemption stories.  Heather is going to be a big hit on this side of the
Atlantic. She herself said it best when she told Larry “I could have been Mother Theresa and I would have been vilified” just like Yoko Ono and Linda McCartney were when they married their Beatles. 

She’s got a point.  And she’s smart enough to deliver it well.   And no denying it takes guts to dance with a fake leg.  Guts are so irresistable to us Americans.  Watch.  She’ll  bag a book deal and an endorsement contract while she’s here. 

Any guesses as to companies that would hire her for a spokesmodel?  What about Dove and their everyone-is-beautiful campaign? 

  

Britney Spears’ PR Rehab

Now that Britney Spears has checked out of her ritzy Malibu rehab center, all the celebrity tabloids will be tracking her every movement to see if her drug and alcohol rehab is real (and if she’s gone back to wearing panties).

I think she can rehab her image simply because in America, you’re never really a star until you make a comeback.  Look at Mariah Carey, who came back from a public breakdown.  Or look at John Travolta, whose career was a Trivial Pursuit question until he made a comeback in Pulp Fiction.  Even Richard Nixon made a comeback before he was elected president.  And he won in a landslide.  Comeback fame is always more potent that original fame.   

But a comeback is not guaranteed, even to blond It Girls.  Britney will have to work hard as hard at her PR rehab as her handlers say she did on her addictive behaviors.  And it can’t be all smoke and mirrors and pithy PR sayings.  There has to be some there there.  Her first step toward rehabbing her image is to get back into the recording studio and produce something people want to hear.  Simultaneously, she needs to show she’s a conscientious mom who wears panties and steers clear of hipster loser guys who are obvious users.  If she shows up at a Hollywood nightclub within the next week, the whole celeb media world will not only condemn her, but they will increase their surveillance so they can catch her falling off the wagon. 

Queen Latifah and the Finger

Why don’t celebs ever learn?  Queen Latifah is the latest celeb to be photographed by the paparazzi while giving the bird.  Real classy. 

I have a lot of empathy for celebs who are followed around by tabloid photographers — I don’t know what I’d do without my privacy — but the Queen has got to know that kind of photo only hurts her public image.  Hurt your public image enough and you hurt your earning potential.  (Britney Spears hasn’t signed any new endorsement deals lately, has she?)

It’s just like when a reporter asks the most obnoxious question.  The question never makes it into the story.  Just your response.  So if you are obnoxious right back, it isn’t going to hurt the reporter.  It’s just going to make for a more dramatic story. 

Growing the Team

 If anybody out there knows someone in Los Angeles who is looking for a PR job, about 30 hours/week, please email sally@sastewart.com.  Here is a draft of an ad:  

 

Junior PR person (New graduate?  Communications major? Business major? New mom returning to work?) for busy PR professional working with top business clients.  Responsibilities include writing first drafts, research, client contact, compiling media lists, keeping web site fresh, walking the very cool dog.  Love of pitching is major plus.  Great atmosphere in downtown
Santa Monica.  Big opportunity for growth and networking.  Benefits include health insurance, vacation, parking, walking the very cool dog. 

Newspaper Dinosaur

I fell in love with newspapers growing up in Winston-Salem, N.C., which was the big city to my cousins from Weldon, but not to me.  We had a morning and an evening paper back then and I remember sitting on the front porch waiting for the kid down the street and his brother to ride by and deliver it so I could read it back to front, starting with Dear Abby.  Until my mom came to snatch it away from meso she could peruse the grocery ads.  (Seven kids, so she was always checking grocery ads.)   

 The Winston-Salem Journal won a Pulitzer back then, for coverage of the riots after Martin Luther King was assassinated.  I remember how they published a picture of the Pulitzer medal on the top right of the front page for years afterwards.  Winston-Salem was in the BigTime then. 

To me, newspapers were a world of knowledge and glamour and even though there were many detours along the way, it eventually seemed natural for me to go into the newspapering business. 

Flash forward to now, in Los Angeles, circa 2007.  I hardly ever read the actual newspaper that arrives on my doorstep every morning.  I read it on the Internet.  I feel guilty about recycling a paper that’s never even opened — An Inconvenient Truth and all — but I can’t bring myself to cancel my subscription, even though everyone else is.  (In my little courtyard of townhouses, only two of us subscribe to the Times.)   Cancelling would be like turning my back on someone so dear to my life.  Besides, the Times is practically giving away subscriptions now.  Mine was something like $35 for a whole year. 

I guess I figure that the dinosaur will die soon enough without any assistance from me. 

Thinking Out Loud

What about this for my tagline: 

Sally Stewart / Media Training 101 / The Media According to Sally

????

Anybody got any other ideas?