Each month, Communicate magazine poses a crisis management situation from a historical event and asks agencies for modern say solutions. This month it’s World Cup-themed and we’re rewinding back to 1986 and England’s World Cup quarter-final with Argentina and ‘that’ handball incident…

“Diego Maradona scores the decisive goal with a clear hand ball. England are outraged. With video evidence irrefutable, what advice would you give to Diego to protect his brand, retain his commercial endorsements, and calm the diplomatic crisis?”

Umpf’s response (full article here):

Only ‘sorry’, humility, humour and social media can save brand Maradona.

Because of his outrageous behaviour, first must come a personal apology from Maradona to every man, woman and child in England.

We’d film an apology for an online video. Enter a friend’s name, email and their photo, hit send and they receive a link to a bespoke video showing Maradona personally apologising by holding up a photo of the friend. Spreading virally, Maradona would be seen to be offering personal apologies across the land.

Next, the humour. First, a quick commercial tie-up with a Bluetooth headset company so Maradona can go ‘hands-free’ without losing any more friends.

Second, a short online video for brand Maradona showing what would have happened if his handball had not gone in the net. This time Shilton saves it and England go on to win the World Cup. Back home, Argentina revolts and Maradona becomes reviled.

In the final shot of the film we see Maradona, a broken man, begging on the streets of Buenos Aires. The camera zooms out to show Maradona begging with a friend – fellow handball ‘goal thief’ Thierry Henry.

Hosted on Maradona’s YouTube Channel, and launched through his Twitter feed, the video would demonstrate humility, humour and social media savoir-faire.

Brown & Cameron: social media buddies? Source: Telegraph.co.uk

With social media becoming an increasingly popular tool, it seemed inevitable that 2010’s general election would see parties employing some elements within campaign strategy; however the degree to which it has been embraced by each candidate could not have been anticipated, resulting in it being dubbed: “the first word-of-mouth election”.

In run up to this year’s general election, tech-savvy politicians can be seen unashamedly flexing their weight of knowledge in this latest communication tool, across the worldwide web.

Labour has pre-emptively armed party members with new-media training, ensuring a smooth execution of this newest tactic; and with daily online video podcasts from senior campaign politicians, as well as real-time Twitter feedback, it is not surprising that such rigorous preparation has been undertaken.

Alongside this, Labour has cleverly optimised traffic to its own website using Google Adwords, resulting in constituents who are searching hot debate topics – such as: the economy, education and employment – are driven here primarily, receiving Labour’s take on the subject first.

While the Conservative party, not wanting to disappoint, have released an iPhone app, where users can receive a continuous flow  of up-to-date news on campaign progress, as well as takes on legislation, public policy and party memorandums.

Modern day constituents are demanding more transparency from MPs, social media offers a platform to achieve this. If these latest campaigns are anything to go by, it would appear that politicians are beginning to recognise and appreciate social media as a credible and effective communication channel, key to winning any election.

- Lydia Cambata

NB. Umpf has no affiliation to any political party, with the above comments regarding social media, rather than the efficiencies of one party’s campaign over another.

There’s a common misconception that public relations is a fairly recent innovation.  True enough, in the 20^th Century Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays popularised the discipline we recognise today as PR.

However, just like Australia and the US, they existed long before they were ‘discovered’.

Although PR cannot lay claim to be the world’s oldest profession (recognised practitioners would have been few and far between back then), PR and word-of-mouth marketing has been around longer than you might imagine.

A quick example.  There are well over one hundred castles in Ireland, but how many can you name? You’d be hard pressed to name more than a couple.  However, you’re probably familiar with the castle at Blarney, if only because of its world famous Blarney Stone.

Millions have puckered up to kiss the Blarney Stone, including Mick Jagger, Winston Churchill, Laurel and Hardy and even Homer Simpson.

The belief is if you kiss the stone you’ll receive the gift of eloquence.  Exactly when the tradition started remains unclear, though it’s thought to date back between the 16^th and 18^th Century.  What’s certain is that the tale was passed from one person to several more, who then passed on the story themselves.   Today, more than 400,000 people turn up each year to kiss the Blarney Stone and I imagine Blarney Castle does not spend much at all on publicising itself.

Think also about the Trevi Fountain in Rome.  Throw in a coin and you’re assured a return to Rome they say.  I’ve been and indeed deposited a few euros.  And when I returned home people asked if I’d thrown a coin into the fountain.  Now I’d call that a very clever word-of-mouth destination marketing campaign.