New PR agency redefines celeb PR
Media Release: Rough Diamond PR launched today. Slogan: “We’re as mean as the media….” . We’re here to protect the reputations of public figures in the war being conducted against them.
The media don’t just report bad things. They twist and turn any titbit into a career-destroying event. With breath-taking chutzpah and hypocrisy, the media now plunder the private lives of any famous person. Until now the response has been “apologize, reform and move on” (ARM) or face ruin. And often it’s to trade a mini-confession to save having to make a big one. Not any more!
Fame bites back!
When celebrities engage Rough Diamond PR, they declare war on the media’s obsession with openness and emotional incontinence. They take a moral stand against the call for public figures to be role models in every aspect of modern life from obesity to charity and fidelity, to the dreaded drink and drugs.
Our strategy is to give the finger to the new profoundly corrupt moral police.
Rough Diamond PR helps clients increase their profiles in new and creative ways. Our celebs will insist that their private lives are no-go areas. They won’t parade their happy marriages, their beaming kids, their promises of endless fidelity. They’ll give no more hostages to fortune.
Rough Diamond PR will instead reinforce and promote the virtues and value its clients bring to their particular field of public life: that’s football for footballers; golf for golfers; politics for politicians; and soft porn for that transparent talent Katie Price (aka Jordan: note that, as an exception to our mantra, her emotional incoherence, brilliantly illuminates her “brands”).
By aligning their reputations with Rough Diamond PR’s, clients strike a high-profile bargain with their publics, employers and sponsors.
Our clients vow never to make a virtue of their private lives. They also vow never to express holier-than-thou opinions or give advice about social issues that they a) don’t live up to already b) might possibly fall short of at some time in their career or thereafter c) don’t understand.
In return, our clients expect the public and media to stay out of their private affairs and to stay focused instead on their genius.
The So-What? strategy
In defence of reputations, Rough Diamond PR offers a sustainable set of life-cycle services for celebrities. These include career planning; security advice; media relations and training; sponsorship management and negotiation; events and hospitality; wide-ranging therapies; and, not least, crisis management.
Rough Diamond PR prides itself on managing dignified silence or “up-yours” salutes or even a “So What?” in response to unwelcome exposure. But sometimes that’s not enough. That is why Rough Diamond PR will strategically and rigorously argue for a new public understanding of the media’s role, and legal measures to reinforce privacy.
But Rough Diamond PR is not the agency for every public figure. Celebrities who are celebs merely because they are celebrated are not welcome. Rough Diamond PR is for those whose talents are beyond doubt: the likes of Tiger Woods, Wayne Rooney, Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse, or Winston Churchill, had he lived long enough to hire us; because today with his wayward ways he’d need us.
Nevertheless, Rough Diamond PR is for both sinners and saints (most of us are both at once). That’s because even the well-behaved and most virtuous and restrained public figures resent media intrusion.
The face and voice of the bite-back
The firm will be led by PR’s own street-fighting savant, Paul Seaman, from Elm Park. Commenting on his new role as head of the celeb world’s most exciting and innovative PR outfit, he said today:
“I am hugely looking forward to knowing my clients’ innermost secrets. But I won’t be sharing them or trading them. I won’t be denying them, either. Rough Diamond PR empowers celebs to take control of their reputations. With us they can resist the current unmoral climate. Of course, their sometimes mad antics will still grab headlines. But shielded behind our indestructible virtual wall, they’ll never have to apologise for being hypocrites, liars and for promoting humbug. Mostly they can parry allegations with a shrug of the shoulders.
“But right now our PR rivals are putting public figures in positions in which they feel obliged to confess to virtually everything. They’ve got them throwing fuel on the fire. With Rough Diamond PR, however, so long as clients keep their talents, and don’t get sent to prison for anything serious, they can hold their heads high even during the worst media storm.”
Excellent! The secular media doesn’t provide purgatory in return for publishing the sins of others, even if it sees itself as other worldly…
Fantastic – But it’s not even nearly April 1st is it?
In all seriousness though, the one point of celebrities is that they are there to be seen in the media, otherwise they are ‘just’ good footballers or singers etc. Surely one group feeds the other and vice versa in a torrent of self abuse and praise?
A cynic would say that if Tiger hadn’t wanted to be in the spotlight he should not have extended from the 19th hole to the 20th the 21st, and 22nd etc. In other words all his sponsorships should have been refused because in so doing he automatically extends his push to the limelight. But then if he had refrained there would be no need for PR agencies: vicious circle = lack of business case for Rough Diamond – However; I hope you prove me wrong!
Tim, Rough Diamond PR is for real, for sure, certainly (in spirit). Moreover, we are not trying to make celebs invisible. Contrariwise: Rough Diamond PR increases the profiles of its clients exponentially at minimal risk of a media backlash. With us, media-inspired self-humiliation is not part of the deal. And when, nevertheless, the media does attack aggressively, Rough Diamond PR’s overwhelming countervailing response sees it off. BTW: have you ever played golf?
Superb! Good luck and power to your elbow, Paul!
I’ve blogged here [http://www.prblog.co.nz/?p=3#more-3] about what I call “tofu PR”. Bland and tasteless. That spineless, insincere, path-of-least-resistance school of thought that says a public flailing and a good spell in sack-cloth and ashes is the best way to wriggle out from between a rock and a hard place. The school of thought that gave us the wholly needless raft of public apologies from Tiger Woods, just days before he played a major tournament. The school of thought that gave New Zealand a spectacularly over-the-top ‘resignation’ from its Housing Minister Phil Heatley (‘Crime’? Paying for a bottle of wine at a party-political function on his ministerial credit card).
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for a good apology. It can, and does, have its place. But when the sentiment of apology is abused for the purposes of deflecting the flak, and getting back to business as soon as possible, it becomes an utterly hollow exercise that can backlash spectacularly.
There are too many tofu traders out there, and too many “penitent sinners” (using Gordon Brown’s ‘Bigotgate’ phrase) prepared to swallow their wares without question. In business, as in politics and slebdom, I believe conviction is what counts. If you say what you believe (as long as it’s not obviously and overly offensive), and believe what you say, you’ll get cut a lot of slack. Try to pull the wool over the punters’ eyes with a lot of phony hand-wringing and you’ll get kicked where it hurts.
Let the fight-back begin. I’ll be watching with interest…
It has been known for me to ‘play’ the odd round but my limits unlike Mr Woods only reach the 19th hole not beyond.
As for Rough Diamond I look forward to seeing the effects on the red tops and beyond; more power to the new breed of celebrity you espouse to create. Though I wonder if they will play along exclusively or run off to Max Clifford and the gang at the first sign of their bank balance depreciating.