The Mail’s coverage of a particularly wild night out for England’s Rugby World Cup lads today- in which Chris Ashton wrestled dwarves and Mike Tindall took a ride on a motorboat (if you catch my drift)- should set alarm bells ringing in any media-savvy mind. Other than raising an eyebrow at Tindall’s quasi-infidelity, the paper…
So Russia have the 2018 World Cup and it’s to go to Qatar in 2022. Anyone trying to suggest that this decision has anything to do with football needs to go away and sit quietly in a dark corner whilst they reevaluate their opinion. The decision by FIFA bigwigs is solely about where the power…
Conundrum of the week is the strange case of why In Touch magazine ran a story suggesting athletic rumpy pumpy between Beckham and exotic model-come-prostitute Irma Nici. I might be wrong, but it all feels so fake. Certainly, David Beckham looks set to sue the US magazine for the claims that he went a bit…
I’ll be examining the manipulative new age of PR and social media, and how the herd is motivated to reshape our lives, in Edinburgh next week. My lecture is one of the key events in the inaugural Edinburgh International Marketing Festival on Tuesday 24th August at 17.30 and the lecture aims to reveal exactly how…
Today’s edition of the Sun features an exposé of Wayne Rooney’s recent night on the tiles as his team-mates “completed rigorous pre-season fitness tours”. It is a typically irked and excitable article, chipping away at the veneer of sporting heroism that has been liberally applied to Rooney and his sporting colleagues in the past. The…
In the 21st Century, with the Twitter cycle outpacing the news cycle by a length, with fewer people working for newspapers and, with Murdoch insisting that content has taken a step up to Emperor, stories move too fast for journalists to stop for anything as paltry and deadbeat as a fact. The truth is dismal,…
There is no hope for the England team – every time one of them opens their mouth they put their foot in it and someone (usually the press) helpfully shoves the boot in too. What do we really expect, though, when the players have too much time, money and self-regard on their hands? Take Ashley…
There’s a deal of speculation about how long Fabio Capello is to stay in the job as England’s manager – a statement was even put out before the decisive group match suggesting that his job was in jeopardy. It seems likely that he will go, and soon, despite a few bullish headlines suggesting that we…
We are living in a karaoke media culture – everything we see is a pale, recycled copy of something that’s gone before and, worse still, this sincere flattery of icons and iconography past is being actively encouraged. Miley Cyrus is heading off down the well-trodden path of over-sexualised image that has been presented 1000 times…
Forty-eight hours can feel like an eternity when your brand is in the centrifugal force in the maelstrom of public ridicule. In poor old Robert Green’s case, the error he committed by fumbling a save and letting in a dismal equalising goal in the World Cup match against the USA will plague him for the…