PR in Sports

Roger Clemens is back in the news folks! That’s right, “The Rocket” finally came out of the woodwork Tuesday morning, giving his first interview in nearly a year. Clemens appeared on Mike and Mike in the Morning on ESPN Radio, and in typical fashion, talked a lot but said nothing.

Clemens spent the interview denying steroid use and defending himself against a new New York Daily News book. American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime was released Tuesday and recounts the news that has seen Clemens go from sure fire Hall-of-Famer, to disgraced.

Which brings us to the mystery of the interview. Very few people were even even aware the book was coming out. Michael Wilbon, from Los Angeles on Tuesday’s PTI, mentioned he was at the Houston Rockets shoot-around prior to Game 5 of their series with the Lakers, and media from Clemens hometown had not even heard of the book.

So why appear on Mike and Mike? Clemens had nothing new to say, and actually drew attention to a book that had little momentum. But, what most analysts seemed to miss, was that Clemens did say some things. He did get his message across. He just did it about an hour before his interview.

At about 7:30 a.m. Gene Grabowski, Clemens new PR rep, appeared on Mike and Mike. Grabowski’s interview was definitely interesting, because as mentioned Clemens later said nothing, but I do question Mike and Mike on having Clemens PR person on to set up his own interview. It might have been better to have an impartial PR pro on to breakdown what Clemens needed to do in his interview.

Regardless, Grabowski is a leading and respected crisis communications professional, and he swung for the fences when Clemens was unable too. Grabowski continually referred to Brian McNamee, Clemens’ accuser, as simply “an admitted drug dealer”, and the authors of the new Clemens book as “tabloid reporters”.

Most interesting was Grabowski’s recount of looking Clemens straight in the eye before bringing him on as a client. This definitely brought back images of the famous “What you do have is my whole word, and it’s stronger than oak” line from Jerry McGuire, and we all know how that turned out. Grabowski repeatedly asked the public not rush to judgment and to wait for Clemens to tell his side of the story. He pleaded “innocent until proven guilty”, painting Clemens as a wrongly accused celebrity.

But, from a PR perspective, we’re all left wondering, why set up the interview in the first place if Clemens himself had nothing new to say? There’s got to be a larger plan from Grabowski, right?…Right?

Grabowski did do his job during his segment, getting Clemens’ message out, but many seemed to miss his interview altogether. In the end, this entire thing seemed to be a colossal disaster for Clemens and Grabowski. The overall strategy seemed to be ‘Hey we’re Roger’s new PR firm and we have to recommend something, he can’t do nothing’, when that’s exactly what Clemens should have continued doing.

Why not let Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez continue to steal the steroid headlines? Now everyone knows about the new York Daily News book, which Grabowski admitted in his interview brings no new information or accusations against Clemens, and public sentiment towards Clemens might be at an all-time low, if that’s possible. I guess we’ll have to wait for another shoe to drop if this episode is going to prove to be a smart move.

We’ve spent a lot of time looking at how situations in the sports world could have been handled better from a PR/Marketing perspective, but I wanted to take this opportunity to look at a couple jobs well done. The PR staffs of the Los Angeles Angels and the Philadelphia Phillies, when faced with the worst of circumstances, came through with flying colors, ensuring the media was kept in the loop, incorrect information was not leaked and players and families were respected.

Joe Favorito at Sports Marketing and PR Roundup has a great recap of how the Angels handled the tragic death of Nick Adenhardt. The Angels organization made the right move by canceling their game versus Oakland last Thursday, and led by head of communications Tim Mead, ensured information was released in a timely, yet appropriate manner. The PR staff made sure players, coaches, management and ownership were on the same page and respected the Adenhardt family throughout their decision making.

With Adenhardt losing his life at such a young age the Angels were not only faced with a tragic situation, but with this being a criminal situation, also had to deal with media that do not normally cover the Angels or baseball at all for that matter. Dealing with media that are not familiar with your policies and procedures can be a difficult task, especially in a situation as sensitive as an unexpected death.

The Phillies also handled the death of long-time team broadcaster Harry Kalas in a professional and respectful manner. As for the decision to play or not to play, the Phillies understood this situation was slightly different than what the Angles had to deal with last week. It’s sad when anyone passes away, but Kalas being 73 years-old makes it more of a celebration of a life well lived. The Phillies knew Kalas was a lifelong baseball man and would have wanted the team to play.

Once the decision was made the organization did a phenomenal job of of protecting their current players, allowing them to focus on their thoughts and the game at hand. The Phillies instead leaned on former players to fulfill media requests. They collected quotes from Phillie legends to distribute to the media and had the face of the franchise, Mike Schmidt, do a call-in interview to ESPN minutes after hearing the news.

Under the most difficult situations, the Angels and Phillies came through in a first-class manner. Kudos to the PR teams and decision makers of both organizations.

Curt Schilling announced his retirement Monday on his blog 38pitches.com

Here we go again, another post on the ever growing trend of social media in sports, but the fact is it’s undeniable at this point. We’ve already covered the Philadelphia Eagles Facebook issue and the Charlie Villanueva halftime Tweet. Monday we saw even more evidence that social media is taking sports by storm when Curt Schilling announced his retirement from baseball on his blog. That’s right, not an arranged press conference, but on his blog! Could you imagine the firestorm this would have caused five or even two years ago?

Schilling will still hold a tear-jerker press availability or at least make the interview rounds, but the influx of athletes using social media to break their own news brings up numerous issues. Joe Favorito at Sports PR & Marketing Roundup has some great info on how athletes can use their blogs not only craft the message, but to capatilize on advertising dollars. By announcing such news on a radio show for example, the stations advertisers win, but by doing so on their own blog the athlete is driving audiences through clicks to their own advertisers.

This new age messaging also begs the question, how can team PR people deal with this type of interaction from their athletes? How can it be ensured that the correct message gets out, or even more importantly, that the wrong one doesn’t? What can be done to make sure a team is aware of what players are doing online?

It can be uncharted territory for a team because there are distinct differences between interviews and appearances set up by the team and what an athlete does in terms of personal branding on their own time. Team reps do their best to maintain relationships with player agents and management, but their personal branding is often done without notifying team officials.

There are action items that team PR people can utilize to stay ahead of the game and avoid suprises. Every PR person should be engaging in social media, whether it be corporate or personal accounts. Remaining up-to-date on the latest online trends requires participating in the conversation. Being one step behind ensures never being able to keep up with where athletes are sharing information.

A little more obvious is “following”, “friending” and “becoming a fan” of your athletes social media pages, and consistently checking them, and their personal websites, for updates. Being surprised by a reporters question about something one of your players posted online can only compound the situation, plus by checking for their updates you might find some personal or community information that would be worth pitching to the media.

Finally, most companies these days are beginning to adopt social media rules for employees, IBM has one of the best employee social media policies. Sports teams should follow a similar model, although a few tweaks might be needed due to the nature of working with contract athletes as opposed to employees. The main idea stays the same though, just as media training is provided to players, so should training for players regarding social media activities.

The key is to remain in the loop on players personal activities in an effort to not be caught off-guard when something is posted that isn’t in-line with team policy.

Update: Former Philadelphia Eagles employee Dan Leone will be chatting on espn.com at 3:00pm EST on Thursday, March 12.

Former Philadelphia Eagles employee Dan Leone grew up just down the street from Veterans Stadium, and has been a die-hard fan his entire life. When the Eagles built Lincoln Financial Field Leone figured he’d fill out an application and see if he could land a gig with his favorite team.

Fast forward 6 years and Leone is the west gate chief on game days, that is up until last week when the team let 13-year veteran, and fan-favorite Brian Dawkins sign with the Denver Broncos. What does Dawkins have to do with this? Well, Leone, like many Eagles fans, was furious Dawkins was leaving and posted on his Facebook page, “Dan is [expletive] devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver…Damn Eagles R Retarded!!”

The Eagles subsequently fired Leone. Should Leone have better judgment, yes. Was his Facebook status update inappropriate for an employee? Of course. But, the Eagles going as far as firing him brings up a host of questions from a PR and really a business perspective in general.

Christy Hammond at Sportsprblog.com brings up a great point. In this day and age every company should supply their employees with social media policies. Many companies are behind the curve on this, but as sites like Facebook and especially Twitter are exploding, more and more people are sharing their thoughts on-line, and companies need to decide what is and isn’t acceptable. That also means employees need to be extra vigilant in what they’re posting.

But, that doesn’t mean that this unfortunate situation rests solely on Leone’s shoulders. The Eagles took a lapse in judgment from an employee and turned it into PR nightmare. I don’t know how many “Facebook friends” Leone has, but usually it’s in the range of 100-200. So the Eagles fired a passionate employee over an inappropriate post that maybe 200 people saw.

In turn they ensured millions more now know about the comment. The story, and Leone’s comment, have now been all over the Philadelphia media, ESPN and almost every major sports media outlet across the country.

An even larger issue is whether firing an employee over a Facebook post is a wise PR move considering the current economic conditions. People are losing jobs left and right, and Leone was just fired for his Facebook status! Will the Eagles see any backlash for being insensitive during these time? Maybe something they should have thought about before pulling the trigger on this decision.

So, my question to you, did the Eagles make a mountain out of a mole hill? And, do companies in the current economic climate need to be more careful from a PR perspective for the reasons they let employees go?