The Baroness & The Barrowman: a PR pantomime

The much-maligned PR fightback documentary, paid for by The Baroness & Barrowman (Lady Michelle Mone & husband, Doug Barrowman), deserves much of the raucous reception received.

It’s fitting that their docu-product appeared during the great British pantomime season. For anyone unfamiliar, this sees theatres and halls nationwide filled out for 6-8 week runs, with festive productions based around fairytales. Think Aladdin, Snow White and the like.?

The extent of jeers and laughs directed at the show has the hallmarks of a good old pantomime production; but, alas for them, not as a serious piece of crisis communication content to restore reamed reputations.

It was supposed to advance their position in a long-running crisis narrative in which they are front and centre. If only it wasn’t acutely compromised, deeply indulgent, and so synthetic. To borrow another theatre tradition, if the audience could throw rotten tomatoes, they would: the couple firmly occupy the roles of villains of the piece.?

Yet, for the volumes of disbelief and disregard expressed, there’s been little by way of analysis of this format - a self-funded investigative documentary - as a vehicle for crisis-storytelling/PR remediation.

Was it a total failure? If yes, was that due to format, content, or inauthenticity? Are the Baroness & Barrowman so smeared that whatever PR pivot they try is doomed to fail?

In the spirit of knowledge acquisition, some useful learnings can be gathered for those of us interested in the art of crisis response and reputation redemption.

1.??? What didn’t work

The biggest challenge for a documentary crisis-storytelling format is credibility. That is, will stakeholders treat it as seriously as they typically would a rigorous prime-time news interview?

To have a chance to work, every major component needs to pass muster. In this case, the biggest blow was not even the main protagonists but the third character: the investigative reporter/producer, Mark Williams-Thomas, who: fronted the show, provided the narrative voiceover, posed tame questions, and conveniently curated a softening of The Baroness & Barrowman.

None of that that should be a surprise: after all, production was paid for by PPE Medpro, the company founded by Doug Barrowman, which won the PPE contracts fueling this scandal. When it emerged soon after that Williams-Thomas had been on the couple’s payroll as a private investigator, directly related to this case, then any lingering benefit of the doubt was quashed. Remarkably, they continue to claim objectivity remains intact.

Meanwhile, the opulent setting of the couple’s exclusive home served to reenforce the trappings of multi-millionaire status. There’s nothing wrong with being a multi-millionaire, per se: I’d like to be one. It’s just best not to illuminate that when stuck in a crisis narrative centered on alleged sizeable, ill-gotten gains obtained via undue influence. The recent ‘Dumb Money’ movie shows PR advisors moving moneymen away from their luxury abodes for PR appearances.

Then, it lasted over 70 minutes. I watched it for professional intrigue, but others who grasped the duration said, in comparably more brutal terms: ‘I’m not giving that much of my time to an inherently biased product.’

How many viewers were lost due to an inequitable investment in time?? I reckon they could have started out with the same goals, but produced a 20-minute mini-doc. And in doing so, enticed a larger audience to at least start watching.

2.??? What did work?

I’ve yet to find an expert voice or average Joe who said that it helped with framing, or induced empathy or sympathy for Michelle and Douglas. ?

But the duration did enable the airing of parts of the back story that, if them, you’d want shared.

Specifically, government-procurement pandemonium and scrambling to acquire large volumes of PPE, evidently short of any tried and tested plan. In this, we discerned a tested ‘Not Just Me’ strategy (Johar, Birk and Einweller) that aims to diffuse blame by pointing out the likely culpability of others in the same pickle. Then, their challenges to the claims against them that the PPE supplied wasn’t fit for purpose; and/or how the PPE was stored after delivery may have contributed to any deficiencies. Plus, the tiny testing sample and technicalities upon which that charge is based.

It did begin to offer the flavour that the UK government may be riding roughshod to recover as much of its flawed PPE acquisition strategy during the COVD pandemic. That matters because the Baroness & Barrowman say that they’re being made scapegoats for others’ failings.

Credible, consumable & conciliatory

In crisis comms, alternative narrative formats deserve consideration. When right for the job, they should be utilised to support a counter crisis narrative; especially when key points of a defensive response likely won’t get air time in traditional media.

There are a various channel options and we often introduce examples and supporting methodologies into our Drill crisis simulations. The goal is to place client teams and the brands they represent in front of alternative paradigms, and push them to apply to their situation.?

In simple terms, an alternative crisis storytelling format needs to achieve three things, to have a chance of working: be readily accessible and credible, consumable, and acutely conciliatory. My last post about this case addresses conciliation via apology-making.??

Crisis response is an art form

Buster Keaton is supposed to have said that pantomime can never be a lost art; something about it being so natural to do.

If only people befallen by reputation crises could contemplate that effective crisis response should be considered an art form too. Comparably, crisis response may not be so natural to do, for most; but it could be more so, if brands practised properly during peace-time for worse-case events.?

Like anything, mastery comes from the right type of practise. In this case, it’s obvious that there was little by way of practise, far less for mastery.???

Now, Baroness & Barrowman must long for one panto phrase to ring out: ‘It’s behind you!’?

Seasoned crisis watchers and panto fans know the likely response: ‘Oh no it isn’t!’