No publicity is bad publicity
Paddy Lewis
A mate who has the unenviable task of trying to wangle information out of Super 15 teams in his role as a rugby reporter was having a moan the other day about how hard it was to get information.
Players could tweet something, and he would try and follow it up, only to be stymied by the NZRU’s version of the Official Information Act – that is, deny everything or say nothing. Even the players are held in a stranglehold which sees some deleting tweets or Facebook messages as soon as the media starts asking questions.
Now while this doesn’t stop a lot of media organisations from reporting what they see on Twitter and Facebook as fact, my mate has a bit more professionalism and would rather get the story from the source rather than just cutting and pasting from the internet.
“It’s a nightmare. I’ll see something, ask the media liaison for confirmation eight hours before my deadline – and they don’t respond. You can either go ahead and print a tweet and risk having to do some sort of retraction, or wait. The media liaison guy does bizarre things like reply to my emails or phone calls at 2am – way too late for deadline.”
He has similar problems with netball, which has always adopted a bunker mentality to the media.
Contrast this with the current surprise package of the summer season. The Toyota Racing Series has brought together 15 overseas drivers to race against five of the best young New Zealand drivers. It has slipped under the radar a bit, but none of the overseas drivers are bunnies. They are contracted to Formula 1 teams like Ferrari (Raffaele Marciello) and are related to some big names. Formula 1 champion Damon Hill’s son Josh is back for a second year, and McLaren F1 driver Gerhard Burger’s nephew Lucas Auer is in for a debut season.
The pits are filled with talent spotters and medium-sized bigwigs from some of the biggest racing franchises in the world, looking for drivers who might have that X factor.
All the drivers are young. The European drivers (particularly the Poms) are being groomed for bigger things on the world motor racing stage.
The Toyota series has five rounds (round three is on this weekend in Taupo if anyone is up that way) and with the demise of the V8 racing here, become the pre-eminent series in New Zealand.
But, as usual, I digress. The coverage and accessibility of the Toyota Racing Series is second to none. I discovered last weekend that not only can I get instant access to any race driver I want (and as Joe Public, not the special treatment us pretend sports columnists get, either), I can feel like I’m right amongst the action with their Youtube site (Toyota has its own camera crew as well as TV3 coverage), and any questions are answered at pace on their Facebook and Twitter feeds.
They update media details in as many places as they can as quickly as possible, and interact with the drivers’ Twitter feeds and Facebook pages to make it a true 360 degree communications extravaganza. They do all this with limited resources, but it is done so well and in such a timely and professional manner, you could swear they had tons of people working on it.
The Toyota Racing Series has harnessed the power of social media and networking, and made their product accessible and engaging (everyone loves the human story as well as the racing). Perhaps they could give rugby and netball a few tips.
Players could tweet something, and he would try and follow it up, only to be stymied by the NZRU’s version of the Official Information Act – that is, deny everything or say nothing. Even the players are held in a stranglehold which sees some deleting tweets or Facebook messages as soon as the media starts asking questions.
Now while this doesn’t stop a lot of media organisations from reporting what they see on Twitter and Facebook as fact, my mate has a bit more professionalism and would rather get the story from the source rather than just cutting and pasting from the internet.
“It’s a nightmare. I’ll see something, ask the media liaison for confirmation eight hours before my deadline – and they don’t respond. You can either go ahead and print a tweet and risk having to do some sort of retraction, or wait. The media liaison guy does bizarre things like reply to my emails or phone calls at 2am – way too late for deadline.”
He has similar problems with netball, which has always adopted a bunker mentality to the media.
Contrast this with the current surprise package of the summer season. The Toyota Racing Series has brought together 15 overseas drivers to race against five of the best young New Zealand drivers. It has slipped under the radar a bit, but none of the overseas drivers are bunnies. They are contracted to Formula 1 teams like Ferrari (Raffaele Marciello) and are related to some big names. Formula 1 champion Damon Hill’s son Josh is back for a second year, and McLaren F1 driver Gerhard Burger’s nephew Lucas Auer is in for a debut season.
The pits are filled with talent spotters and medium-sized bigwigs from some of the biggest racing franchises in the world, looking for drivers who might have that X factor.
All the drivers are young. The European drivers (particularly the Poms) are being groomed for bigger things on the world motor racing stage.
The Toyota series has five rounds (round three is on this weekend in Taupo if anyone is up that way) and with the demise of the V8 racing here, become the pre-eminent series in New Zealand.
But, as usual, I digress. The coverage and accessibility of the Toyota Racing Series is second to none. I discovered last weekend that not only can I get instant access to any race driver I want (and as Joe Public, not the special treatment us pretend sports columnists get, either), I can feel like I’m right amongst the action with their Youtube site (Toyota has its own camera crew as well as TV3 coverage), and any questions are answered at pace on their Facebook and Twitter feeds.
They update media details in as many places as they can as quickly as possible, and interact with the drivers’ Twitter feeds and Facebook pages to make it a true 360 degree communications extravaganza. They do all this with limited resources, but it is done so well and in such a timely and professional manner, you could swear they had tons of people working on it.
The Toyota Racing Series has harnessed the power of social media and networking, and made their product accessible and engaging (everyone loves the human story as well as the racing). Perhaps they could give rugby and netball a few tips.
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