By Nick Morin
In a world dominated by social media presence, one foolish move can leave your company and its consumers scrambling. Therefore, we need PR. When people think public relations, they immediately go to the overwhelmingly large companies like Apple and Google. However, what most people forget about is how important PR is in the sports world.
Here are the top five biggest PR mistakes made in the past decade:
1. Chicken, Beer, and Partying
Back in 2011, the Boston Red Sox suffered one of the largest collapses in Major League Baseball history. The Sox went from leading the AL East by nine games in the early wild-card race, to missing the playoffs completely. The Red Sox ace pitchers John Lackey and Josh Beckett went for a combined 6.45 era and a 2-7 record.
To make things worse, instead of blaming these losses on the normal team problems like “trouble in the locker room” or “they just didn’t show up when they needed to,” the Boston Globe found it imperative to blame this dramatic loss on the compilation of drinking beer, partying, and eating fried chicken while in the clubhouse. Naturally this didn’t go over well with fans in Boston and ultimately ended in the firing of the Sox skipper Terry Francona.
2. Deny Everything, Admit Nothing
MLB slugger Ryan Braun was once a household name. In fact, he’s still a household name, just for the wrong reason. In 2013, the Brewers all-star was caught using performance enhancing drugs, and his PR team decided he should put together a public apology.
Good idea, right? Well, it would have been except for the fact that mid apology, Braun decided that while he apologizes, he should throw some of his executives under the bus along with the “process” as he called it. Needless to say, his staff didn’t go home as confident as they were when they left.
3. Don’t Get Ahead of Yourself #AskEmmert
The trusted president of the NCAA, Mark Emmert, made an appearance on ESPN’s Mike & Mike during a spike in fan interest. After what seemed to be a successful live interview with hot topic questions, the NCAA thought it would be a great idea to start a twitter buzz called #AskEmmert, where Mark would answer fan questions and keep everyone up to date.
This idea was shut down quickly after many tweets surfaced that, in the words of the infamous Pat MacAfee, was not good for the brand. It was officially shut down when tweets like this began to rise,
“#AskEmmert remember that time you mismanaged a $150 million building project at UConn so badly the governor ordered an investigation.
4. Faster, Higher, Stronger…Problematic
It has been a few years since the Olympics passed the torch to the city of Sochi, Russia. However, the time that has passed has not healed the problems Russia faced during their temporary rise to fame. Almost immediately after the “amateur” athletes began to show up to their hotels, complaints started to file in about not only the accommodations but for basic utilities like water.
Of course, Russia wanted this Olympic event to change people’s view on their country. Although, I can imagine #SochiProblems was not the image they wanted to leave on everyone’s mind as that hashtag became the top trending tweet during the Sochi Olympic time.
5. Not one, not four, not six…but two rings?
Okay, I can understand people want to know everything the star player is up to, but is having an entire ESPN segment dedicated to “The Decision,” the best PR idea Lebron James’ team could come up with.
You can’t put together an entire list of sport PR mistakes without adding one of the worst television flops to appear on a sports network, and that’s why this is number one.
While LeBron’s overly exaggerated decision on what team he was going to be signing to got a large number of ratings, is it really necessary to put together an entire campaign just to hear a guy make a choice. From pyrotechnics to a fog machine, this extravaganza was something out of a WWE fight night. Fortunately for Lebron, he is the greatest basketball player on the planet so this awful attempt at entertainment did not tarnish his legacy.
A quick lesson to the rest of the athletes who think their presence is “personal TV show important”; unless you are an absolute dominant athlete in a sport like the NBA, keep to the average press conferences to announce your future plans. If you don’t believe me, feel free to meander down to the link below and try to tell me that isn’t the most ridicules PR/Marketing idea you’ve ever seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9BqUBYaHlM