Have you heard the one about the PR competition which attracted so few entrants a ‘winner’ was made up?
Or about the lucky ‘entrant’ no-one could confirm existed who was sadly too ill to enjoy his prize?
Well, this may sound like a far-fetched joke, but it is actually a real life farce which damaged reputations and saw someone lose their job.
The competition, which dramatically spiralled out of control, was organised by Chesterfield Football Club which held a raffle for a place on its pre-season training camp in Hungary.
Sadly, despite such a high-profile prize, the competition attracted just four entrants and it looks like the idea was quietly dropped.
But anyone who knows football will tell you supporters have long memories and when fans questioned what had happened it was announced the competition had been won by a James Higgins, from Surrey.
Lucky man. Other fans looked out for him on the trip but there was no sign. The club reported on its website he had been prevented from travelling by illness, under the headline 'Disappointment for raffle winner'. It added that ‘as a gesture of goodwill’ people who had entered the competition could get a full refund.
But some supporters smelt a rat and after one of them contacted club director Ashley Cooper he issued a statement announcing the winning entry was ‘not legitimate’ and that information supplied to the communications department had ‘clearly been falsified’.
As own goals go, this story was becoming increasingly spectacular and perhaps not surprisingly the head of the club’s communications and marketing department lost his job as a result.
If you want to see the story in all it gory detail check out the tweets of supporter Jonno Turner (@jonnot). Here are a selection:
Clearly the best course of action to take would have been to confirm early on that the competition had been cancelled due to a lack of interest. Yes, that would have caused a little bit of embarrassment, but it would have been short lived and unlikely to make anything more than local news.
Instead, thanks to going to the extraordinary lengths of inventing a new supporter and then claiming he was too ill to enjoy his prize, the club attracted national headlines for all the wrong reasons. A crisis media management situation which was entirely self-inflicted.
Cover-ups never work and are more damaging than the story you are trying to hide.
On a more positive note the club did apologise once details of the cover-up began to emerge – a vital move in any crisis.
And Mr Cooper has been candid in his subsequent statements, labelling the incident as a ‘total farce’ and adding he is ‘still reeling from the shameful incident’.
He said it had been caused by a ‘massive error of judgement’ by a ‘hard-working, respected, likeable employee’ and that the club had taken ‘swift action after uncovering the truth’. Words which may help the club regain the trust of supporters.
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