It had to take something special to knock Donald Trump and Brexit away from the headlines this week.
But one particularly unlikely story grabbed the attention of journalists around the world and took the gloss off what should have been a good news story.
It also triggered two investigations and has been described as ‘car crash PR’.
When footballing minnows Sutton United took on Premier League giants Arsenal in the FA Cup this week it should have been the perfect opportunity to raise their profile.
But an incident involving an overweight reserve goalkeeper and a pie saw them instead making headlines for all the wrong reasons and showed a crisis media management situation can hit any organisation.
At first Wayne Shaw’s actions, which saw him pictured eating a pie on the substitute’s bench during the match, turned him into an internet sensation. It seemed little more than a light-hearted and self-effacing attempt to live up to the ‘roly-poly goalie’ label he had been given in the build-up to the tie.
But it quickly became clear that a bookmaker – which sponsored Sutton for the game – had offered odds of 8-1 that the keeper would eat a pie on camera during the game.
His actions had potentially broken betting rules.
This suddenly became the focus of media attention and ‘piegate’, somewhat unimaginatively, was born.
The club which had hired a PR agency before the big match to maximise their exposure, suddenly found it was in urgent help of crisis media management experts.
I’m not sure whether a Non-League football team would have a communications crisis plan in place but, to give them credit, Sutton certainly followed some of the key principles and much bigger organisations could learn from their actions.
In any crisis, you need to be seen to be responding quickly and to be taking decisive action. The club’s manager Paul Doswell did just that announcing on Wednesday that the club had accepted the goalkeeper’s offer to resign.
It is also important to show your customers – in this case supporters - you care – and Mr Dowsell’s comments showed he cared about both the club’s reputation and his player.
He said: “This decision was taken at board level. We felt we had to take very strong actions. The Chairman spoke to him this afternoon and Wayne offered his resignation.
“I’m devastated, the chairman is devastated. I have spoken to Wayne and the guy is in tears, crying down the phone. It is a very sad situation.”
It is also important not to treat journalists as the enemy. When you find yourself in a crisis situation the demands of the media can feel too intense, particularly if you have limited or no experience of this type of situation.
But you need the media to get your messages across. Turning down interview requests or offering no comment will only intensify the interest and create the impression there is more to the story. Sutton, and in particularly their manager, do not appear to have shied away from the media attention.
Additionally the club also tweeted a short statement about Mr Shaw’s resignation on its officials account. Earlier this week we showed how Uber had completely ignored its own corporate accounts during the early stages of its latest crisis.
What was less impressive was that the club seemed to have no idea of what Mr Shaw was doing or saying in the media. The manager admitted in an interview as the story was still building that he was not aware his goalkeeper had appeared on a breakfast TV sofa that same morning to discuss his exploits. Clearly it is difficult to control the message when it is not clear who is speaking to the media and what they are saying.
There’s no doubting piegate was a pretty unsavoury incident, but for some quick thinking brands it still offered a PR opportunity.
Morrisons offered the goalie the chance to become its ‘official pie taster’ and Pukka Pies tweeted an offer of free pies for the whole team.
Lets get #WayneShaw to become our official 'pie-taster' https://t.co/ZBFmPlL3eL
— Morrisons (@Morrisons) February 21, 2017
Knocked out of the cup? Don’t worry @wayneshaw70 #EverythingsPukka - drop us a line and we'll send free pies for the whole team. #WayneShaw pic.twitter.com/MNmMCIc3sG
— Pukka Pies (@PukkaPies) February 21, 2017
However, for Sutton United a Cinderella story became something of a nightmare and again showed how the actions of one employee can trigger a crisis.
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