Accentuate the Positive, 3.0

According to the London Daily Telegraph:

A Commons official resigned as the Speaker’s spin doctor after he was caught trying to generate anti-Labour publicity, it emerged yesterday.

Wow — must have been something pretty inflammatory…

John Stonborough had to hand in his notice after an e-mail he wrote to a Tory friend was sent by accident to a researcher working for a Labour MP.

In the e-mail, Mr Stonborough urged the Tories to attack the Labour ‘snouts in the trough’ disclosed in the list showing the expenses claimed by MPs.

“Snouts in the trough,” eh? Kind of pales next to Cheney’s F-bomb, where the Washington Post had to defend running the word in question.

Latrell Sprewell, who once lost most of a season for choking coach P.J. Carlesimo, recently learned a valuable lesson in math:

One pithy comment, plus two reporters, equals infinite fan heckling and taunts.

It seems the former All-NBA guard was a little peeved that Minnesota Timberwolves management wanted to restructure his $14,000,000/year deal down to $9,000,000 — and that “a guy’s got to feed his family.”

And exactly why would anyone take offense to that?

Update (5/19/05): Wolves owner Glen Taylor recently called the pairing of Sprewell and Sam Cassell a “failed experiement,” and said neither was coming back to the team. Well, now he’s backtracking, and Cassell is back — and so is Spree (if he can live on less than $14M)

Michael Goldman has some very pertinent things to say about the importance of crafting a message.

He is known primarily for work with political candidates, even though most of his clientele is in the business world. I agree with this philosophy whole-heartedly: “People don’t know what to say. We help them clarify their message.”

Being a spokesman can be daunting enough, but just imagine being a spokesman forced to fire your “unofficial spokesman.”

Face it — the “Mr. Wendy” ad campaign was awful. But cheesy rebound lines like this one only tend to make reporters laugh (and damage your credibility.): “While decisions are still being made about new creative, food has always been the hero at Wendy’s, and we’re going to make sure that comes through loud and clear,” Wendy’s marketing executive Don Calhoon said.

Give me a break. I can swallow a triple with cheese easier than I can that statement. It needs to be more conversational. Yeah, you can make the case that the “bite” made it into print… but I can also make the case that today’s politically-savvy reader/investor will recognize it as spin, and reject the cheese.

“Food has always been the hero at Wendy’s”. I thought you had to go to Subway or Quiznos to get a hero.

Folks — it is possible to craft a statement that is too cute to be effective. Don’t outcute yourself.

Late in the piece, the CEO gets it right.

Asked during a recent conference call by one analyst whether the company was rethinking its advertising in light of sales slippage, chief executive Jack Schuessler replied, “Any campaign you tend to tweak it from time to time … and I suspect we’ll tweak Mr. Wendy.”

He ought to tweak Calhoon while he’s at it.