Blind Hammer looks at Official and Unofficial Media Relations at West Ham.
When David Gold recently revealed to TalkSport our priority ambitions for signing a striker he received immediate criticism from some fans. This echoed the criticism David Sullivan experienced last year when he was similarly transparent about our need for striker recruitment in an interview with Sky Sports.
Essentially the criticism focused around a number of areas but most particularly.
1. We were revealing our budget in advance and therefore disadvantaging any negotiation by driving up the asking price.
2. We were alerting competitor clubs who may try to disrupt any deals we attempted.
3. We were similarly encouraging excessive agent demands for wages and signing on fees by revealing budgets and priorities.
4. We were posturing by appearing to be in the market for players that we had no realistic chance of signing.
Fan critics who made these complaints argued that what should happen is that signings should occur as a surprise, unheralded by any speculation. The first we should hear about them is when a signing is announced on the official web site.
Now in an ideal world this viewpoint would hold a lot of credibility and most of us would support this approach in principle.
However we do not live in an ideal world. The fact is that even if “sources” at West Ham did not engage in any media interventions there would be rumours and interpretations aplenty in the press. The football gossip and rumour mill is a full time industry which powers many a Journalist’s living and provides advertising revenue for many websites. A golden silence from Gold and Sullivan would do little to prevent the juggernaut of the football media industry commercially driven to satisfy the interest of thousands of West Ham fans.
Even if the Board hierarchy never made any on the record comments it is unrealistic not to expect rumours and gossip to emerge from the corporation that is West Ham United. There are hundreds of people working for and attached to West Ham who will in the normal phenomenon of Office gossip participate in and discuss rumours about the club. Unless we transform the culture of West Ham and Society in general into a Stasi like Police State run by fear then information emanating out of the club to some extent is inevitable. Even successive Governments of all Political hues are generally unable to prevent leaks, despite threats of sanctions. On balance I think leaks are a price worth paying for the benefits of whistle blowing and free speech.
Quite apart from these internal sources, leaks emanate from areas that West Ham have little control over. These include Players from other clubs and agents representing both our players and potential targets. Agents are financially driven to manipulate the media to try and affect the pay and terms of their Players. I have received some insight into this from an ex-football agent.
Given this inevitable chaotic swirl of transfer narratives in the media, and stories about the club in general, simply absenting themselves from this public discourse carries risk for West Ham. Removing themselves from the discourse entirely allows free rein to negative narratives.
The fact is that whether we like it or not the Board have the responsibility to project West Ham as a positive brand in the world of Football. They would be neglecting their duty if they simply retired, hermit like, from any media scrutiny into obscurity. I remember how Ian Holloway complained before our Play off Final how the relative small size of Blackpool as a club highlighted the responsibility to keep the club positively in the news. In Blackpool’s case unless he worked at it there was a danger that they could completely disappear from the Sports Pages, doing harm to the club’s profile. The situation for West Ham is less dramatic but the principle still holds. This principle is that interest in Football is competitive and all Clubs, from the smallest to the largest need to try and manage, even manipulate the media to their best advantage. Improving the media profile of the club has longer term commercial benefits, increasing attractiveness to new fans, and therefore longer term benefits which should pass through to help increase the chance of Footballing success.
The real task then for West Ham is to manage the media. One approach would be to constantly issue Official Statements to counteract negative media stories but there are risks to this strategy. Every Official Statement to some extent makes West Ham a hostage to events and fortunes. In the twists and turns of the Football world, positions which seem entirely reasonable one week may have to be radically revised only a few weeks later. Official Statements would soon lose credibility, a bit like the infamous “vote of confidence” clubs have often given to beleaguered Manager just prior to their sacking.
An alternative approach, which West Ham use, is to use trusted “unofficial” outlets to communicate, day to day, with their fan base. There are 3 mechanisms that they use that I am aware of. The first is the long running Jack Sullivan Twitter Account, the second is the Claret and Hugh Website, and the third is the Column and Radio Show attributed to the “Ex-West Ham Employee Insider”.
Using these outlets they can try and manage the inevitable discussions and gossip surrounding West Ham. A good example of this was when it was leaked last week that Hernandez was making a demand for wages that would bust our wage structure. By managing this leak the club is communicating with its fan base. If this news did not emerge then it would be open season on negative criticism of a Board “sitting on its hands” and doing nothing to seriously advance West Ham’s interest in the transfer market. By leaking Hernandez’s reported wage demands the club are at least revealing the genuine dilemmas the Board faces in its recruitment. West Ham fans may not be happy about this but they have a better understanding of what the issues are.
The real question then is how this need for transparency and communication is managed. There is an argument that information has emerged officially from the club which may has harmed our negotiating position in transfers. Declaring that we had £20 million for a striker last year may have been a case in point. Similarly reports appearing unofficially on Claret and Hugh this summer that we have a Transfer budget of £65 million face a similar charge.
However Gold and Sullivan may well, in private, defend their strategy by pointing out that footballing insiders will be already aware of potential transfer resources available to a club like West Ham. It will be not be particularly advantageous to them if we are revealed to have a limit to our transfer allocation. By this argument, signalling the ball park transfer budget available to West Ham helps our Fan base by allowing a genuine and realistic understanding of what potential targets are available to them.
For my own part I still think West ham should steer away from unofficial leaks of budgets and limits to transfers. I understand their wish to reassure fans of the extent of their commitment but the controversy which accompanies any such stories diminish any positive effects that they hope for. Media management is a skillful and dangerous occupation. It is a bit like catching a Tiger by the tail. There are many in life who believes that they could manage the media only to be later consumed by them.
Unfortunately this media management is a game that West Ham must inevitably play, alongside other clubs, equally trying to manage their media profile. My own view is one of understanding, but also that there is a need for improvement.
COYI
David Griffith