Phil Hall's PHA Media has confirmed to PR Week that it will be advising England football captain John Terry on his media strategy now that an injunction blocking coverage of his affair with Vanessa Perroncel, the partner of former Chelsea and current England teammate Wayne Bridge, has been lifted.
A number of other celebrity PRs had previously said they would be cautious about taking Terry on as a client, especially once it became clear Max Clifford was representing Perroncel. However one of those who said he wouldn't be keen to represent Terry at this time, Gary Farrow, nevertheless admitted to the trade magazine "sport is a different area and people have short memories - his branding within Chelsea won't be a problem".
Of course the fact Terry tried to bury this story by using one of those increasingly controversial super-injunctions, similar to that used by energy firm Trafigura last year, hasn't helped. Firstly it could reduce the number of sympathetic journalists who might otherwise come to his defence, given how hated the newly oppressive British privacy laws are among the press. And secondly, it implies to the public that the England captain has more to hide than he probably really has. It's another demonstration of the fact that if celebrities or companies want proper reputation management they are better turning to reputation managers from a PR background rather than a legal one.
Ian Monk, PR advisor to Wayne Rooney among others, told PR Week: "Lesson number one for reputation managers: only call in the legal attack dogs if there is a real chance of a sustainable victory. Securing a killer injunction which is publicly torn up by the courts a week later multiplies the damage ultimately done.The initial story gets published with venomous interest through its status as 'The story they tried to ban'. This has always guaranteed extra blood in the water".
Still, some reckon Hall, more than anyone, is up to the job of turning things round for Terry, despite the reputation damage his lawyers (and before that his libido) has caused. It will certainly be interesting to see how Hall does, given, as the Guardian pointed out yesterday, he himself was critical of the PR people handling that other recent sportsman in scandal, Mr Tiger Woods, going as far as to write on his own blog: "On every main principle of crisis management, Woods and his team failed".
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