PRs: This is how to handle conflict
As a humanities student, one of the academics I cited regularly was the 20th century philosopher AJ Ayer.
Ayer is credited, among other things, with popularising, in the English speaking world, the movement of logical positivism – which, to oversimplify, is a theory of the meaning of statements about the world.
Few academics were more famous in Britain, at the time, than Ayer and several of his contemporaries at Oxford, who together formed what became known as the golden age of Oxford philosophy and were famed for their ability to broaden the appeal of scholarship by putting it into simpler terms (we could do with a few more of those today).
But in a strange twist to the end of his philosophy career, Ayer is perhaps best-known for an unlikely encounter not long before he died, attending a New York celeb party. Ayer feared boxer Mike Tyson was assaulting model Naomi Campbell, and stepped in to break things up.
“Do you know who the fuck I am?,” Tyson snapped at Ayer, towering over the frail, elderly academic. “I’m the heavyweight champion of the world!”
“And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic,” Ayer retorted.
“We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest we talk about this like rational men”.
Do you know who I am?!
Which brings me to this bank called This Bank. I wrote a less than charitable column about the London bank’s recent rebrand, in which I called its new name bland, insipid and downright awful.
When companies get criticism in the press, execs tend to clench their teeth and shake their fists, à la Tyson. Some pick up the phone to libel lawyers (our good friends at Mishcon offer a 24-hour hotline for such occasions). But the result often compounds their frustration, with little to show for it beyond an invoice with lots of zeroes.
This Bank, on the other hand, took the AJ Ayer approach. Can we talk like gentlemen, they said, and I agreed. I had an interesting interview with chief exec Chris Waring, who visited our offices – you can watch it here – and to my surprise I now find myself quietly willing them on, hoping the relaunch pays off.
So there’s a lesson to PRs and comms officers everywhere. Can the aggression: let’s talk.