FigsAndOlives retweetledi
Let me recount a story from 2014 when I worked as a client executive at BHM Group.
We were handling most of the Nigerian Breweries brand portfolio, and Amstel Malta was one of our accounts. They were sponsoring the AMVCAs, so we were involved in pre and post event media planning.
During the ceremony, Genevieve Nnaji was announced as a lifetime achievement award winner, and her prize came with a year's supply of Amstel Malta, which was announced. Bear in mind that Amstel Malta actively marketed itself as a health-conscious brand and a low-sugar alternative to other Malta drinks.
Genevieve - who also happened to be an Amstel Malta brand ambassador - had a regrettable foot-in-mouth moment onstage when accepting the award. When presented with the year's supply of Amstel Malta, she (jokingly) went "I hope this won't make me fat!"
The AM brand manager nearly lost her mind, and all the phones at BHM started ringing off the hook. This was a serious crisis moment for the brand, and we were the crisis communication experts, so we were expected to fix it! Fix it NOWWWW!
Us eager 20-something year-olds at BHM immediately swung into action, impressively coming up with a comprehensive communications plan for the crisis, including a Big Idea, in just 2 hours. Our plan was to take what Genevieve said and repurpose it into "Amstel Malta makes me PHAT - Pretty Hot And Tasty."
The plan had radio, TV, online and print channels, an influencer marketing extension (with buy-in from influencers whom we had proactively reached out to, even before presenting the plan to the boss), and even a celebrity endorsement plug-in (we proposed using Genevieve herself to market the phrase so as to make it all seem believable, or at least contrived) - all to the effect of making Genevieve's AMVCA faux pas seem like it was a planned statement to kick off an Amstel Malta comms campaign.
In fact, we believed so much in our comms plan that even without the boss's approval, we staged a photoshoot with each of us holding a can of Amstel Malta in the office - each photo captioned "Amstel Malta makes me PHAT."
After all this *Comms and PR* activity, we confidently walked into @ayenithegreat's office to present our crisis communication masterpiece that would dig Amstel Malta out of the hole dug by its brand ambassador and impress him. I remember holding the MacBook Pro and confidently presenting the slide deck to him alongside @MrBigtimi.
His verdict...
"Are you people serious?" And walked us out of his office. 🤣
Over the ensuing hours and days was when we saw the difference between an actual comms professional and a greenhorn wannabe. Instead of *doing something* to impress the hyperventilating client, Ayeni simply advised the client to wait and observe whether this "crisis" was in fact, a crisis. Instead of an overreaction where no response was actually necessary, he insisted that we wait and monitor whether anyone would pick up on the significance of what Genevieve said or give it coverage.
Nobody picked up on it. A few obscure tweets, no online gossip article, no news mention - nothing. It turned out that "Amstel Malta makes me PHAT" would not in fact, have put out a fire, but would have CREATED one. Where nobody even noticed our brand ambassador's unfortunate slip of tongue, it was our overeager, youthful aṣéjù that would have actually drawn attention to it.
What Ayeni did is the SI unit of 21st century professional crisis communication - reading the room first before doing, or deciding whether to do anything. Left to the angry client, Genevieve's endorsement contract would have been terminated immediately, which would have transformed what turned out to be a non-issue into a whole saga. Ayeni rather advised everyone to stay calm and monitor the situation carefully.
That's how come you've never heard this story until now - a PR professional did his job.
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