When Jay-Z arrived at Glastonbury in 2008 many believed it would be a disaster and he’d just be boo’d off stage. The greatest rapper in the world getting no love from one of the most famous music festivals in the world. It all started when Noel Gallagher from Oasis came out and openly critisized festival organisers Emily and Michael Eavis for booking Jay-Z to headline. “Hip hop at Glastonbury – no way man. It’s a rock festival“.
So whatever he did next was going to be the difference between failure and success. He could have died on stage, I mean really getting killed by the crowd. But he took some amazing advice from his team. Just look what happened next….
Why does Jay-Z playing an Oasis song (badly) matter if you’re reading this and you’re in business? Because when something goes wrong, you get a complaint, bad press from a product launch or competitors openly critisize your product - whatever you do next will make all the difference.
The way Tiger Woods managed his PR during these problems just shows what happens when you take bad advice, chose to do nothing or hide behind lawyers – Your brand gets abused and loses all credibility.
So whilst having a PR team on retainer may be a thing of the past – make sure that when things do go wrong for your brand (and they will at some point) you are surrounded by people with creativity and integrity.
For those of you that ain’t get the memo, my name is Jay-Z and I’m pretty fucking awesome…
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