How Rangers and Carlsberg can mitigate the PR damage caused by last night's UEFA violence
As the former PR supremo at Tennents, Rob Bruce knows a lot about event sponsorship. Here he gives his thoughts on what last night’s crowd trouble in Manchester might mean for the events key stakeholders.
Bruce begins by saying that he does not feel Glasgow’s reputation would suffer to any great extent; “Everybody understands, especially in terms of football, if there is trouble it is normally the minority that spoils it for the majority. And obviously the media involved will pick up the story and report it, sometimes in a sensationalist way. The reality is that it is normally just a temporary glitch.
“It’s an unfortunate incident and it’s a shame that it’s happened but it’s the minority that has spoiled it. The reality is that Glasgow has a reputation as a fantastic city and in footballing terms the Tartan Army has travelled the world representing Scotland, and it has helped to achieve that international reputation. Although it is not welcomed, last nights events will soon be forgotten about.”
He continues to say that sponsors are always taking a slight risk when supporting any event or team, with the possibility of any brand becoming associated with ‘negative elements’ but felt that once again, brands such as Carlsberg would not be greatly troubled.
“It needs to be made clear to people that this kind of behaviour, although unacceptable, does happen whether an alcohol brand sponsors any individual team or event. An alcohol brand sponsoring something does not encourage people to drink too much. The tournament could be sponsored by McDonalds, BT, people will still go out and drink and if they are that way inclined, they will cause trouble.”
Bruce goes onto highlight that Rangers itself should also quickly act to distance itself from the problems, make it clear it will not endure such actions in order to ensure that those fans who were not involved do not become tarred with the same brush.
He also feels that Manchester, despite criticism from Rangers fans, perhaps fairly, will come out of the events, with little to worry about when holding future events.
“You have to remember that Manchester made it perfectly clear that it didn’t want hoards of fans entering their city without a ticket, but there was so much pressure put on them by the fans, by the tournament and by the media that they decided to open up the city. To say that a city like Manchester cannot put on a football game when it hosted the Commonwealth Games is a nonsense, as it is well used to putting on big events, but at the same time, this will not damage the city’s reputation at all.”