Summary

Praise and Reviews "Talespin is an excellent book for corporate business executives and students of communications. Gerry McCusker takes us on an international journey through an enormous variety of public relations disasters showing us with clarity and insight how they can happen to big corporations and individuals alike. The 'lessons learnt' at the end of each section should be required reading for all PR consultants." - Alan Capper, Adjunct Professor, Culture and Communications Department, New York University and Former Chairman, Rowland Worldwide Many PR practitioners believe that the obsessive reporting of the concept of 'spin' has unfairly tainted the entire PR discipline. But others believe that PR people themselves make the catastrophic errors of judgement that create PR disasters. From the top celebrities who have publicly slated their sponsor's products to corporate photo-calls that were disasters waiting to happen, Talespin reveals why PR consultants are so often accused of 'sexing-up' information. As each tale unfolds and spins out of control, the perpetrators of shoddy PR practice are exposed. Gerry McCusker gives us an amusing, yet shocking, peek behind the scenes of 79 real-life public relations disasters from around the globe. Documenting both the infamous and the unreported PR disasters from the worlds of branding, business, media, music, politics and sport, he asks the question: "How can these catastrophes continue to happen?" While Talespin makes for a compelling and entertaining read, its message is deadly serious: malpractice, misjudgement and the media's own agenda are the combustibles that combine to cause PR mayhem. Anyone working in the media-related industries will learn unforgettable lessons from these real-life PR horror stories.