One day I read a guru of PR in Nigeria saying he would NEVER lie on behalf of his client no matter the crisis. He would prefer the client to tell him the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. His own job will be to communicate the truth to the public in a way that resloves it. How will the MD of FCMB admitting that he was busy flogging his secretary or whatever she was in his buttery while they were supposed to be resolving the most strategic banking problems make the scandal go away, just to use a recent example?
In law, I think counsel to the accused is allowed to lie to save his client? He was not hired to slay his client. His job is to save his client even if he has to lie his head off. Is PR like that? Is the PR man paid to send his client to the gas chamber simply because of the demand of ethics? I laughed at the proposition.
I submit that such counsel is merely theoretical and in my humble opinion, even faulty. It assumes there is only one resolution to different problems. You want to hear my truth? Sometimes you have to lie your head off. Keep lying till the whole world gets tired of your lies and just abandons the truth in one corner while your lies becomes the issue. You know why? Because the concept or idea of truth is itself highly subjective. But that is a debate for another day. Let us attack this Tiwa truthfulness and how it is now shaping her future.
How do you get out of the Tiwa kind of dilemma? By speaking the absolute truth? Like she did? Tufiakwa. Whoever advised her to do that was just an amateur spinmaster. Here is my analysis, including the solution scenario that would have turned sadness to joy in the hands of a true spinmaster. Thank me later.
1. Tiwa calls to tell me her story: Sex tape may leak. Blackmailers ready to strike.
Response: Stall them forever. Buy time. This would make it possible to think through a solution. I will then make a plan to respond to the worst case scenario. I will NEVER, repeat, NEVER ask her to make that dumb self confession. (I will return to this later).
2. Put her and her team together and come up with a stunt event to be announced on the date, the very date the sex tape is released. The theme of the event will be sex oriented. But absolutely no mention or connection to the sex tape.
3. Upon the release of the sex tape, take advantage of the massive publicity and controversy around the Tiwa name to unleash a barrage of publicity for the TIWA NIGHT OF TOTAL RELEASE. The materials, already prepared, will be leveraged across all media with a preponderance of focus on the environment of highest focus~social media. Objective? Confusion, talkability, questions, arguments and ticket sales(Balance the negative with the positive)
4. Theme: Now you have seen the fake, get set to see the real thing! A dozen images of seductively clad Tiwa is released and backed with adequate muscle till they go viral. Dominate or at worst match the viral power of the leaked tape which is automatically on auto run(The investment would still be less than the blackmail money and you will make that money back. Follow me)
5. This will lead to all kinds of questions: Was the sex tape part and of the publicity stunt by Tiwa? Did Tiwa deliberately release the sex tape? Is it really Tiwa in the tape?(Majority may say yes but some will demure). The long and short of it is that a lot of people will want to see the show, just like they wanted to see the tape.(Make fortune out of misfortune!)
6. What about the hard nosed who want to know what really happened? Organize a world press conference. Overt purpose: To publicise the concert. Covert purpose: To LIE about the sex tape!! This would be the opportunity for RIGHEOUS INDIGNATION: How dare you imagine that the great Tiwa will do that? How did that very nouseous idea even drop in your mind? In fact you must have a very corrupt mind. The sex tape is obviously fake. It’s a look alike of Tiwa. Somebody did it to embarrass her. Somebody did it kill her show. But they have failed.
7. Develop the media response. Everybody knows that the Nigeria media love press releases. Write as many news angles as possible. Positively attack the blogs, newsrooms and everywhere with it. The focus is the show, not the sex tape.
8. Reality check: The talk of the sex tape will not die. But it will fall down to the bottom of the wine bottle while the delicious news of her exploits will flow to the top, to be consumed by the intelligent, the reasonable, the movers and the shakers, people who would rather believe good things about you than the bad, her loyal fans…
9. The hoi polloi and the dregs of the earth can gorge themselves on the “fake video” and the argument over its veracity will live forever, but in the hall of infamy. Civilized folks will move on and Tiwa will save face. Take note of that: the video will live on only in the hall of infamy.
10. Instead of this, either she advised herself or somebody advised her to confess to such a self denigrating action on record(It is the “on record” that is the issue because illicit sex is a fact of life). And of course she was speaking this American kind of sophisticated English and trying to make the whole thing strike a moral cord. Moral cord how? After that lewd activity set confessed to? Mind you, I am not condemming her. After all, the Holy book says cast the first stone.
11. My final submission: Her initial announcement, which was supposed to have taken the wind out of the sail of the video and kidnappers did no such thing. It just imported truckloads of petrol and matches. It prepared the ground and became the dvance publicity mobilizing millions to be on the lookout for what has become THE MOST AWAITED SEX VIDEO IN NIGERIAN SOCIAL MEDIA HISTORY.
Bad.
Before this video finally debuted, we asked 50 people of all classes on whatspp if they would love to see the Tiwa sex tape. Less than ten percent said no or refused to respond, prompting me to ask the question: Why does everybody want to watch Tiwa getting f____d?
This inspires a part 2 to this article that will attempt an answer.
•Originally published in Medium.com and sourced from Facebook
