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Unforced errors and cautionary tales
www.unmade.media

Unforced errors and cautionary tales

Tim Burrowes
Jun 17
5
Share this post
Unforced errors and cautionary tales
www.unmade.media

Welcome to Unmade, written at a pub in a village near a folk festival while you were sleeping.

Happy World Juggling Day.

And also, happy EOFYS. As our participation in this ancient festival to mark the end of the financial year, we’re offering 55% off an annual subscription to a paid membership of Unmade. That reduces the $650 price down to $292.50 per year.

Our paying members got this email earlier than everyone else. They also get to skip behind the paywall for our weekly Tuesdata feature, and big reductions on our future in-person events.

The price will never be as low again. But only until June 30.

Get 55% off forever


The hubris factor

One of my favourite writers is the English author Ian McEwan. However, there is a certain formula within his writing which became slightly repetitive, once I came to notice it. In many of his books, the central character is a high status professional, brought down by their own hubris. Smug scientists, doctors and judges all tend to make it to the final stages of McEwan’s books having discovered that they’re not as brilliant as they thought they were. They are always the architects of their own misfortune.

The McEwan formula could apply to a number of prominent people who have suffered setbacks adjacent to the media and marketing world in recent times.

The classic example is that of Alex Malley, the former CEO of accountancy body CPA who was sacked five years ago next week. If his ego hadn’t told him that it was worth spending millions of dollars of his members’ money on making himself famous via the marvels of content marketing, nobody would ever have started asking awkward questions about his $1.79m annual salary. In the end, that was what did for him.

Indeed, it’s probably good advice for not-for-profit sector CEOs to keep their heads down when they’re on a good wicket. Guide Dogs Victoria is going to take a long time to recover from the mess created by the decision of its former CEO Karen Hayes to show partisan support for former treasurer Josh Frydenberg during the federal Election.

Twitter avatar for @deniseshrivellDenise Shrivell @deniseshrivell
Guide Dogs Vic paid its disgraced CEO Karen Hayes increasingly eye-watering salaries over the past ten years, during which time its annual wages bill surged 40%, from $6.37m to $9.44m. Last financial year it delivered just 35 guide dogs #auspol
theklaxon.com.au/home/guide-dogs

June 11th 2022

667 Retweets1,809 Likes

The backlash and subsequent scrutiny of staff salaries will make fund raising more difficult, which is a truly sad outcome from people who need guide dogs.

Musk’s interplanetary ego collided with Twitter | Getty Images

Then there’s Elon Musk, a man for whom the hubris well goes deep. Although there had been an undercurrent from a handful of investigative journalists who questioned his status as a real life Tony Stark, for the most part his reputation was as a brilliant entrepreneur, remaking the world in cars, energy and space exploration. His personal brand was what helped drive up the value of Tesla stocks to the point where he became the world’s richest man.

And then he opted for the ego trip of buying Twitter. Or not buying Twitter - we’ll see.

Musk put in his binding bid shortly before the market peaked. Now he’s stuck with either spending $44bn on something that’s now only worth half what he’s obliged to pay, or attempt to renege and destroy his reputation as somebody who can be trusted in future business deals.

Worse for Musk though is that the world has become far more questioning of his claims and abilities. Unpleasant allegations about harassment have emerged. The Tesla share price is about half what it was at the start of the year, and the company is no longer getting the benefit of the doubt around autopilot crashes.

Even if the deal doesn’t get done, the Twitter ego trip has cost Musk much of the adulation he previously enjoyed.

And one more story has unfolded over the last seven days which was propelled, if not by hubris, then at the very least a lack of self awareness.

The reputation of the Sydney Morning Herald has experienced what may have been its worst week in its history. Just how bad was brought home to me this week when I rode on the London Underground and picked up a discarded copy of the Evening Standard. There on page three was coverage of the newspaper’s blundering role in the outing of actor Rebel Wilson. This is not a little local difficulty. It’s been all over US TV too.

Let’s put to one side for a moment the ill judged nature of the newspaper’s approach to Wilson, which included giving her a deadline to comment which came across as an ultimatum.

The paper’s reputation was only trashed when its gossip columnist Andrew Hornery made the unforced error of telling his readers what had happened. The oblivious tone of his piece which generated the global backlash was that he was entitled to feel aggrieved that Wilson has chosen to make her announcement on Instagram rather than give him the scoop.

It’s the kind of notoriety more often experienced by News Corp editors, whose cultural battles are usually chosen intentionally. By contrast, this was an unforced error driven by an inability to see how things would look to the outside world. If he’d kept quiet (or his copy had been edited more thoughtfully), the paper might have survived the misstep with its reputation intact.

But does that amount to hubris of McEwanesque standards? Even as the controversy kicked off and the newspaper’s editor Bevan Shields belatedly conceded that mistakes had been made, Hornery was reportedly telling followers of his own private Instagram account what he really thought about the social media outrage: “Don’t take any notice of them, it’s toxic vitriol and nutters barking at shadows demanding to be heard.”

If this was a classic McEwan cautionary tale, we haven’t reached the final page just yet.

The Unmade Index: A slight wind drop

After 12 days of successive falls, The Unmade Index finally made a modest recovery yesterday, nudging upwards by 0.6%.

Seven West Media, which has arguably been oversold in this month’s media stocks cataclysm, finally attracted a bargain hunter, with its share price racing up just before the market closed yesterday afternoon. SWM ended up 11.6% for the day, although it is still down for the week, the month and the year.

Seven’s jump was enough to help lift the whole Unmade Index back into positive territory for the day, despite most media and marketing stocks seeing further falls.


Road trip!

Time to leave you to the weekend. Please do think about subscribing to a paying Unmade membership while we have our excellent end of financial year price. It’ll never be as low again.

Get 55% off forever

I’m taking a week off to indulge in a lap of the musical nostalgia circuit. Before I start heading back towards a Tasmanian winter, over the next five days I’ll be seeing The Waterboys here at the Middlewich Folk and Boat(!) Festival; ABC performing The Lexicon of Love from start to finish in Bath, and The Eagles in Edinburgh. Stranger Things has nothing on me for 80s throwbacks.

In the meantime my colleague Damian Francis - damian@unmade.media - (and a few special guests) will be holding the fort.

Have a great weekend.

Toodlepip

Tim Burrowes

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Unforced errors and cautionary tales
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