capt_oats

Wait. Haud the bus, this was done by an external company? And we signed off on it? Fuuuuuuuucking Hell. @Busta Nut it's in my post - I muted her ages ago but she's right tbf.

Thoughts and prayers to all the Well supporting creatives who have been absolutely fucking triggered by this btw.

+1 on this as well. I think this is the crux of my issue with it. Especially after years of Burrows and Russell working to "tell compelling stories" and create the idea of the club as a credible thing then they launch this. I feel a bit sorry for Scott and the media team in so much as they'll have been told to put it together but as @Busta Nut says the actual messaging and "initiative" is entirely the work of unserious people who it would appear don't have a fucking clue what they're doing in this specific area. But we definitely don't need a Head of Digital, Brand and Communications...

This, 100% is my reaction to that video tbh.

The 'quirky' video has gone live then...

Aye. I'm sure a laddie who can't get into the St Mirren team and has 9 in 76 appearances for them would have been welcomed with open arms by our support.

Tbh, I think there's a similar sort of energy around people's perception of SOD as there was McManus. Expectations vs Reality and all that. There was also a narrative around the time he signed that "he didn't want to be here" largely because he'd left Killie with a view to a Championship move which fell through due to the Pandemic and signed a short term deal with us because he lives locally. As I said further up the thread that short term deal that subsequently led to him being 10 games shy of having played for us more than any of his other clubs. I mean, that's not to say that he hasn't underperformed at times but if you're being fair we had three consecutive managers (Robinson, Alexander and Hammell) who didn't seem to have a clue what to do with him and play him as an orthodox full back while folk seemed genuinely confused as to how he was pocketing Grealish with when he was away with Scotland and Clarke had him playing as a wing-back.

Sort of adjacent to this but if SOD makes another 10 appearances then he'll have played more games for us than any of his other clubs.

Just updated that last post. Tierney is also contracted to 2025 so technically it's 7. By my count it gives us 11 permanently contracted players of a 20 man squad (plus Lamie) who our OOC this summer. Which ironically is fewer in terms of numbers than other seasons recently.

Of the current first team? By my count 6? 7 with Tierney out on loan. Casey, Blaney, Paton, Zdravkovski, Miller and Bair.

Kaitlyn Dever's been cast as Abby. I love Kaitlyn Dever.

Aye. I'm kind of hesitant to focus on it because broadly it's a really good interview that, as has been already been said, gives the sort of clarity that would have been useful at various points over the past year. That said, given it was a big part of the identity of the club under Burrows it's an interesting point of discussion given Weir clearly has thoughts about it that are very different to Flow and I'm fairly sure that the basic argument of "why are we investing as much in the media team when it means we're running with a bottom 3 playing budget?" - which is what he seems to be saying - is shared by a decent proportion of Motherwell fans. Having said that, one thing that I picked up on that seems to have been missed is that in talking about the scaling back of the media/comms department Weir is kind of only giving his personal view on it. At around 24:42 of the interview he says: "as you know two of the team decided to leave at the same time and the decision was made at that point based on finances and where we were doing (sic) and the people that were here that we wouldn't build that team and that we had a good enough team in the media and communications to do the job that we wanted to do." So...Russell and Brannan left at the end of the 21/22 season. We announced Burrows was planning to step down in January 2023. We also (quite famously) advertised the Head of Digital, Brand and Comms role as of March 1st 2022 the job description is still on the site - https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2022/03/01/vacancy-head-of-digital-brand-and-communications/ I suppose what I'm getting at is that decision seems to have pre-dated Weir taking the interim role so it's presumably been a decision that's been taken by the board somewhere between us advertising that role and Burrows exiting and I assume it's a decision Weir wasn't involved in but he agrees with.

In the current circumstances sure but I'd imagine that changes if things become more of an existential threat. Tbh, given how much of that interview could have been lifted off The Thread I'm surprised Weir didn't just say "continually bulleting managers is bad business and bad vibes" (and he'd be right of course).

I'm fairly sure that the Paddy Power sponsorship was linked to our "profile" and "engagement". Whether or not you're on board with that ethically it's still directly generating an income I guess. Also, as @well fan for life says it may be the case that the numbers were artificially inflated by a % of free kids tickets or whatever but our ST sales were reported as increasing year on year which coincided with the previous set up. Clearly there were other factors eg: increased price after price freezes, changes to kids tickets etc but either way this year's ST were down a fair bit on the numbers we'd seen in previous years. There's obviously context there but the drop in STs reported at the time we scale back the media/comms team along with the fact that we'd apparently decided not to replace our Head of Comms but also hadn't replaced Burrows (who Weir conceded had/has a comms background) by that point probably isn't a coincidence? Whether the difference in ST sales justifies the extra cost of an increased media team is a different story I guess. It's often been said that between the Burrows and Russell dream team they managed to successfully create the perception that we were a bigger operation than we actually are which depending on your POV may/may not have value. It's pretty clear from that interview that Derek Weir isn't subscribing to the Scottish Sports Marketing newsletter or anything and that's...fine. His comment that it "surprised" him we had a "bottom 3" playing budget but were investing as much in the media department is a position that I'm sure a large section of similar Boomers in our support will not only share that POV but will also be scandalised by. #BurrowsOut etc. Not to age-shame but looking at the profile of the remaining board members it's probably not a huge surprise that they perhaps didn't buy into that side of things as much as a CEO in their mid-30s who'd have no hesitation in jumping on a Sports Marketing podcast to talk about brand and strategy.

Tbf, the ‘investment’ and the fundraising project seemed like two separate discussions. Which isn’t to say they’re not linked but Weir’s discussion of what he thought the investment model could look like seemed to be in line with the situation Hearts have fluked into with Anderson - where you have an independently wealthy person sitting alongside the ownership but acting as a guarantor/benefactor if necessary. We can only imagine what sort of horror this ‘quirky’ video is going to be but as @Handsome_Devil says the fact that Weir (unintentionally?) leaked, disowned and dismissed the plan suggests that at the very least it’s not going to be what a lot of people seemed to think it was ie: an announcement or confirmation of significant investment.

Exactly this. As I said earlier he trips himself up a couple of times when he's talking about comms which kind of undermines the point he's making and as you say leaking, disowning and dismissing the as yet unannounced fundraising campaign and then the club actually publishing it highlights the issue that folk have been flagging. The problem with our comms at the moment isn't that we've stopped making documentaries about David Turnbull it's that we don't seem to have anyone in place who understands the strategy of communications - and the fact Weir says himself that "it's not my background" feels like it's (unintentionally) illustrative of the issue - so we're tripping ourselves up with the information we're putting out. Scott and the team we have left are clearly stretched thin and are producing #content but what we're fumbling isn't really their job. Also, I guess the fact that we had such a high bar before probably means the mistakes are more noticeable.

As I say, I think it's a good update but I had a giggle at this... "It's time to give the fans an update." Lads, it's 4 days shy of being a year since we announced Burrows was stepping down... (yes I know we've released a couple of updates since then but still...this feels like the first comprehensive appraisal of where we are. As @rowsdower said, the content is the sort of common sense stuff that could have been useful ages ago or at the very least would have saved the club a fair bit of grief)

I just got to that bit.

I'm only up to the start of the pyro chat but on the whole that's a good update. The fact that it's pretty clearly taken various articles in the press to prompt it maybe undermines the idea that our media and comms is absolutely fine but beyond that it at least addresses the main issues and I'll not lie I got a laugh at yer man clamping the boy who was Tweeting comparing our costs with Killie. As @thisGRAEME says, interesting to hear that that we're looking at appointing a CEO with no current or historical connection with Motherwell and tbh, it's interesting to hear how the original recruitment process played out.

Vaguely related to the broad discussion about recruitment, I dipped into Steelmen Online for the first time in months yesterday and noticed someone had posted this quote from Dickie albeit as part of the discussion about the McMahon/Weir exits and the general mis-interpreting of what McMahon's statement about "significant investment" actually meant. Kettlewell had kind of confirmed this in saying that we'd be able to bring in a couple on top of what we already had at the time. It's not quite a repeat of the one in one out situation we had over the summer where it was more about freeing up space in the squad rather than the budget. Dunno, it feels relevant in terms of the numbers we might be looking to bring in.

No argument there from me. I think the point though is that regardless of whether you do/don't have "one of the lowest budgets in the league" Robinson will say you do - that just seems to be the way he's wired and the narrative he's comfortable with. As I say, it's not a dig he did exactly the same with us which is why it caught my eye as his narrative is pretty much verbatim. Ultimately no one is actually going to ask him to show his workings and if he says it often enough folk believe it - as a poster in this thread has already shown.

Aye. One thing I’d also say is that a lot of the interviews Robinson’s been giving lately are almost verbatim the lines he’d push when he was with us. He definitely likes to lean on the same sort of stuff. Which isn’t a dig or anything it’s just quite the coincidence that we *also* apparently had “the lowest budget in the league” and “aren’t able to pay well” when he was at Fir Park. It’s very familiar As you say it’s probably six and half a dozen between the group outside Celtic, Rangers, Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen. The trick is how you use the budget available.