capt_oats

Aye. Exactly that. Nah, it's more a case that once you see some of the campaigns the agency/studio have worked on then the final thing makes a bit more sense. It doesn't make it any more/less objectively bad and all the various criticisms stand but at least it's in line with a house style and I don't think there could be an argument that what was delivered is particularly out of line with that. Whether it's the right tone for what we're trying to do (what are we trying to do? who is this actually for?) and quite how/why we landed on them as the preferred option is probably a question for Jim McMahon. I mean, did we supply a brief and ask for pitches from various studios or did we just go straight to Leith and say "we've heard of you, we like your other campaigns can you do us something like that?".

After @thisGRAEME pointed out that it was Leith who worked on the creative and knowing the style of their other campaigns I think it's fair enough to assume it was deliberate and they knew what they were doing. Which is kind of a relief in so much as we haven't produced this in-house. There are questions/arguments that can be made about what process we went through to land on this as a creative direction, how appropriate the messaging is and how effective the video is - what were we actually trying to achieve with it? And the response to that really comes down to how generous you're willing to be to those on the board. The issue for me really comes down to the point @Busta Nut made last night to say "that's it?". If that's the extent of the board's thinking then it's no wonder we've struggled to attract serious investment.

Nah. It's just objectively bad. Tbf, there's a lot going on that you may/may not be aware of that's probably provoked as strong a reaction from folk on here. Basically the club have been floating the idea of seeking external investment as a route to go down for years. In the announcement that accompanied the details of his stepping down McMahon indicated "The final stages of a fund-raising initiative are almost complete and will be ready to be shared early in the New Year." Cool. In that case you might hope to see something credible/viable put forward. Bearing in mind they have been talking about this for years the fact that *this* is what they've delivered presumably in line with their own brief is utterly galling. Add that to the less than ideal timing of our interim CEO saying that he's of the opinion that we don't need a Head of Digital, Brand and Comms in the interview the club published the other day and tbqh it has sent folk for a walk. I'll not lie, my head has fully detached and is currently orbiting the moon. Our interim CEO spent part of his 40 (FORTY) minute interview clarifying that we're not in financial difficulty (we reported cash in the bank of £4.2m at the end of last season), one of the WS board members was on the telly earlier backing this up and reinforcing the point that we're seeking investment to work alongside the ownership - yet the messaging on this video is "Taylor Swift gies some dosh..." What.The.Actual.f**k? To be clear, Russell and Brannan left the club for West Ham at the end of the 21/22 season and it appears that the board made a choice not to replace them so we've effectively been operating without a head of comms since then and it's shown. Tbh, it's increasingly looking like the people who made that decision simply don't understand why the job is important or quite possibly they don't even understand what the job *is*. Again, this is something that has been a regular point of annoyance that you may have noticed if you drop into this thread. The Burrows/Russell/Brannan era media output was over-earnest (we exist to improve people's lives you know) and it rubbed folk up the wrong way at times (the post-match interviews you mentioned definitely grated after a while but they'd committed to it as a bit so stuck with it) but for the most part they approached things with the right tone. There was some stuff that was 'quirky' but it was generally appropriate to the context eg: the Peter Hartley reveal etc but if there's one thing that Burrows did well it was treat the club messaging and its profile seriously. Besides the pointlessness of it this clip is just so wildly misjudged on every level and the fact that it seems like it's an "initiative" that the club board have been working on suggests that those involved are utterly out of touch and there's huge lack of understanding of an area in which we used to excel.

Cheers. I was genuinely curious who it was after seeing that.

Bring him home...

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.