The training ground of champions

We have been lucky enough to work across many different areas of tennis but none is quite as close to our hearts as our involvement with junior tennis. 

My first experience of junior tennis was watching the boys’ and girls’ matches at the 2001 Wimbledon Championships as part of what was then a new writing gig for the International Tennis Federation (ITF). From the start I found it fascinating to see these talented young players serve their apprenticeship and learn not just about how to prepare for and win matches but also how to function in the unique atmosphere of a major tennis tournament. 

Faye Andrews, my co-director at The Emilia Group, spent eight years immersed in junior tennis as part of a long-term, full-time role at the ITF so her bond with this aspect of the sport is arguably even stronger than mine. That’s why we were both delighted when we began working with Tennis Europe at the start of this year, an organisation of member nations across the continent which runs, among other things, the Tennis Europe Junior Tour.

The TEJT has a roster of events for players aged 12-under, 14-under and 16-under, including a season-ending Masters tournament for the top eight players in each category. It boast players from more than 100 countries across Europe, players with a range of personalities and backgrounds with one thing in common - the desire and potential to end up being the best tennis players on the planet. Rafael Nadal, Justine Henin, Caroline Wozniacki, Andy Murray, Victoria Azarenka, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Maria Sharapova (to name just a few) were all in their shoes once; finding their way and growing up while playing Tennis Europe Junior Tour events. 

Rafel Nadal at a Tennis Europe junior tournament

That impressive list of former TEJT players is not limited to Europeans either; Guillermo Coria, Andy Roddick, Juan Martín Del Potro and Sania Mirza all got their first taste of European competition on the tour. If you go back further you get a sense of the role that Tennis Europe has played in nurturing some of the greatest players of all time, from Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic to Steffi Graf, Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker and Mats Wilander. 

Clockwise from top left: Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray,
Roger Federer, Boris Becker, Ivan Lendl, Stefan Edberg

As part of our role as media consultants to Tennis Europe, we have twice been lucky enough to attend the Tennis Europe Junior Masters, which is held in Reggio Calabria each October. On both occasions we have loved watching how the players bond and learn from each other, as well as from the educational sessions held during the tournament in which we deliver interactive media training. The ethos of the Tennis Europe Junior Tour is very much like that of the global ITF Junior Circuit (which includes the 18-under Junior Grand Slam events) in that it combines the highest levels of competition and professional-standard tournaments with a commitment to support players’ off-court development too. 

These junior tours are designed to mirror the ITF Pro Circuit, ATP and WTA Tours in every way, even down to having a cumulative ranking system and anti-doping programme. In every sense it is where champions learn their trade.  

Armstrong underestimates the opposition

Sportspeople as experienced as Lance Armstrong should never underestimate the opposition, yet the disgraced American cyclist and his advisors did just that ahead of last week’s sensational interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, for Armstrong has made something of a habit of it. Even after being exposed, Armstrong showed scant respect for those who doggedly pursued him and refused to accept his repeated denials of doping. Instead he attempted to destroy them, allegedly labeling the whistle-blowing wife of a team-mate a “whore” and issuing threats and lawsuits as he went. 

The Sunday Times’ sportswriter David Walsh was Armstrong’s most ardent and relentless accuser, and deserves to be celebrated by every journalist on the planet for the way he stood up for his story, all the while standing up to one of the biggest names in world sport. Armstrong presented himself as a hero to cancer sufferers as well as an athlete beyond reproach, yet his defensiveness in interviews, aggressive answers to awkward questions and name-calling (“troll” was his favoured word for Walsh, usually accompanied by profanity) were not the responses of an innocent man. 

One of The Emilia Group’s areas of expertise is crisis communications and although it’s an area that corporations tend to focus more on than athletes and sports organisations, those with sponsorships, funding and reputations to lose in sport would do well to look at Armstrong as a reminder that preparing for the worst is always sensible - especially if you have something very big to hide.

It’s not clear what Armstrong thought he was going to gain from the Oprah interview, given that the damage to his reputation became largely irrepairable the moment USANA’s mind-blowing report on his (and his team’s) doping landed on newsdesks around the world. Having committed to the questionable PR tactic of talking to Oprah -  presumably in the hope that he win the public over or gain some sympathy for his plight - Armstrong then prepared poorly and showed little obvious sign of remorse or contrition.

An example of this was when Winfrey asked him if he felt he ought to apologise to Walsh, whom he had villified both professionally and personally (according to Walsh, Armstrong stooped as low as to openly criticise Walsh’s reaction to losing his 12-year-old son). “Do you owe David Walsh an apology, who for 13 years has pursued this story, who wrote for The Sunday Times, who has now written books about your story and about this entire process?” asked Winfrey. There was a long pause before Armstrong said, somewhat unconvincingly, “I’d apologise to David.” Not “Yes of course”; not even the word “sorry”, just a hypothetical and therefore non-committal “I would...”

It’s not clear what Armstrong was expecting from Winfrey - perhaps a teary cuddle and some soft-balled questions - but what he got was a world class grilling that often left him looking flustered and bounced into evasive answers. In Winfrey’s words, she prepared “like I was studying for a test” and, like Walsh before her, undid Armstrong through persistence and attention to detail.

Harry J Enten recently cited some interesting research in his Guardian blog which bears out the suspicion that Armstrong has only managed to hurt his own standing even more by opting to do the interview. In October 2012, at the height of the revelations about Armstrong, 48% of Americans told pollsters that he should not get credit for any of his career accomplishments - including a bronze Olympic medal and seven Tour de France winner’s medals. By early January 2012, pre-Oprah that figure had fallen to 37% showing that the public were easing up slightly.  However the first post-Oprah polls showed that only 21% of Americans polled thought Armstrong could restore his reputation. 

In a further poll, again unearthed by Enten, only 17% of those polled thought that Armstrong was being truthful in his answers to Oprah. That cynicism will only increase as the news cycle rumbles on and more and more people around the world become familiar with both his crimes against sport and the way Armstrong behaved to those who defied him while he denied.

For a man who loved winning so much that he was willing to set aside morality, fairness, honesty and decency, Armstrong sure looks like a loser now.

Helping small businesses share more effectively

One of the most enjoyable aspects of having your own company is the way unexpected opportunities arise that take you - and your expertise - in a direction you didn’t forsee.

The Emilia Group’s core business, as you can probably guess from looking at our website, is sports media - be that communications, PR, events, athlete management, acting as publicist, media training sportspeople or social media for sport brands and organisations. The skills and experience that we have can be applied to different sports and different athletes, whether they are tennis players, fencers, runners or gymnasts. 

Yet in the last few months we’ve added airline pilots, a plastic surgeon and an events specialist working in the film industry to the list of people who’ve sought our advice. On the face of it, these organisations and companies have little in common with each other - and next to nothing in common with the sports brands we usually work with - but on talking to them we discovered a shared thread. All of them wanted to raise their profile and “get themselves out there a bit more” and none of them knew how to make that happen.

As small business owners ourselves, we understand that as well as delivering the skill or services you actually get paid for, you can also find yourselves having to be a Jack - or a Jill - of all trades. By turns you are expected to be a bookkeeper, administrator, sales person and - crucially in this context - boast a working knowledge of marketing and PR. This is asking for a contradictory skills or, put another way, for one person to be an expert in everything. We understand how to promote our company - and other people’s -  because its our stock-in-trade but ask us to perform a rhinoplasty operation or fly a 747 and even we might struggle a little!

So where do small businesses or organisations turn when they need specialist advice to raise their profile and build their brand? Some seek advice from companies offering “digital PR”, and in return get ambitious plans laden with jargon and marketing-speak and, usually, a strategy-by-numbers better suited to a much bigger company with a far larger budget.

Not every company needs a Facebook page or a You Tube channel and, by the same token, printing off hundreds of fliers - for hundreds of pounds - can often be a waste of time and money. We take the same approach with small companies and organisations as we do with athletes, governing bodies and sports events organisers and it always starts with listening.

By listening we can work out what the goal is and who they are trying to reach. From there we can build a PR plan for them to follow, which may or may not include social media. Sometimes our work ends with some in-house social media or PR training, in other cases we might project-manage building a website and creating content, while some clients require ongoing PR, media and marketing support. 

There is no one-size-fits-all solution because we’re all about tailoring the PR strategy and the service we provide to the needs of the client - whether they’re a tennis player or an airline pilot.