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.  

Building media relationships Djokovic style

One of our favourite sights of 2012 was Novak Djokovic breaking away from his post-semi final press conference at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals to personally to hand out chocolates to the assembled journalists as a thank you for their cooperation during the season.

It was a simple act, one which not only endeared the World No.1 to those in the room but also became a hit piece of viral video on social media, circulated via Twitter, Facebook and You Tube within the hour so that fans could celebrate his thoughtfulness as well. 

So, for the price of a few boxes of chocolates and a few moments of Djokovic’s time, the World No.1 and his management team pulled off brilliant piece of positive PR that should serve as an example to other high profile athletes and their advisors.

Watch the video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h31XCIrXNo

There are many mutual benefits from having a good relationship between an athlete and media but too often the two are kept apart, as though they worked in parallel universes rather than within the same sport.   Having seen the relationship from both sides now, I can see how this happens. There are usually many layers of people between player and journalist and the very formal press conference format - with its inherent time pressure to get a list of interviews done quickly - leaves little room for friendly, relaxed interaction. The opportunities to chat as colleagues, working in different sides of the same industry, are few and far between. 

The onus is on the player and his or her advisors to create those opportunities. That could mean making time for the occasional coffee and an off-the-record chat with one or two journalists from your own country or it could be something as simple - and human - as remembering to smile and say hello when passing a familiar face from your press conferences in tournament corridors. This is something that we always stress to players that we work with - a smile here and a quick, friendly chat there can go a long way.

It is not just about stroking journalists’ egos - because, let’s face it, most journos develop a necessary thick skin early on in their careers - it’s about breaking down barriers so that you can help each other do a good job.

In talking to athletes, coaches and sports administrators about media, the same misconceptions, prejudices and fears come up time and again. The fear of the unknown can be a powerful force and it can make players unnecessarily nervous, defensive and wary of speaking to journalists or doing interviews. This can lead to bad experiences with media and a lack of confidence which, in turn, leads to poor interviews, unusable quotes and little or no profile for the athlete and his or her sponsors. 

To an uneducated athlete - or one who has been given a negative impression of the media by well-meaning people around them - a journalist is an abstract figure, poised to ask them questions and, perhaps, publicly find fault with what they say or how they play. In my experience you can dispel a lot of myths by simply explaining what those strange men and women in the press room actually do, how deadlines work, why they asked certain questions and what everyone is trying to achieve. Players also need to be educated, as early on in their careers as possible, on how having a positive media profile can help them engage with sponsors and fans.

The more athletes can be helped to see journalists and broadcasters as human beings, the better for them and their sport, not to mention those trying to cover it. If they are in any doubt then they should follow Nole’s lead - chocolate is, after all, always a winner. 

Tweet in haste; repent at leisure

As a quick surf around our company website will tell you, the core of our business is helping athletes to understand the media and to use it to their advantage. 

As you can imagine, our virtual office is always buzzing when yet another story emerges of an sportsperson coming a cropper by tweeting first and thinking second. These case studies instantly get absorbed into the athlete media workshops that we we run for organisations like Tennis Australia, British Fencing and Tennis Europe so that we can use them constructively to help sportspeople understand that their Twitter account should be handled with care. 

There have been several high-profile examples of this recently in football - notably Ashley Cole’s now notorious description of the Football Association as a “#bunchoft**ts”. His England squad-mate Ryan Bertrand also got himself into the dangerous cycle of reaction and retraction when he tweeted an angry response to suggestions that he was missing England duty because of a sore throat rather than something more serious. 

Having worked closely with athletes and seen first-hand how much distraction, stress and - in some cases - distress these media hiccups can cause, our initial reaction is always somewhat sympathetic. Of course all athletes are responsible for what they say and do in the public domain but those who have missed out on the sort of media workshops that we run can sometimes find themselves exposed in the big, wide, media world without a real understanding of what is expected of them.

Sportspeople making ill-advised comments and paying the consquences is not a social media phenomenon, but the advent of these intimate, instant forms of communication means that the line between what is said in private and what is said in public is getting harder for athletes to define. 

If our media sessions have a message, it’s that sportspeople - just like politicians, actors and anyone with a significant profile - must understand the difference between their public persona and their private self. That is not to say that they must create a facade or be somehow ‘two-faced’; instead it means presenting themselves in the best possible light. This is important for attracting, representing and keep sponsors; for promoting their sport and for acting as a role model to young sports fans. 

Some athletes are more comfortable than others with being in a public eye but these days it is an inescapable part of the job of being a professional sportsperson. That’s why organisations which take a proactive approach to media training tend to save themselves and their athletes a lot of trouble further down the track. By preparing sportspeople for life in the public eye, they are investing in a long-term safeguard for the reputation of their sport. No media/PR team at a governing body or management company wants to have to deal with the fall-out from an athlete saying or tweeting something ill-advised. 

Some might say that the difference between thinking something (or saying it to a close friend) and tweeting or speaking about it to a journalist should be obvious. Surely it’s a matter of common sense? That may be true if, like most non-athletes, you have been in a workplace or been through the experience of saying something rash to your boss but that is not the world of young sportspeople. If they have been training and competing from a young age, most have not ever worked 9-5 or attended school regularly. Their time is often spent around coaches and other athletes, sometimes in a cosseted world which revolves around them and their sport and does not necessary help them develop an understanding of how the outside world might see them. 

It can, therefore, come as a shock when they find themselves and what they say being discussed and judged by that outside world but such shocks can be avoided with a few short sessions and a bit of expert advice ahead of time. Organisations which prepare their athletes for life in the public eye might well be saving themselves from having to prepare for an an #epicfail later on.

If you want to discuss our media workshops further, drop us an email at info@theemiliagroup.com and let's talk about how we can help you or your athletes.

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.

Playing the social tennis game

Tennis isn't the only sport we work in but it certainly keeps us busy. Few sports are as genuinely global, boast as many recognisable personalities, are played as consistently throughout the year or have as many major competitions in the course of a season.

The four Grand Slams and team formats like Davis Cup and Fed Cup create peaks in interest around the ongoing ITF Pro-Circuit, the WTA and the ATP Tours, while wheelchair tennis and the ITF Junior circuit take the sport to different interest groups and across a wide age-range. To add to all this excitement are stand-alone events like the Boodles, which is held every June as a taster tournament for Wimbledon and for which The Emilia Group provides media and social media management.

We also manage media and sponsorship for Britain's No.1 tennis player Elena Baltacha, who has a busy year ahead not just with a full schedule of international events but with a likely spot representing tennis at the Olympic Games. Elena is very active in social media and enjoys interacting and engaging with tennis fans via Twitter and Facebook, something that we help her manage with strategic advice and hands-on help.

Facebook and Twitter both enjoy a natural synergy with tennis because a global sport needs a global platform. Tennis has strong visuals, which is great for Facebook as well as You Tube, recognisable stars and manages to combine hard-core athletic prowess with grace and elegance - plus it helps that tournaments are generally played in glamorous locations.

Twitter, meanwhile, is a wonderful platform for athletes to showcase their personalities and engage with fans in a way which feels intimate for fans but safe and controllable for the sportsperson. Tennis players in the past were often criticised for being robotic and characterless but nobody who has read Caroline Wozniacki teasing boyfriend Rory McIlroy via Twitter or seen Novak Djokovic tweeting pictures of his dog Pierre could legitimately agree. Tennis fans feel closer their heroes than ever before thanks to Twitter, which has a positive commercial impact for sponsors who choose to activate player product endorsements through social media.

It's not just players and sponsors who can benefit but all sorts of tennis brands. Our client the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the governing body for the world game, understands the synergy between tennis and social media and has brought us in to support its communications team when it comes to delivering effective engagement through Twitter and Facebook. We manage the social media platforums for international team competitions Davis Cup and Fed Cup (as well as ITF Pro Circuit and the ITF Juniors Facebook pages) and recently completed back-to-back weekends making sure that each tie, play-off and player was talked about and promoted via social media platforms.

Social media may be far more economical to resource than other PR or promotional activities but it asks you to pay for it in time, by demanding constant attention and consistent updating and reaction - hence the need in this case to bring in specialist help. In a competition like Davis Cup, which has 64 countries competing and 24 zonal ties happening in one weekend, keeping up with the flow of information and news can be quite a challenge.

It means long hours, working in shifts and managing your time with care but most importantly, staying true to your strategy for promoting the brand through social media. It's easy to lose sight of that - in the race to be reactive, we had to stay focused on being pro-active as well. It was worth the effort, for both competitions enjoyed healthy growth through social media and we expect that trend to continue, with huge potential for growth. After all, we have seen enough to say with some certainty that tennis and social media really are the perfect match.