If Public Relations was an Olympic Sport…

There has been a lot of winning and losing going on for the past two weeks – some spectacular achievements and some ‘best forgotten’ moments too. Athletes aside, who has won the Public Relations stakes for London 2012 so far?

Gold medal:
And the winner is…. The Royal Family. Our blue bloods seem to have been playing their own high spec version of ‘Where’s Wally?’. Scan the crowd at any Olympic venue (not just in the Olympic Park) and you could find Princess Anne, Prince Harry, The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and other more minor Royals cheering and screaming with everyone else. You had to look carefully to spot them– dressed in their casual Olympic Ambassador kit of polo shirt and chinos, the enthusiasm was genuine, the joy was real.
From the moment HM The Queen ‘parachuted’ into the opening ceremony – Team GB Royal have got it absolutely right. PB’s (personal bests) have been coming thick and fast – Elizabeth R’s link up with James Bond was classy and funny – worthy of a world record.
Another PB was Kate and William’s embrace as Sir Chris Hoy won a gold medal in cycling. The intimate shot of two young people clearly in love and completely caught up in the gold rush graced many a front page last week.  Kate’s passion for hockey and her steadfast attendance at each women’s team match has been impressive and Prince Harry capped the family’s medal winning form with his crowd-pleasing performances while maintaining some serious street cred..

Silver Medal:

It was a close call, but just pipped at the tape into second place is our wonderful military and police whose profile has received a significant boost with an event which started as a sprint (to quickly respond to the shortfall in security staff caused by contractor failure) to a marathon throughout the Olympic fortnight. Cheery, courteous and steadfast, these men and women in uniform have embraced athletes and visitors alike with the warm blanket of discreet, but robust security.

Bronze Medal:

Previous entertaining form and early promise demonstrated with his ‘shabby chic’ appearance at the closing ceremony of the Bejing Olympics meant that Boris Johnson was always a strong contender for a London 2012 PR medal. With his infectious joie de vivre, his buoyant enthusiasm and apparent innocence (despite reports otherwise), Boris is a constant source of amusement and yet somehow his considerable intellect shines through. He must be the only politician in the world who could turn the farce of being stuck on a zip wire, dangling in thin air for several minutes, into a PR triumph. The foreign press love him, the camera loves him, Londoners (mainly) love him and I love him.

As our Olympic dream has become delicious reality there will be many other personal and corporate PBs. But there are also the ‘could do better’ in the PR Olympics. These include G4S – the security firm who well and truly messed up, and effectively committed PR suicide. Our coalition leaders haven’t done particularly well either – squabbling about the House of Lords reform at a time when the nation is basking in the happy glow of global approval.

Hey ho – you win some, lose some – but perhaps the most precious prize of all, worth multiple gold medals are the words of Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympics committee who described London as ‘a city partying’ . He continued ‘the kindness of the British people has helped deliver more than anyone expected and the success was very reassuring for the future of sport’

So you see, dear world, us Brits are, in the main, lovely people – really – we are!