Alastair Campbell gave a nice illustration of how social media has changed the game of spin in an address to the Festival of Marketing in London on Thursday. He recalled how he had fulfilled a lifetime dream by playing in a six-a-side tournament at Turf Moor, the home of his beloved Burnley FC against a team from Hollyoaks. A row with one player resulted in “minor fisticuffs”, but Campbell’s team still lost. Two hours later he was trending on Twitter because Mail Online had run a story saying he had been involved in a “bizarre football punch up with pop heartthrob Tom Parker which led to The Wanted superstar being stretchered to hospital with a suspected broken leg”. The accident actually happened in a later match – “when did an inconvenient fact like that stop the Mail?”, Campbell quipped. But his broader point was how he responded by simply composing three tweets, one of which was a link to a statement on his blog “setting out facts in a lighthearted manner. I cannot claim to have come out well in the papers the next day. But my line was in there, and so was the tone.” He added: “I reflected on how much the world of so-called spin had changed. I recalled those Sundays spent at home, ticking off every paper as I called to brief them one by one. Time intensive, ballsaching, not family friendly.” Now no verbal interaction with a single human being is required: “Me, my phone, my blog, Twitter, with automatic link through to Facebook. That’s it.”
