Dell's spoiler

You might have noticed we ran a Q&A with Michael Dell in Monday's AFR. It's was purchased from the good folks at CNet.com.au - here's the original version.

For those of you interested in media machinations, you might be interested to know that yes, this was a good old fashion spoiler. Dell's PR machine, in their infinite wisdom, had decided they would give an exclusive interview with Michael Dell to The Australian during his flying visit to Sydney on Monday.

Naturally enough, I was none too happy when I found out a week before the event when proactively asking for an interview. I was outraged, actually. Here's my logic: Dell gets 85 per cent of its revenues from corporate IT. The AFR is the single most important daily source of IT news for the top tier of business executives in this country. Yes, I'm biased, but the most recent McNair survey of Aussie IT media backs up my argument. Meanwhile, Dell is under the hammer at the moment. What's needed is a publication that can ask the tough questions, I told them. The argument fell on deaf ears.

So I did what any good editor would do with knowledge of his competitors plans and ran the spoiler on the day of the media briefing, complete with a news story highlighting Dell's 42 per cent share price slide in the past 12 months. Can't have made Dell PR happy on the day when the Big Boss came to town. Meanwhile, turns out The Aus did not run what Dell PR people said would be a "World According To... " Q&A with Michael Dell on Tuesday, the day after the briefing. Instead they had a short news yarn, as did I.

The net of all this is that Dell missed out on getting a Q&A in either publication and managed to offend one, if not two, editors. And both publications missed out on a good opportunity to provide our readers with more insight into the world's biggest PC maker and its founder. I'd argue it wasn't me who did the spoiling.

Update: The Aus published their Q&A today, a week after the event.

Comments

[David Flynn]

You gotta love smart strategic thinking! :>

[Trevor Cook]

More evidence for my view that exclusives should be avoided wherever possible.
Even if the'exclusive' strategy does work (and Mark its often proposed by journalists and editors) it just leaves a sour taste in other media outlets (as is obviously the case with you on this occasion).

[Annette McCarthy]

The strategic intent is completely lost on me. I imagine, given Dell's market position an encompassing media approach would have been the way go. As to 'exclusive' or non 'exculsive' - isn't that another question?

[Chris Newlan]

You are damned if you do and damned if you don't in many cases. In my experience journos get annoyed when you are not offering an exclusive and get even more annoyed when they are not on the recieving end of a drop. BTW, The Oz ran the Dell interview today.