Following on from our story this morning about the unusual press release from Lotus, we received an email from Edward Rowe, the Public Affairs Manager for Ateco Automotive, the importer and distributor of Lotus throughout Australia and New Zealand.
Edward writes:
“A nice proper press release that set out the Lotus case would have been nice, but as one of several hundred releases issued on the eve of the China Grand Prix, it probably would have been ignored or little used.
And that’s the point and the problem. It’s pretty clear that Lotus are being subjected to a sustained and substantial ‘black ops’ PR programme and that this is being waged across both the normal mainstream and the social media. The only way to stop this is to make a very loud message, that bright and clear and get it across as much media and social media as quickly as possible. As I say, a normal press release sitting amongst several hundred others would not have that level of impact. But by going down this route, Lotus has ensure that its message has not just got across all the mainstream media, it is also all over the social media all within 24 hours.
With a conventional news release, the Lotus side of the story would have dribbled out slowly, the rumours would have continued and the problem got worse. By using this method it means it will be very hard now for the people who are running their rumour campaigns to continue as everyone will have heard the Lotus side of the story in a matter of hours. And that, albeit in an unusual manner, was what Lotus wanted to do.”
And considering how viral the original release has gone, that is exactly what they have achieved.
As strange and ranty as the press release was, it did contain several very good points regarding the sources of a lot of the rumours currently afflicting the British sports car manufacturer. And judging by the very specific mentions of both Joe Saward (F1 journalist and, as the release points out, Director of the Caterham Group. EDIT: Read Joe Saward’s version of his involvement with Caterham HERE) and Tony Fernandes (owner and Team Principal of the Caterham F1 team – formerly known as Lotus Racing and Team Lotus – and owner of Caterham Cars), it seems the battle between Lotus Cars and Tony Fernandes over the use of the Lotus name in F1 may be over, but clearly a lot of the animosity still remains…
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