Bank's Inertia Fuels Nude Pic 'Storm'

You have to appreciate the irony!

Some poor dude who works at Sydney's Macquarie Bank - financial adviser David Kiely - was this week caught on television checking out several racy photos of supermodel Miranda Kerr (from her recent shoot for GQ magazine).

For those who don't know the story, Kiely's workstation was in the background of a live TV interview between one of his colleagues and Chris Bath of Channel Seven news.

If you squint, you might - just might - see Kiely in the background opening up an email and checking out pics of Kerr. At the last second, he spins around and looks into the barrel of the camera - sprung!

NOTE: we're not talking hardcore porn here but stuff you generally see on TV's Video Hits on a Sunday morning..or...the Daily Telegraph! See below...

Dailytele

Just wondering, if anyone at Macquarie Bank read the above issue of the Daily Telegraph while at work, would they be in trouble too? But I digress - this is not about HR but PR (I wonder if there's a HR Warrior out there?).

Okay, at time of writing, according to various sources, David Kiely is in hiding awaiting some measure of internal discipline. At the very worse, if the reports are correct, he faces the sack.

Meanwhile, the YouTube clip has gone bananas and the world's media has gotten in on the act.

Pleasingly, the public have come to the broker's defence, with efforts to "save David Kiely's job" now in full swing. Kerr herself has said she would support the effort by signing a petition if required.

Meanwhile, Macquarie Bank has reportedly stuck to the corporate line that it "takes matters such as the unacceptable use of technology extremely seriously"...yeah, yeah.

Boring and Stiff

Looking at this from a purely PR perspective, it would seem that by putting out the regulated (i.e. boring, stiff, jargon-filled) corporate response - and then going into hiding and refusing to comment - Mac Bank has fuelled the issue.

Had the bank acted swiftly - and you'd hope that sanity would prevail and Kiely only gets a rap across the knuckles at the very worst - then the negative ripple effect ("Save David Kiely's job" etc) would have been severely blunted. As it is, all eyes - the media's and the social web - remain trained on Macquarie Bank.

The bank has stuffed up the classic PR tenet - be first to fill the page. If you don't, others will...as they have in this case.

In terms of brand and reputation, if this issue is about Mac Bank upholding "moral standards", don't forget we're talking about a company that is hardly representative of community attitudes. Remember, this is the bank that has a history of paying outlandish bonuses to its senior executives, to the outcry of the media and general public.

So what I take from this is that Miranda Kerr's bottom is not acceptable at Macquarie Bank, but paying the boss a $100 million nest-egg is.

Interesting...

Oh, as an aside, GQ Australia editor Nicholas Smith says the magazine is pitched at Macquarie Bank staff.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Smith said:

"We actively think of the Macquarie Bank worker when we put our magazine together each month."

P.S. if you didn't get my suggestion re irony at the outset, it's that traditional media (TV) instigated the social media (YouTube) frenzy - albeit inadvertently. Normally these days, it's the other way around.

Also posted on prwarrior.typepad.com