by Thinus Ferreira
It's not just the bad closed-eyes publicity photos. The publicity team of M-Net (DStv 101) badly dropped the ball on Survivor South Africa: Return of the Outcasts - the 9th season of the localised Survivor SA version of the Banijay reality competition format produced by Afrokaans.
With the buzz-less, press coverage-poor, TV ratings-tanked and apathetic season of Survivor SA bowing out on Thursday evening which South Africa's media have largely deemed irrelevant and ignored, M-Net's PR team has a lot to answer for over its apparently failed communication strategy and mindboggling PR decisions that yielded worse results than ever before when it comes to media exposure, media relations and ratings.
For Survivor SA, as a local TV show, M-Net keeps doing less and less effort when it comes to interacting with the media but somehow apparently expects the same media-play outcome.
While M-Net for previous seasons had journalists and publications do set visits for a day or two on-location it was obviously not possible for seasons 8 and 9 filmed in South Africa's Eastern Cape due to Covid-19 restrictions.
The lack and impossibility of any set visits for Survivor SA this year and in 2021 is definitely not any fault of M-Net or Afrokaans, with the pay-TV channel's PR division and former M-Net head of publicity, Lani Lombard, who worked hard in seasons past, stretching budgets to fly some media worldwide to sample the show on-location and to do interviews with host and crew, and to observe the cast during challenges and tribal council.
The trouble M-Net has with getting proper media buy-in for Survivor SA, and that M-Net is and has been deliberately causing with its bad, inexplicable and apparently inexperienced PR decisions, however, start here:
Survivor SA media launch
In previous years, ever since the very first season Survivor SA season, M-Net has held a Survivor South Africa media launch event - and before some seasons even additional panel sessions with producers when M-Net did programming upfronts and allocated a slot to Survivor SA producers to talk to the media and to hype up the show.
Don't forget the "Let's play Survivor SA" media events M-Net structured in the past for the country's media to compete against each other to see who would be guaranteed a set visit to whatever secret locale or island that the show would end up using.
Cue this year, where the underwhelming and hardly reported on Survivor South Africa media launch was held in the Eastern Cape and for only certain media - with M-Net, MultiChoice, the Eastern Cape Development Corporation (ECDC), Eastern Cape government officials, as well as Survivor SA producers and talent attending but not the journalists and publications which have supported the show and M-Net in the past and continue to try to cover it.
Cue M-Net's PR team (in the business of communicating) deciding to deliberately be cagey, secret and dishonest and to not tell a lot of journalists that there was a Survivor SA media launch happening, and actively executing decisions not to invite members of the media for whatever reasons.
Even after the Survivor SA media launch at the Mpekweni Beach Resort near Port Alfred where the season was filmed there was nothing - zero - from M-Net regarding any photos, any transcripts or recordings of what was said and happened there, and the only output from junior media who did attend, doing superficial reporting like asking host Nico Panagio three questions.
If you don't really want to work with media and journalists and publications and sites, communicate that and tell them - that's your actual job description.
Also keep in mind that if you deliberately don't want to have them at your media launch you're disrespecting them, and signalling they don't matter to you. Just then don't somehow magically expect coverage from them, or the type of coverage you want, or complain about the type of coverage there is.
Castaway interviews
A basic Google search by anyone with a connected computer shows M-Net's horrific failure this season regarding exit interviews in the media. Where are they?
While several media in previous seasons would talk to and do interviews with players who got voted out, you'll have to search hard for almost any interviews in the South African press with Survivor SA: Return of the Outcasts outcasts. They simply didn't happen.
What exactly was M-Net's publicity strategy to get press and exposure for people voted out, and how exactly did M-Net think it was going to work harder and smarter to keep up, maintain and get placement for this season's voted-out castaways when there are multiple Survivor SA episodes per week?
Making it harder for media to keep up, meant media checked out - and M-Net had no plan to keep media motivated to cover, or to keep covering the show.
Banal, badly done, generic, one-size fits all press releases
Something big went wrong with M-Net press releases for Survivor SA: Return of the Outcasts with dull and generic e-mail blasts done to media (when they were done), and complete lack of interactive and dynamic engagement from M-Net's side with media on their specific needs, or M-Net asking how it could help them to cover Survivor SA this season.
While it's fine to send out basic information likely received from the show's production team, M-Net made no attempt to individually reach out during the course of the show to specific media, or to customise the information to the needs of specific media outlets and journalists in terms of what they need and how they require it to make it easier to engage with and use.
Some weeks: One Survivor SA e-mail blast as a press release summary. One week: Apparently a generic press release daily. Then: Nothing again.
No rhyme or reason whatsoever, no communication about future planning, no phone calls or messages.
Publicity photos could be added as its own damaging and disappointing subheader but let's bring that up here: The Survivor SA season 9 photography was badly done, and while it possibly was always bad, at least the media never knew about it, or received it. Photos were curated.
This season nobody at M-Net could be bothered to apparently screen images. The media just got a photo dump of Survivor SA photos to wade through, often lacking photos of specific moments, and literally "Kiteo, his eyes closed".
Post-show media briefing
The Covid-19 pandemic is over and M-Net couldn't bother and doesn't want to return to doing the traditional post-finale in-person press conference for Survivor SA this year.
It could easily have been done after maybe a physical watch party or physical screening for Survivor SA.
It's apparently also too much effort for M-Net's PR team (or not worth the effort or too difficult?) to do a virtual press briefing on Zoom, and to get South Africa's media together that way.
This is, and has always been an important part of the play-by-play structure and media buy-in for a show like Survivor SA.
While media found it functional, useful and beneficial, M-Net got exposure, the winner got exposure, fans and viewers got additional information, and show sponsors got exposure.
Yet M-Net doesn't deem it necessary or important to make the Survivor SA Afrokaans producers, the winner, the runner-up and M-Net executives available as a group for a collective post-show media briefing to the country's press at the conclusion of it.
Media are expected to start telling the beginning of the story, and must then struggle to try and tell the end (and the vast majority just don't bother).
South Africa's journalists covering television, now on almost a daily basis speak on the phone to publicists from London and America for overseas shows of international TV channels, as well as streaming services and distributors, do Zoom interviews and attend virtual roundtable sessions with casts and crews.
Yet South African publicists like with Survivor SA are leisurely sitting back and just wasting away chances and opportunity after opportunity in which they could have engaged meaningfully with the media to unlock value and coverage for locally-produced, South African TV shows.
Why the laziness and lack of focus and energy to give South African TV shows like Survivor SA the PR support it needs to be successful?
Broke what worked and forgot what came before
With the ongoing exit of talent from Randburg it is understandable that M-Net marketing and publicity people working on Survivor SA (or who've never worked on it) possibly forgot what came before it in terms of media liaison and how it worked and why it worked.
Or perhaps M-Net decided to deliberately broke things or stop certain things, without creating an effective replacement for what got taken away.
None of these are valid excuses. Read up, do past coverage searches, ask around. Phone people. Ask the media. To have a show like Survivor SA and not support it effectively in terms of publicity and well-informed, energy-added media relations is a real shame.
The level of non-support and low-support in terms of PR around an asset like Survivor SA is how the SABC's failed and often non-existent PR approach has often been for over a decade for television shows on the broken public broadcaster.
It's not been M-Net's legacy and it's sad to see and experience in real-time how things have slipped, disappeared and are done worse, not better, as basic standards and expectations are not being maintained.
If a decision is made to cancel Survivor SA, with M-Net citing a lack of media interest, a lack of media coverage and a lack of buzz that will not be the South African media's fault.
It would be M-Net's own "self-fulfilling prophecy" PR mistake of doing little or nothing, not properly liaising with the media, sitting back, and then complaining about there being little or nothing.