Mark Owen: a PR nightmare

The term ‘love rat’ is something that has become almost synonymous with a cluster of male celebrities from John Terry and Ashley Cole to Tiger Woods they have all been exposed as serial love cheats. However I think like the rest of the world I let out a gasp of shock when it transpired that Mark “the cute wee one from Take That” Owen had been having multiple affairs for years. On the 11th of March Mark Owen went public with his indiscretions via a tell all interview with the Sun newspaper. This sort of move is certainly not one that would one would normally see occurring from a celebrity, from my perspective it certainly seems that his hand was pushed as the paper had probably already found out about his affairs and with or without his consent would have printed the story regardless. By taking the move to come out publicly the team surrounding Owen and Take That will have been hoping to have some sort of damage control. However have their attempts worked? Owen is known for his “squeaky clean” image and this sort of controversy is certainly something that could rock not only his career but that of his fellow band members. Since the revelations have surfaced Owen has entered rehab to solve the drink problems that have miraculously come to light and thus coincided with the cheating controversy. I do however question whether this recent confession of alcohol dependency is simply a mere case of smoke and mirrors from Owens PR camp hoping to distract the medias attention from his numerous affairs?

Within moments of the news breaking on the Sun website gossip forums and social networking sites were ablaze with chat about Owen, Heatworld even set up a forum for fans to comfort each other and discuss their shock. This was the time when Owens PR team will have been holding crisis talks to ensure the safety of their client and therefore their own financial interests. As soon as a scandal such as this one is exposed the internet comes into a world of its own with many purporting to have the facts and making wild claims. I question whether the PR team surrounding Owen suggested he take some time out from the media spotlight and merely developed this notion of an addiction to allow Owen to come back from rehab and for all to be forgotten. A prime example of this can be seen in the case of Tiger Woods who entered a rehab facility to tackle sex addiction and is now set to make his return to golf.

In PRweek there have been claims that the moves taken by Owen and his PR team have already paid off. They believe that by “orchestrating” the confession that they have “minimised the fall-out”. Owen clearly wants this situation to be forgotten about and by coming out and giving such a stark and honest account of his misdemeanours he has hoped the situation will not be dragged out. Certainly having the support of his wife will allow the public to forgive him more easily, however only time will tell if this does happen. Having some level of media control does seem to have helped, however this does not meen that Owen is out of the woods in regards to poor media representation and will be heavily reliant on his PR team to ensure fans remain on his side and more importantly that any endorsements don’t disappear.