Even pirates are in the PR business.
The “PR Play of the Week” – as designated by PR Week’s Tonya Garcia – was awarded to the pirates earlier this month. In fact, the PR Play Rating was “ingenious”, which beat the “savvy” rating that myself and colleagues received a few years ago for our Free EC promotion. Professional jealousy aside, the pirate public relations campaign showcases the value of publicity even for the most profound uphill reputation battles. In this case the “pirates” attempted to reposition themselves as something like a “coast guard.”
Pirate spokesman Sugule Ali called the New York Times from a satellite phone on a Ukrainian cargo ship that he and his co-pirates had hijacked. Ali’s message was that his group was interested only in money, not the $30 million in weapons onboard that put an international spotlight on the robbery. He tried to move his reputation from piracy (translated as “sea bandit” in his region) to the expected actions of a coast guard patrolling its waters. Ali is awarded kudos from PR week for normalizing the pirate experience and downgrading the international alarm: “We just saw a big ship, so we stopped it.”
Here are the partial transcripts from Ali’s interview:
Q. Have the pirates been misunderstood? ?A. We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits [”sea bandit” is one way Somalis translate the English word pirate]. We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.
Q. Why did you want to become a pirate??A. We are patrolling our seas. This is a normal thing for people to do in their regions.
Q. Isn’t what you are doing a crime? Holding people at gunpoint??A. If you hold hostage innocent people, that’s a crime. If you hold hostage people who are doing illegal activities, like waste dumping or fishing, that is not a crime.
Q. What has this Ukrainian ship done that was a crime? ?
A. To go through our waters carrying all these weapons without permission.
Q. What is the name of your group? How many ships have you hijacked before??
A. I won’t say how many ships we have hijacked. I won’t talk about that. Our name is the Central Region Coast Guard.
Ali may not view himself as a pirate, but piracy is rooted in the tradition of taking direct action for the good of the disenfranchised.
I had suspected that pirates were overly caricatured after taking my son to the nation’s only pirate museum last July. Displayed among the torture devices used by and on pirates were descriptions about their socialist tendencies. The pirates, according to the museum, were motivated by a combination of socialism (the wealth ought to be distributed evenly among the people) and political democracy (Royalty should not impose taxes, etc). The museum notes that they were also violent, lawless, and cruel – but in some cases no more so than the governments they were opposing. It seems clear that some pirates were motivated to challenge the greed and corruption of monarchy, but it seems also clear that many, after having “stolen back” the people’s wealth, failed to share the loot.
The pirate museum is located in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where a sunken pirate ship was recovered a few decades ago. John F Kennedy Jr among other wealthy adventurers backed the exploration. Apparently the ship’s captain had foolishly pushed ahead during a bad storm because he was anxious to meet up with a Provincetown girlfriend. This all happened very close to the site where the pilgrims had first landed. The pilgrims found Provincetown to be so grim that they re-boarded and proclaimed their official landing to be their second stop, Plymouth Rock. Now Provincetown is a gay-friendly artist colony where flocks of tourists meander up and down its main drag, watching comedy and buying t-shirts.
At the pirate museum kids were eager to buy fake eye patches and plastic swords. Ali’s world of “piracy” is far from Provincetown’s caricature. When asked if he was fearful of the escalating international standoff, he said, “We’re not afraid of arrest or death or any of these things. For us, hunger is our enemy.”
I am far from expert about the battles off the coast of Somalia. But I can see why PR week was intrigued by Ali’s efforts. Adding nuance and a storyline to this international crisis was profoundly impactful public relations.
