If we are to believe the recent headlines, we might want to check on the women of the UK. Specifically, headlines like that which appeared in the Daily Mail, on Thursday 16th May:
Jeremy Clarkson, 64, is crowned the UK and Ireland’s sexiest man for the second year running beating the likes of Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland and Idris Elba
Or, from the same day in the Mirror:
Jeremy Clarkson named UK’s ‘sexiest man’ for second year beating likes of Idris Elba and Tom Holland
And the same day in the Daily Star:
Jeremy Clarkson somehow named UK’s sexiest man by women looking for an affair
And later on the same day, in the Daily Star again:
Piers Morgan fuming as Jeremy Clarkson beats him in UK’s sexiest man poll
And later on the same day, in the Mirror again:
Piers Morgan rages after Jeremy Clarkson is crowned the UK’s ‘sexiest man’
And then later, on the same day, in the Mail again:
How Jeremy Clarkson, 64, won the title of the UK and Ireland’s sexiest man – and it’s good news for average blokes everywhere
Not to mention the Express, who led with the angle that former-MP-turned-TV-host Ed Balls was shocked at the desirability of Clarkson:
GMB host says ‘I don’t understand’ as Jeremy Clarkson’s crowned sexiest man
The Express, as it happens, would cover the story more directly, but not until the next day:
Jeremy Clarkson beats Tom Holland and Idris Elba to win ‘sexiest man’ for second year
For their part, the Metro spoke to an expert to get their take on the appeal of Jeremy Clarkson – and by ‘expert’, they meant “celebrity mindset coach and relationship expert” Noor Hibbert. And then there was the coverage in the Oxford Mail, Nottinghamshire Live, OK Magazine, and Joe.co.uk.
That was day one. The next day, the Independent got in on the act:
Jeremy Clarkson has been voted the UK’s sexiest man and it makes total (weird) sense to me
And two days later, the Daily Star couldn’t resist a third bite of the cherry:
Jeremy Clarkson says he may be ‘sexiest man alive’ – but he’s ‘something of a porker’
It wasn’t just the mainstream press – the Twitter account PopCrave broke the news to their 1.7m followers, in a tweet was viewed almost seven million times.
“This is crazy” replied one user. “Ok I’m neither British nor attracted to men so I might be way off base here, but Dev Patel didn’t even crack the top 10?!” tweeted another. “Prince William above Idris Elba? Be serious” said a third. “Are women in the UK … okay?” asked one, and “Is the UK okay?” asked another.
So, what’s going on here, is the UK filled with women who are just dying to get into bed with the guy who lost his Top Gear job because he gets aggressive when he’s hungry? I suspect not. There’s more to this story, sufficient even to warrant analysis in a skeptical magazine. Returning to the Daily Mail’s initial coverage:
“Jeremy Clarkson has officially been crowned the UK and Ireland’s sexiest man on Thursday for the second year in a row. The presenter, 64, beat off a long list of competition including the likes of Prince William, Idris Elba and Cillian Murphy.
The Clarksons Farm star scored an impressive score of nine out of 10 points in the annual poll conducted by IllicitEncounters, which bills itself as ‘the best online dating site for married people'”.
This story is not actually a piece of anthropological or sociological research about the sexual fantasies of a nation’s women – it is a thinly disguised advert for a website that wants to encourage readers to cheat on their partners. Yet, even so thin a disguise as this was enough to sucker in dozens of national and local news outlets, several mainstream TV pundits, and hundreds of thousands of readers, each of whom diligently did their part to share and popularise and discuss and spread the marketing message Illicit Encounters had used to bait their hook.
The annual Sexiest Man poll from leading married dating site, Illicitencounters.com is voted by 2,000 of its female members.
The women are asked who they think the UKs sexiest man is, asking them to score a 50-strong list of the past year’s most famous, culturally relevant names from most to least ‘sexy’. Each name was scored 1-10 (10 being the highest) based on their ‘sexiness’.
The methodology of this study, according to the infidelity website behind it, involved finding 2,000 female users of the website and presenting them with a list of 50 names, inviting each name to be scored. At best, of course, this couldn’t find the ‘sexiest’ name on that list (let alone in the country), but the name with the highest average score.
However, that is not the most significant question to be raised about this finding. Illicit Encounters claims to have 1.4million users from the UK – although, if true, that represents 1.4million accounts, with no real guarantee that those are unique accounts. They also claim to have 1,000 daily logins – but that may include users who log in multiple times per day.
They also claim that around 45% of users are female. If true, that would put them above their peers and competitors – when rival infidelity site Ashley Madison was hacked, data revealed that just 3 out of every 10,000 female accounts was real.
Interrogating the survey methodology, sadly, proved impossible, as the only phone numbers available for the company were the discontinued mobile number of their former press officer, or an online tech support number which went straight to voicemail. However, there is another alternative origin story for this survey – rather than being a survey or real-life female paid-up members of the site, this may be the product of a PR survey from nonsense PR specialists OnePoll.
Almost a decade ago, I would regularly fish stories like these out of the press, and trace their origins back to the survey company who were paid to conduct the research, and OnePoll were accountable for the overwhelming majority of such stories (a situation that, according to researchers in the field, the management company boasted about as a point of pride). At the time, I tracked plenty of stories in which Illicit Encounters, specifically, hired OnePoll in order to conduct surveys that would form the bases of PR stories. Is it possible that the company has had a chance of heart, and now conducts the research for themselves, on their own platform, interrupting discussions of infidelity in order to ask their definitely-substantial female userbase their opinions on the sexual potential of right wing journalists? It certainly isn’t completely impossible, I suppose.
On Clarkson himself, it’s worth highlighting that one of the first dodgy PR stories I ever picked apart, all the way back in 2010, was a story from an online hookup website in which they asked their female members to speculate on which celebrity had the biggest penis, and Jeremy Clarkson topped the list. Every time I’ve given a talk about PR in the news, for the last 14 years, I have included the example of the Clarkson’s Cock story. Even when I would give lectures as part of university journalism degree courses, I’d open with Clarkson’s Cock.
In my opinion, this isn’t actually a case of women across the UK swooning over Jeremy Clarkson, and it’s not even – in my opinion – likely that some women on a website dedicated to infidelity quite fancy Clarkson. The entire list feels, to me, like it was designed to come up with eye-catching results, in order to maximise attention.
In first place, there is the controversial choice, someone that people will be surprised and annoyed by. In second place, Tom Holland: an objectively handsome and well-liked actor, who serves as the instant comparison to the victor. Then in third place, Prince William, another choice that people will argue over the inclusion of, but someone about whom any story will automatically guarantee attention. Fourth place, Gareth Southgate the man leading England into the Euros this summer, who is likely to be in the spotlight an awful lot over the next few months. And then two undeniably attractive people in Cillian Murphy and Idris Elba.
This is a list perfectly designed to annoy people and draw ire and derision, therefore maximising attention for the website it’s promoting. And it clearly worked, given that the story has been viewed and shared millions of times online, and that it was featured in dozens of national newspapers, and dozens of regional newspapers dying for content. It was debated on breakfast television, who are equally hungry for content and for potential conflict. Attention seekers like Piers Morgan jumped on the story and made it their own, to keep the conversation going. This story was perfectly shaped to get absolutely maximum bang for very little buck.
Now consider for a moment if, instead, the company had decided to pay for an advert. What would it cost to get a full page, prominent advert in fifteen different newspapers over the course of three days? And for an ad on Twitter that’s seen by millions of people, and engaged with by at least hundreds of thousands? And then a TV slot, at a highly watched time of day, on one of the most popular channels.
All of this would have costs high five figures, at the very least. But, instead, pay a few hundred quid to a polling company and you’ll have strangers the world over discussing your marketing message as if it is true, and as if it is news. It’s easy, and it’s simple, and it’s cheap, and it’s effective, but it’s tawdry nonsense that cheapens our media.
I’ve been covering ‘Bad PR’ stories like this since 2010. Hell, I’ve been covering Bad PR stories specifically about the fuckability or otherwise of Jeremy Clarkson since my earliest days in skepticism. Apparently nothing has changed in that time in terms of how easy it is for dodgy companies to hack their way into a broken, desperate and diminished media, in order to hijack public discourse with their brand messaging.
