Referral Marketing: A Force for (Jade) Goody?

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Love it or hate it, Referral Marketing is really a force for good in this media 'circus'..

The Jade Goody / Max Clifford Affair is not simply a ‘triumph and tragedy’ story of two very different people caught up in each other’s lives. In what is a relatively short space of time, it has allowed the deepest emotions to fill pages of ‘gutter press’ - and forever changed the lives of thousands of people throughout the world.

Jade Goody is a 27-year-old ex-dental nurse who came to fame through an appearance on Big Brother in 2002, and then again in Celebrity Big Brother in 2007 when she seized the publicity opportunity handed to her by Shilpa Shetty.

She came from an under-privileged background. Her father was of mixed race - a drug addict and criminal who died of a drugs overdose at the age of 42. Her bisexual mother was incapable of showing her any love or affection throughout her entire life, being a demented, evil little woman filled with hatred for just about everything and everyone.

In spite of this, Jade put her laughing eyes and quick, intelligent agile mind and body to work for herself. She was determined not to grow old gracefully and impoverished, and started on a journey that would take her to places she knew only in her mind.

Her big opportunity came in 2002 through Big Brother, where she exposed the vulnerability of others to drag herself into the limelight. By the end of summer 2002, she was described as ‘a nasty slapper, Public Enemy Number One, the most hated woman in Britain and a monster’.

This was her springboard to celebrity status and all that goes with it - and she knew it. She took hold of life in both hands always delivering what people wanted from her: turmoil, sex, raw passion and the chance to vent their anger.

She was Jade, Unadulterated Jade - Warts and All; the adult version of an unprotected little girl who was handed a joint to smoke by her mother at the age of 5; the same little girl who was subject to her mother’s beatings and mental torture for as far back as she cares to remember.

As a result of the chance to appear on Big Brother, she is now estimated to be worth £3.3 million through her appearances on reality TV, her perfume Shh..Jade Goody, backstabbing, tearful multiple apologies on radio and television, continuous cancer scares, 54,000 complaints from viewers to Ofcom and Channel 4 and many death threats, Christmas Dinner with Jade Goody (a book and DVD featuring her two sons), a brief appearance on Bigg Boss(the Indian version of Big Brother), her autobiography Jade: Catch a Falling Star, a weekly column in Now Magazine, the Wicked Queen in the pantomime Snow White, Living With Jade Goody TV documentary, beauty salons called Homme Fatal catering exclusively for men, relationships with Jeff Brazier, the father of her two sons, and footballer Ryan Amoo, who she lived with for about six months, her rows and breakups with Jack Tweed who she married courtesy of OK Magazine and Living TV- and many, many other personal appearances in magazines, and on radio and TV.
Jade has also made a lot of money from setting up shoots with paparazzi photographers who split the sales with her.

She owns three houses and a £60,000 turbo-charged Range Rover, and may still have the Bentley Continental GTC sports car worth £130,000. Her perfume is the fifth biggest seller in the UK with sales going up daily, as Max Clifford and his team ceaselessly parade her bald, dying body in our faces hour after hour.

Jade Goody has sold around 120,000 copies of her autobiography, and numerous copies of her third fitness DVD. She is getting around £700,000 for the exclusive wedding pictures from OK Magazine- and there are rumours of even bigger fish on Max Clifford’s line waiting to be hauled in if she is up to it.

Jade is reported not to have spoken to her two boys, Bobby (5) and Freddy (4), about the cancer that has spread to her liver, bowel and groin. If this fact is true, she certainly has her own agenda for it. But Jade does have to face her final curtain soon, and this will take all the courage she can muster in the face of diminishing strength and utter dependency on others.

To help herself come to terms with her impending demise, Jade is working with a faith healer to clear her bad energy, and life coach, Sue Stone, who says Jade has started reading the Bible. Jade has also brought in specialist grief counsellors to assist her to be able to explain to her children what is going to happen.

In order to earn even more money for the boys she cherishes, Jade is keeping a secret, personal diary of her illness which will be published after her death.

But before the last flower in her funeral cortège dies, Jade will have faced the ultimate test of her courage - and Max Clifford’s office will have drained the last glass of celebration champagne in her honour. There is no question that Max Clifford and Jade Goody will have made a good deal of money from the publicity that his company has generated for her.

But that aside, Max Clifford is the perfect person to be there to comfort Jade in the privacy of her hospital bedroom, when the light starts to dim and she cannot find the strength to cuddle her two boys close to her any longer; for he was also born into a poor family, the youngest of four children. Max’s father was a gambler and alcoholic who was frequently unemployed.

Max left school at fifteen with no qualifications and within four months of starting, was sacked from his first job in Elys Department Store in Wimbledon. After working in newspapers for several years, he too, got a lucky break working for EMI in the press office. As he was the only trained journalist there, he was given the job of promoting an unknown - and apparently unwanted - pop group called ‘The Beatles’, who were touring the US at that time.

From there Max eventually found himself with Chris Hutchins’ PR agency, where through association with Harold Davidson, the impressario, he rubbed shoulders with stars of stage and screen - including Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.
When the head of Chris Hutchins’ agency, Syd Gillingham, decided to retire in 1970, Max Clifford opened his own agency, He was then just 27 - which was considered pretty young to move in top circles as a publicist in those days.

His popularity grew, and in 1986 he masterminded a publicity stunt for Freddie Starr. The Sun newspaper carried the now famous headline: ‘FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER’. This outrageous story catapulted Max Clifford to fame.

Big names seeking publicity started to knock loudly on his door - including a brothel ‘madam’ who was to bring him wealth through a prostitute named Pamella Bordes. The headline that did it this time was: ‘CALL GIRL WORKS IN COMMONS’. It involved Conservative Sports Minister Colin Moynihan, billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, Andrew Neil and Donald Trelford - and it’s alleged that Max Clifford leaked information to The News of the World to serve his own ends.

Max soon found himself in a world of sleaze, protecting gay footballers from press intrusion, and exposing stories to get the Labour Party into power. Jeffrey Archer has no reason to befriend him either, as Max exposed Archer’s perjury in 1980 which sent him to goal.

But he was instrumental in getting Tracey Temple more than £100,000 from the Mail on Sunday for telling all about her affair with John Prescott. Fearless as ever, in 2006 Max announced he was going to expose politicians who failed to abide by the standards expected of them in public office. He himself received death threats over the Stephen Lawrence affair, and when he got involved with the O.J. Simpson trial.

Max Clifford makes no bones about his animosity towards rival publicist Simon Fuller - or his belief that appearing on a reality TV show, flaunting your body or being abysmal on a talent show, is a sure way to fame and fortune. These thoughts may have emanated from the discreet weekly adult sex parties he ran for his friends and clients in South London during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

At the age of 46, Max developed epilepsy as a result of early life brain scarring and was banned from driving for eighteen months.

Maybe it was these similarities between their lives that drew Jade Goody and Max Clifford together, and cemented the close platonic bond that exists between them. Of course, the sad death of Max Clifford’s wife, Elizabeth, from lung cancer in 2003 - and the fact that Max himself was found to have prostrate cancer in 2008 - strengthens this bond considerably.

It’s easy to see that Jade Goody has a quicksilver mind, easily grasping new ideas with great dexterity. Max Clifford is also agile, highly motivated and fearless. Jade is hungrily seeking the ideal life for herself, but her upbringing and character prevent her from finding it.

Now she is running out of the resources to continue her journey, she’ll need Max Clifford’s steadfastness and gallantry to counteract her own short temper, restlessness and aggressiveness - which is nothing but a reaction to boredom.

Whatever else has come out of The Jade Goody / Max Clifford Affair is left to each one of us to decide. Small business owners may relate her life to the words of Theo Paphitis who, when commenting on the credit crunch, said: “When this crisis started, they (the Government) didn’t know what to do. They never thought it would be as deep as it is at the moment. And they are making it up as they go along. But nobody is prepared to say ‘We don’t have a blueprint. We’re trying to react to everything we are discovering as we go along.’ ”

I think when Jade Goody was accused of making racist remarks to Shilpa Shetty, her personal ‘crisis’ started, and she didn’t know where it would take her because she simply didn’t have a blueprint for it.

The Jade Goody / Max Clifford Affair demonstrates clearly the difference between marketing and Referral Marketing. Max Clifford has done a Referral Marketing operation by building credibility and using tactics that are designed to attract new customers. Whereas Jade Goody has marketed her product poorly, and deliberately blinded herself to the long game being powerless to change the cruel hand Fate has dealt her.

Inevitably, her business empire will crumble when she no longer occupies the ‘Big Chair’. Jade Goody knows it – and that explains why she is so intent on making all the money she can whilst she is still on this earth.

Love your feedback, guys!

Andrew