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Analsys & Opinion The Right Angle Just the ticket for Telstra, more bad press
Analsys & Opinion The Right Angle Just the ticket for Telstra, more bad press | Just the ticket for Telstra, more bad press |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Monday, 06 March 2006 | |
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The latest incident, reported in the Financial Review today March 6, concerns Dan Burns, Telstra Network and Technology executive managing director. He was given some court-side seats for the men's final of the Australian open on 29 January by HP, already one of the biggest IT suppliers to Telstra and one hoping for a sizeable chunk of the millions Telstra is spending on its OSS/BSS revamp. But when the HP executives turned up for the big match they found Burns' seats occupied by total strangers who, reportedly, bought the tickets on the Internet not knowing they were part of a corporate hospitality package. The FR was not able to confirm that the tickets had been sold on the Internet, but HP did confirm that Burns had asked if he could give the tickets to executives from another company, and HP had agreed. From this point the story gets a bit murky. But the real issue is Burns' decision to transfer them outside of Telstra. Journalists too are the recipients of corporate hospitality in the form of tickets to sporting and cultural events. I have accepted, and declined, many in my time, although rarely so exclusive as these (I did get an invite to the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics, from Telstra!). If I'm unable to accept or really don't want to be at the entertainment on offer I would never dream of asking my would-be hosts if I could pass the tickets on to representatives of another organisation not of their choosing and potentially one with which they have no need or desire to build a relationship. It's their money that's paying for the tickets so if I don't want to accept their hospitality I believe they should be free to choose who they spend it on. In an organisation the size of Telstra Burns would have had no difficulty suggesting colleagues who would have appreciated the tickets and with whom it would have been equally useful for HP to develop a relationship with. But no, he chose to give them to someone else, perhaps someone he wanted to build a relationship with. HP agreed, but that's to be expected and does not mean that they were happy about it. Telstra is too valuable a client and Burns in too powerful a position in that hierarchy to refuse. In my view it's wrong, and Burns deserves the bad press he's copped as a result. My sympathies lie with the PR folk at Telstra who have to defend his actions because someone in his lofty position would never deign to do so. "We didn't do anything with the tickets without gaining permission from HP, nor for financial gain and Telstra did not do anything wrong," Telstra's PR person told the Financial Review. But the official line started to sag when it came to the question of "whether it was general policy to hand free tickets received by Telstra executives to outside firms rather than to pass them on internally." There was no answer to that one. My guess is there was no explicit policy, but I bet there will be after this! And my freebies to the closing ceremony of the Olympics? A friend got married that day, so I regretfully declined them. Wonder what those would have been worth on the Internet...
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