Victory happens slowly

And then it happens all at once

Victory has been on my mind this week.

No reason.

No reason at all.

It can’t have escaped your notice that earlier this week, Leeds United won the second division title the world marked 80 years since VE Day. The end of WW2 in Europe. The defeat of the German-led Axis powers by the United Nations Alliance.

It’s a victory that happened gradually. 46 punishing games, that horrible run of draws before Sheff United collapsed, followed by an injury time winner by Manor Solomon six years of war across North Africa, Italy, Eastern Europe, The Baltics, Russia, North-West Europe and finally Germany itself.

Historians will tell you the war was won in 1943 outside Stalingrad, or by the evening of June 6th 1944 with British, Canadian and American soldiers opening a second front, or certainly by the time the Soviets and Western Allies were in Germany proper.

Even the pathetic shitheel who kicked it all off was done in a week before VE Day - having poisoned his dog, poisoned his wife and finally splashed his brains across a really ugly couch back in April on what must count as history’s least romantic first night of a honeymoon.

But right up until May 8th, people were dying in the final days of a war the instigators had no chance of winning after a series of reverses that happened years before.

The writing was on the wall, but victory took years. Until that moustache tit ate his Luger after murdering a dog and it all finished up within a week.

Now you might think the business/marketing lesson here is going to be about staying the course, doing the hard work, and continuing until that tipping point when success becomes all but inevitable.

It’s not. The marketing takeaway here is to always respect PR embargos.

Adolf tops himself April 30. The Soviets took Berlin May 2. The handful of Nazis who’d not done the decent thing and saved the hangman a job signed the articles of surrender at 2am on May 7.

And then because Stalin be as Stalin do, the news of the end of the war was embargoed until 23:01 on May 8 (May 9 in Moscow), to give the Soviet agitprop apparatus enough time to put together some nifty posters for their pre-arranged Victory Day. Journalist Ed Kennedy knew that. He knew because he’d been a witness to the surrender at Eisenhower’s HQ.

Then, given the opportunity for the scoop of the lifetime, he got on the blower to the Associated Press.

‘This is Ed Kennedy in Paris. The war is over, and I am going to dictate: Germany has surrendered unconditionally. That’s official. Get it out.’

Gazumping history’s most paranoid dictator went down like a fart in a packed lift. Stalin thought the US was trying to take credit (thus pre-empting every Hollywood movie of the next 80 years) and saw his Georgian arse. Diplomatic cables were exchanged, and Ed Kennedy was fired by the AP.

So even if that victory comes all at once after years of blood, sweat, tears and toil, remember two things:

1. Always respect PR embargos

2. Don’t upset murderous dictators

Something mint: this advert for a local restaurant

The video’s a bit loud. And very sweary.

That’s Leeds’ captain, absolutely leathered, recommending a local restaurant before telling a crowd of thousands that his co-worker is particularly well-endowed.

The power of social proof, eh?