My first instinct is that it is very hard to give general advice in a list of three that won’t fall apart at the first hurdle. So from the off I’m pretty convinced he’s going to make the biggest mistake of all. Error #1 being pat. In addition he made three other simplistic errors:

#2 asserting that perception always trumps reality;

#3 advocating the grovel;

#4 advocating over-reaction.

Levick says that in a crisis the first 24 hours are critical. But that’s far from always true. Plenty of proper crises unfold over days, weeks and even months. There is often nothing to be done in the first 24 hours bar trying to find out what’s going on (whilst issuing numbingly dull statements of concern).

Levick says people get (1) stuck in fear (or rather believe that they’re the good guys); (2) stuck thinking more of what they always do will work in a crisis and (3) won’t make the radical changes which are needed. These amount to firms being in denial, and sometimes that’s a problem on all the scores he mentions, I agree.

But none of these general truisms implies or validates the formula Levick advocates. In short that’s that firms at the outset of a crisis should collapse into grovel mode; throw out the good with the bad of their culture (and sort it all out overnight) and shoot anything that limps providing it’s in their own camp.

Levick rightly remarks:

“You can never underestimate how much emotion plays a part in those crisis situations, in those critical 24, 48 hours.”

While that’s often the case, one of the commonest errors in a crisis situation is to pretend those emotions can be capped at the outset by PR spin and hasty action.

Of course, sometimes an immediate dramatic reaction is exactly what is required. In groceries, an instant product recall is a great move when E.coli bacteria is suspected to have contaminated produce. But in cars, it might be the right move only after days or weeks. (Why cause unnecessary panic, which can cause its own crisis?)

In the case of strife-ridden countries, which Levick says his advice covers, the full meaning of a challenge is seldom visible within days. Events rarely require knee-jerk responses so much as considered strategies and smart tactics. To say otherwise would be to put leaders at the mercy of impressions, which change like the wind.

But let’s get one thing clear. When things explode, when people get harmed or killed, property damaged and the environment polluted, organisations had better be penitent (but listen to their lawyers too) and never arrogant. This leads me on to take a closer look at Levick’s second distorted observation:

“Well, in a crisis perception always trumps reality 100% of the time.

“And one of the things that we need to recognize is that it requires a paradigm shift. We need to think and act differently.”

The point about PR is to certainly to stress to bosses that perceptions matter, and that action may be required to create a better perception. But PR does its best work when it bends false public perception into something like alignment with reality. If all we have to offer is to tell clients to accept whatever perception the media have painted, it reveals that we are not up to our job. The Levick line implies that all the paradigm shifts are on the bosses’ side: I say that we may need paradigm shifts all over the place, and they take time.

I do agree with Levick that lots of firms are often almost as awful as it’s possible to be at managing their PR hazards. Actually, their problem is threefold: thinking about risks in order to minimise them and thinking properly about how to deal with disasters when they arise and thinking about the PR dimension of the latter.

Companies – their CEOs and boards - ought to be stress testing the worst cock-ups they can imagine. Banks ought to have assumed that their run of good luck might be a bubble, and one of their making. Even saying this reminds us that at the highest level firms tend to be in denial about the risks they face. So it’s hardly surprising that they end up in denial when things go tits-up (as I know well, nuclear core meltdowns are a classic example of an industry falling into that trap). That leads me to question the last aspect of Levick’s advice:

“The third reason are the following three words: ‘why we can’t'…. everyone has been trained and paid to avoid risk. And now you are asking what risk should we take. And every one will always come up – no matter what the opportunity is. Should we recall the product, should we get rid of that division, should we fire that individual responsible. And everyone will come up with why we can’t. Why we can’t do it for financial reasons. Why we can’t do it for company morale reasons. Why we can’t do it for legal reasons. And the end result is that the opportunity early in a crisis to make a sacrifice and to do way with the brand, or the division or the person that is the cause of the problem ends up being lost…”

Fire a person? Get rid of a division? Do away with a brand? Make a sacrifice as a way out of a dilemma? Does he really believe that in most cases in most crisis-hit bodies they should take such drastic action in the first 24 to 48 hours of a crisis? Regardless of the facts? Regardless of whether one has just cause or not for doing so? I say that’s mostly rotten advice.

Though, as I said earlier, I agree that sometimes his advice might be exactly the right thing to accept. For instance, if the causes of a crisis are transparent, remedial action is obvious, if painful, and occasionally so if only for precautionary reasons.

Yet let’s not panic. Most firms could survive either following or ignoring Levick’s advice. There’s never been a car company ruined by a product recall. There’s never been an oil company wiped out by the consequences of an accident. The truth is that most so-called crises are not crises at all, but dramas. That’s life. Nothing gets done without hazard, and cock-ups come in all flavours. Hence, I maintain that case by case, the wheels fall off generalizations when it comes to crisis management guidance. That means that organisations and their PRs have to be canny and flexible – and certainly not pat.

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Here’s what Mr Blatter had to say at a press conference yesterday to his critics who were calling for his re-election to be delayed:

“Football is not in a crisis, only some difficulties… If governments try to intervene then something is wrong. I think Fifa is strong enough that we can deal with our problems inside Fifa… If you see the final match of the Champions League you must applaud… We are not in a crisis. We are only in some difficulties and these will be solved inside our family.

“The executive committee of Fifa was very pleased to receive the report of the FA regarding the allegations made by Lord Triesman at the House of Commons… We were happy that we can confirm there are no elements in this report which would even prompt any proceedings.

“If somebody wants to change something in the election or in the congress of Wednesday, these are the members of Fifa… This cannot be done by the executive committee, it cannot be done by any authorities outside of Fifa – it’s only the congress itself that can do it. Congress will decide if I am a valid or non-valid candidate.”

Spoken like the bold realist and constitutionalist. Very good “stag-at-bay” stuff. I also thought Mr Blatter was brilliant to say that he wanted to sort out governance - especially on the pitch, and then in his committees. First things first, he implied.

I know: he clearly lost his rag at yesterday’s press conference. He’s an old-style Swiss apparatchik. He is sometimes prone to control-freakish outbursts when faced by a hostile crowd. His PR advisers need to drill in to him that he must keep hold of his statesman-like mask in such situations. But, overall,  it was a very good performance.

His down-to-earth frankness was admirably refreshing. He made it crystal clear that he is, at bottom, accountable to his members (call them his core stakeholders). They have procedures and methods, which he is following, for handling elections of FIFA officials. Only his members, not the media or British prime ministers or the English FA, can unseat him or set the agenda.

Mr Blatter was surely right to say that he dealt with the executive committee members the world’s countries sent him. It was, however, a politically risky remark for him to make. In an ideal world, it was a statement of truth that would have been better coming from someone else. But it wasn’t an ideal world for Mr Blatter yesterday, and I guess he couldn’t hold himself back.

The really good news is that for once the media have not re-set the main agenda; they have not been allowed to take control. Indeed, my beloved British media lacked grace and wisdom perhaps especially because they realized that they were going to lose this battle against him. They behaved liked spoiled rats robbed of a feast. I say they are in denial about the realities of the game. Anyway, it was nice, solid stuff, a glimpse behind the mask.

The truth is that football’s reputation (here I mean its popularity) does not depend on FIFA’s reputation (here I mean its squeaky-clean image) so much as on FIFA’s competence to manage big events and the game’s general affairs. The fact is that FIFA does a good job of managing both.

It is the product that’s FIFA delivers that is loved, not FIFA. And, yes, like the referee FIFA sometimes unavoidably becomes the center of attention and that’s tough.

But in the eyes of the fans, the owners of football clubs and the game’s administrators are a necessary evil. The UK has many club owners who could be considered dodgy, but their money and enthusiasm are more than welcome in the game. Anyway, our English FA hardly sets a shining example of competence that would give it any moral authority over FIFA – see here here and here.

As for sponsors such as Adidas and Coca-Cola, they are not dumb. Sponsors know all about football’s quirks. There have been no surprises. Their recent tut-tutting to journalists is humbug. It will come to nothing because the likes of Coca-Cola and Emirates need the game as much as it needs them.

Of course there may well be a case for reform. Like the EU, the UN, the Olympics and other international bodies, FIFA is a candidate for corruption and for pork barrel politics. Corruption and manoeuvres are always a risk with federal systems where the periphery sends representatives to the centre. Corruption also thrives in situations in which big money, power and reputations are at stake but where there is little scrutiny.

FIFA has a major hand in how a big pot of money is spent and where it is spent. Naturally, FIFA has many supplicants. And, yes, there’s been poor oversight by media and member countries over many years.

It is also true that the British media, which are now screaming loudest at Mr Blatter, are always more agressive than any other when they smell a story. They have a courageous history of tracking down malfeasance in their own abrupt, sometimes rude manner. They are rightly feared by plenty of international bodies which are used to a complacent press.

Still, and contrary to what the British and other media say, Mr Blatter may be exactly the man to put FIFA right, provided he understands how to get the Corporate Governance and scrutiny right in future. Of course, I’m presupposing that he is good at this job, but my gut says he is. He probably knows where the bodies are buried. Besides: one was hardly ecstatic about the main rival candidate, Qatar’s Mohamed Bin Hammam.

I don’t say he’ll make either FIFA or himself lovely or loved, but they may both survive and do pretty good work.

Here’s my parting message:

Are you listening CEOs and PR gurus in crisis-hit organisations? Mr Blatter has shown you all how to come out fighting and win by sticking up for reality and by repelling media freeloaders from taking control of his ship. He won’t be bullied no matter how big the headlines get decrying him and his organisation.

The lesson from this struggle is that firms and institutions don’t have to let the media take control of the agenda during a crisis…. all it takes to win is some PR nous and some balls.

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My countryfolk are screaming foul. Oh dear, they were always dreaming. They never stood a chance. It is possible that England’s governing Football Association thought that PR could influence the outcome. The Russians showed them what nonsense that was. They lost the technical and commercial bids and the wider PR campaign. Yet they won the vote to host the World Cup because they were offering what FIFA craves. The Russians probably also focused almost exclusively on the private views of the 22 committee members, rather than FIFA’s public rhetoric.

Never mind any possibility of corruption’s persuasive powers, there were sound reasons for Russia’s win. FIFA’s President Sepp Blatter has long been intent on spreading football’s influence across the globe. As the BBC reported:

Russia wrapped things up with their Fifa member Vitaly Mutko pointing out that eastern Europe has never previously hosted the World Cup.

“Twenty one years ago the Berlin Wall was broken,” said Mutko. “Today we can break another symbolic wall and open a new era in football together.

“Russia represents new horizons for Fifa, millions of new hearts and minds and a great legacy after the World Cup, great new stadiums and millions of boys and girls embracing the game.

“Russia’s economy is large and growing, and Russia’s sports market is developing markedly.”

The last World Cups have been in Japan and South Korea (2002) and South Africa (2010). The next ones will be in Brazil (2014), Moscow (2018) and then Middle East (2022). The fact that Russia and Qatar were high-risk choices should provoke a “so what” response. Risk is a challenge to overcome and not a reason for inaction or rejection.

Actually, wouldn’t a good liberal, kindly, globalising, civilised view be that it is exactly right that FIFA’s choices fell as they did? Russia (which has for centuries half-yearned to be Europeanised) and Qatar (which has for several years been an invaluable Western-bridgehead to the Moslem world) are the very places where football may be a benign influence. Indeed, why not argue that football mostly thrives in Westernised countries, but can be a force for culture and good in more backward countries just as it is in Manchester’s Moss Side?

The British footballing establishment’s moan that FIFA is bent, or at least manipulatively dishonest, reeks of sour grapes. It is a statement of the blindingly obvious. But given what goes on from the FA downwards in Britain’s domestic game, claiming moral superiority whiffs of cynical hypocrisy.

Meanwhile, anybody who blames the British media for FIFA’s rejection of England’s bid is looking for scapegoats. The BBC’s Panorama‘s controversial last-minute report on FIFA’s “wrong doings” lacked substance and was far from convincing and very possibly libelous. However,The Sunday Times did cleverly catch two of FIFA’s World Cup selection committee openly selling votes for cash. But so what? England was already defeated. In this battle, winning never depended upon the media’s support.

The question, then, is why did prime minister David Cameron expose himself to inevitable humiliation on the world stage? There are a couple of linked possible explanations. Clearly, he would have quite liked to host the World Cup. Presumably, it would have helped pay for the 2012 Olympic infrastructure losses. He may have lusted after the competition’s ability to bring his people together around a vision of sporting glory at Wembley Stadium: but that would have been a dream, too, surely? We might have proven ourselves good losers and warm hosts: as South Africa did. Indeed, it may well be that we rise to similar opportunities during the Olympics. Let’s hope so.

The only explanation I can propose is that at home David Cameron was in a no-lose situation. Backing the bid, and going down with the ship, gave him a chance to modify his Top Toff Tory, Squire Cameron, image: he was at one with us oiks, at small cost to his pride. (Ditto, the heir to the throne, by the way.)

We have to hope that Britain’s Foreign Office and its spy network had enough inside information to advise David Cameron wisely about the FIFA process (if not he could have asked me). Hence, it is doubtful that defeat came as a complete shock, even if the lack of even minimal support did.

It is time that people got real about football. It is the last bastion of the politically incorrect and skullduggerous old world. It gets away with it because it is a game that provokes passion precisely because it does not obey the real world’s rules. If Cameron and Barack Obama, who wailed that the rejection of the US bid was a mistake, had remained cool and stood aloof, Russia’s and Qatar’s victories would not have been half so consequential politically, indeed they could have been welcomed gracefully.

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Crampton says that man does not live by scrubbed pavements alone, and he’s right. In Zurich city as night falls, across the road from the opera house, along the beautiful lakeside promenade near Bellevue, you’ll find hundreds of teenagers loitering. At their feet will be crates of cheap supermarket-bought booze. It’s binge-drinking and joint-smoking time. They create a right mess, which they leave behind for others to clean. But what’s weird to us Brits is that there’s no police in sight and there’s no public stink about it.

When the kids are suitably tanked up they head for the city’s night clubs to take harder drugs and dance. Again, they are left alone to get on with it. Of course, like the underage drinking, cannabis and hard drugs are illegal, but the young have little to fear from the law on Friday and Saturday nights as they openly flout it.

There’s a freedom at play in Zurich that you won’t find in London anymore. But if a fight starts the police suddenly appear on the scene in force. They go in hard because young people sometimes carry knives (Swiss law regarding weapons is relaxed until you try to use one on somebody else). However the courts – unlike the police – are likely to treat the kids gently, which amazes the Germans whose laws are much tougher.

In so-called Swiss-style, Zurich’s left-wing and Green authorities recently ruled that bars showing the World Cup in South Africa on TV must turn the sound off. This decision struck most people as silly in a small city that allows 500 bars and clubs to open after midnight. The authorities heard the protest and allowed the sound.

Noise is a major issue in Switzerland. In my village on Zurich’s Gold Coast the one thing you must not do is make a racket. There is a pervading calmness and church-like silence, which the odd laugh, bark, kid or lawnmower pierces. There’s hardly anybody on the streets. In such places you feel the numbness of Switzerland’s inward-looking family-orientated village life.

As I see it, Zurich city is a sanity-saving zone. It provides easy-going relief from the close-knit, sometimes stultifying, small towns and villages in which most of Switzerland’s population live.

Bunburying Gnomes: How the elite plays away

The Gnomes of Zurich are practicised masters of Bunburying between the city and their local communities. Unlike in the UK, they’ve never had to worry about being exposed by the tabloid press. There’s little appetite among the Swiss public for knowing what people get up to away from home. Well, so long as they don’t do what one billionaire did when he took underage girls back to his suite at the super-elite Dolder Hotel at 3 a.m. and ended up in prison.

Gnomes cannot rock ‘n’ roll in their garden, outside their house, in the village square, or be seen the worse for wear by their neighbours, except at Zurich’s Street Parade or the local Chilbi. But if they head for Zurich centre they can sample freely almost any bohemian flavour they fancy. Yes, Swiss Germans are wonderfully contradictory.

One of the great attractions of Zurich, besides contemporary art collections, cinemas, circuses, modern cuisine, museums, trams and trains, is the skiing nearby. And what’s striking is how in winter the partying moves partly from Zurich city to places like Davos and St. Moritz. Posh they might be, but both ski resorts are buzzing with all night romping, some drug-taking, loads of boozing and the boisterousness you once found in Brighton and Blackpool, before New Labour outlawed a good night out. But that’s the fun that British university students and the British upper-middle-classes still outrageously pursue after pretending to ski on the piste.

Yet middle-aged families (I’m talking about mine here) can safely take their kids out at night in a ski resort or in Zurich city. That is so long as they don’t slip on the icy streets, and so long as they know which streets to avoid at 3 a.m.. What’s more, there’s plenty to do in both places for people of all ages and lifestyles.

So here comes some advice to Mr. Crampton from a British PR based in Zurich. Next time you spend a couple of days in a city, I suggest that you do more than walk the streets on a quiet Sunday morning before you traduce it in The Times.

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Roman represents the future of our trade. His quality of thought is becoming more common – though far from common enough – across the in-house and agency world.

Roman Geiser

He embodies how PR is maturing as a business under a new generation’s leadership as it enters its Golden Age.

His take on things ranges from radical ideas for repositioning Swiss banks, to questioning the effectiveness of the S in CSR.  He’s prepared to think big about what disintermediation could do for his clients, while staying alert to the possible downsides for society as a whole. He is cleverly nuanced about social media (a tad over-enthusiastic for my taste, but there you go).

He joined the agency world seven years ago. His background was as a public affairs lobbyist for an umbrella organisation of Swiss businesses. Then he was hired by Jäggi Burson-Marsteller, a formerly family-owned business based in Zurich and Bern, which was bought by BM, Young & Rubicam.

So, as he readied himself for his journey as a PR agency EMEA COO, I asked him to give us an insight in to his business and thinking. Here’s the outcome:

Strategy, evidence and today’s market

PS: I’d like you to describe what the recession has done to your clients, to explain how well your business in EMEA has fared.

RG:  It really depends market by market and positioning by positioning of each unit we have in our organisation. In Switzerland, we work for industries such as energy, pharmaceuticals and food.  If you take those three industries, they’re doing pretty well in the recession.

We see a clear trend to specialisation and focus.  The mid-sized agencies in this market – those offering 360 degree service – have an issue. Clients either want an agency that really understands their business, or an agency with functional or specialist expertise, for instance agencies that are 100% specialised in digital media and social media.  So there is a need for all agencies to find a sweet spot.

We see a certain cautiousness. There’s a psychological impact on even healthy businesses. Investments are taken more slowly than before.

Some services have become commoditised.  However the more strategically an agency is positioned the better it is protected from the crisis.  So offering product PR in the fast moving consumer goods area, for example, has become a low margin business.  Or even doing financial communications around standard transactions like public offerings has become internalised by banks and commoditised.

That means the higher up the value chain you are, and the better the quality of service you offer, the better off you are during the crisis.  Services like doing press releases, or just media relations in multi markets – those are not services where you can differentiate your brand. They are really price-based discussions which put your margins under pressure.

Burson-Marsteller is known in the industry as being extremely strategic. Of course, all agencies claim that!

PS: What exactly does ‘strategic’ mean?

GS:  If I take the Swiss example, we are very successful in healthcare.  We have a team of scientists here.  We have four medical doctors and a professor at Rockefeller University.  You need that kind of calibre to really bring evidence to the table to provide analysis. Then you can have a discussion with the client based on “This is the existing mindset and this how we get to where we want to go”. For me, that insight and knowledge and in-depth analysis based on qualitative and quantitative research is evidence-based.  And it starts at the beginning of a project.

Froth on the boom’s coffee or the caffeine in the latte?

PS: Do you agree with me that PR was guilty of putting the froth on the late boom’s coffee? Or put another way, if bankers have had to say sorry, do we need to, too?

RG: I understand where you’re coming from. One of the key reasons to have a PR agency, or a trusted advisor, is to bring critical faculty to the table and to ask the right questions. And, for sure, in certain industries the PR industry profited from the hype and we were part of the overall economic system.  At the same time, I believe there were great attempts to warn and also to support CEOs in their function.

PS: To warn?

RG: Yes to warn. You like to quote Dr Leslie Gaines-Ross on your blog. She recently highlighted how the trend from celebrity CEO to credibility CEO, more of “please show me” and not just the glamour stuff, began some four or five years ago. And that’s a kind of clear anti-hype warning that came from the PR industry itself.

Burson-Marsteller tried to engage the Swiss Bankers Association, for instance, in some pre-emptive reputational research during the boom. But what do you do when a decision-maker tells me “Thanks for your advice but we don’t have an issue”? That’s why I feel we did our job properly.

What kind of capitalism comes next?

PS: Will the new boom produce a different capitalism, particularly considering that the world’s most dynamic economies are going to be amongst its least democratic?

RG: I don’t think that there will be new models to capitalism.  I mean, it’s a pretty well established domain, right? There will be a new global balance of economies being at the table as equals with with the US in some fields.  That, I believe, is certainly more than a trend.

PS: Is there a new morality to capitalism?

RG: First, capitalism is not anti-moral. Second it’s been in practice for decades. So it won’t have a new shape or new dimensions in future.

I wouldn’t jump to saying: “Here is the new global regime with new power bases”. For instance, I still see the US, just by its historic capability for revitalisation, reinvention and innovation, as a strong leader and player in the future.  But it’s interesting to see that the most recent growth and first signals for recovery came clearly from China, also from India, but basically from China, which is new.

We shouldn’t underestimate the power of the old economies. In a world which is getting much more complex, with multi-stakeholder management, with so many stakeholder groups having an impact on your business, that calls for managing complexity.  And if you look at the continent which really has experience of managing complexity from language to cultures, it is Europe.

Where is PR headed?

PS: What are the three major three trends that will dominate the PR landscape over the next ten years?

RG: The key trend definitely is social media and digital communications and the shift of paradigm from mass media into more dialogue-oriented communications. That’s a huge shift. But its impact varies from market to market, culture to culture. For instance, Switzerland is highly digitalised, but it also values privacy. People don’t speak up on blogs here, as they do in the UK, and give their opinions.

Second, I would say, is the balance of purpose and performance in an organisation in order to build trust longer term.  It’s basically the question of: “What is the purpose of a corporate, of a multi-national?”.  It’s very often around employees.  It’s around the products and the services for consumers.  So it’s around the mission and vision of a company

The third trend is multi-stakeholder transparency in a globalised world.  Companies operating around the globe need to demonstrate transparency and to explain themselves to many more stakeholders in the age of trend No. 1.

It’s not about structures but about leadership

PS: How will PR agencies change their business models and services?

RG: The first one sounds easy, but it’s extremely complex to make digital communication more than an add-on to your communications programmes. Very often you say “What could we do digitally?  Do we do a website? And yes, there are new trends like Twitter.  We need to offer that in our communications programme”.  And that’s the wrong attitude.  I believe digital or kind of low-cost media needs to become an integrated part of all communication concepts.

At the same time, you need to understand your business extremely well to see the limits of digital social media, such as in pharmaceuticals for obvious regulatory reasons.  Going into it with a kind of hype attitude can be dangerous. It’s new, but it’s more than just a fad. But it’s not a revolution. It’s an evolution. It’s an evolution which brings the business more into the dialogue-oriented sectors of communications.

The multi-stakeholder global trend goes into new agency models, which I believe are going to be more international.  PR agencies are still coming out of the first phase of family-owned businesses with very local business models.  But we are becoming more digital and more international.  Offering that service to your client becomes more and more important.

Of course, managing the matrix of markets and practices in agencies is extremely demanding. It needs people who like to work together. And it starts at the top.  So if you have a management team or market leaders who like each other and work together well, you have the key ingredients for not working in silos any more.  So there is no real ideal structural model. You can have all kind of bonus systems and financial incentives. But what is really needed is investment in a team that works together collaboratively and which produces success stories together. That’s the way to go.

What are reputations made of? A five point list

PS: How would you explain the success of Apple and Ryanair’s PR, both of which, for different reasons and in different ways, seem to do everything wrong, and yet seem to get everything right in terms of their reputation and business strategy?

RG: My explanation would be that it is always multi-dimensional. Let me list the top five elements that create great reputations for firms.

First, is how they develop talent and how attractive are they for potential employees.  Take Apple.  They are doing that extremely successfully.

Second is product and services of high quality.  You can be as digital as you want.  You can be as corporate responsible as you want.  If you don’t get your product right, if you have a problem explaining your hedge fund to your target group because you don’t understand it yourself, you might ask yourself the question, “Is my product really a good product”.  In the case of Apple or Ryanair, they have solid services, good products, which fit into very specific target groups.

Third, transparent leadership structures.

The fourth is financial results and performance. If you drive a business which is financially sound, you create the momentum for a sound reputation. And that brings me to number five.

The last one on my list would be CEO reputation.  And here again both Ryanair and Apple score through the roof on that one.

It is the balance between these five factors creates a good reputation and trust. You do not need to be top on all five. But it’s always a dimension of those aspects.  And other reputation studies maybe have a different ranking. But it’s those that I’ve listed which are the key drivers that count.

Time to ditch the S in CSR? And what is CR about?

PS: Is CSR a marketing tool or a genuine attempt to inject morality into capitalism?

RG: This really comes under my “purpose and performance” answer. Let me explain. I prioritise the  concept of responsibility rather than the social bit of it. That’s because “social” is corporate giving and sponsoring. But corporate responsibility goes to supply chain management and to diversity in the workplace. It goes to labour standards in all kinds of countries. It goes to compliance issues, too.

If you take corporate responsibility or give that angle to CR as a communication platform, we are talking evidence-based communication. We are talking about content and not just about how you brand it or how you position it and how you make a better marketing tool out of it. It is really about how you run your business and how you act responsibly in the roles in which you operate.

Elevator pitch to put Swiss banking back on track

PS: Good to hear. I’ve always advocated dropping the S in CSR and also for promoting business sustainability much more forcibly than we currently do.

Now, moving on. Please pick an unpopular person, institution, firm or country and make an “elevator pitch” for it.

RG: I’d pitch the financial sector in Switzerland.  And what I’d be pitching would have nothing to do with communications.

PS: Okay, go ahead.

RG:  Behaviour drives communications and reputations. It’s all driven by behaviour.  And the first behaviour recommendation I’d make to the Swiss banks would be not to base a product or the financial sector on a system of differentiation of tax evasion and tax fraud.

The only differentiation that matters is excellence in Swiss banking. There are huge assets which come with excellent banking and the positioning of it. So Swiss banks should not hide behind a smart legal differentiation of evasion and fraud. That’s not the way to go.

Second, nobody likes secrets.  We do like privacy, though.  Why is Swiss banking branded “banking secrecy”?  It’s the protection of the individual and the protection of one’s privacy that matters. And that is a different concept.

My third point would be look at self-regulation. I say don’t wait until the regulators push their positions on you.  Self-regulation can be a very healthy way to come out of the crisis stronger and to keep enough room for your core business.

My fourth is look at the products, because the banking products have become too complicated. There are many ways to shape products in more understandable ways. After all, good products, as we discussed earlier, are one of the key drivers of reputations. Products need to be much more transparent. Any risks in those products require a clear assessment of the portfolio. Sometimes in the boom years, the underlying risks were not clear even to specialists working in the field.

Power shifts in media – good news and not so good news

PS:  Ask yourself the question I should have asked you.

RG: A point you haven’t mentioned is the role of old media, if you want. There is right now a power shift of who produces relevant content and who has the power to invest in content?  And that shift goes from media to the PR sector.  It goes to in-house PR, external PR. And as a PR man, I could say it’s a great strength. But as somebody who is socially or politically aware, I would say it can do harm to the balance of democracy, because media have an important role there.  And sizing down all those newspapers, and taking away their ability power to do in-depth research is a problem.

At the same time you have big companies, PR firms basically involved in paid-content production.  It doesn’t mean that the content is not correct, but it always presents one perspective in a discussion and I believe there still needs to be strong media to play a role in public debates.

Certainly, big corporate can become the media. Why not have Nike TV doing sports programmes? But I like the “competition of ideas”. If you want to have a competition you need a few players being part of that competition.

PS: Do you have any closing remarks?

RG: Yes. If you ask our founder Harold Burson what makes a great PR person he says “curiosity”. And I think it is fascinating right now to be a PR person. There are so many things going on. We are challenged more than ever before. There’s loads of opportunity. I think we can say it is a new age, as you say, a golden one.

PS: Thanks. Great stuff, if I may say so.

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The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva reported that the police did not supply any public information about the attack until after the case was reported in the Brazilian media. Instead, she said, the police called for patience while they investigated the incident. But the tone of the report suggests criticism of the authorities.

The story was irresitable in a way, and maybe even important. As the BBC says of the “SVP” marked on the woman’s body:

Swiss People’s Party – whose name in German is “Schweizerische Volkspartei” (SVP) – is renowned for its anti-immigration stance, and has been accused of racism during political campaigns.

It is claimed the letters SVP stand for “Schweizerische Volkspartei”

Its poster during the 2007 general election, showing white sheep kicking a black sheep out of Switzerland, caused international outrage.

However the party has always denied any connection with neo-Nazis, our correspondent adds.

Actually, nobody in Switzerland has ever seriously linked the SVP to neo-Nazi skinheads, racist violence or anything like it. Engraving its name on people’s bodies is not the kind of thing it goes in for.

Brazil’s President said, “faced with such violence against Brazilians abroad one could not keep silent.” Brazil’s minister of human rights Paulo Vannuchi was quoted in O-Globo, the nation’s leading newspaper, saying:

That crime has brought back the horror of the Holocaust.

The Swiss envoy in Brazil has been called to the foreign office to account for what happened. O-Globo reported how government sources called for an independent public inquiry supervised by the United Nation’s High Commissioner of Human Rights.

The BBC implies that the Swiss police were remiss in not trumpeting this attack from the rooftops. But it may be that they had reason to be more circumspect than the BBC or Brazilian media and politicians.

The Swiss police have no idea where the photographs of Paula Oliveira – the 26-year-old lawyer at the centre of this – came from. They are not the ones the police took. That made them suspicious because since the incident she has been in police and medical custody. Medical checks have confirmed the woman was not pregnant at all.

One wonders why the BBC went so big so fast with this story when the facts were unclear and in doubt from the every beginning? Not least because the attack supposedly took place during a busy time at the station for a period of ten minutes with no witness reports. In contrast, the restraint shown by the Swiss media has been praised by the police.

Do I detect BBC Swiss-bashing? Or is this some weird fall-out from the Jean Charles de Menezes case, which was all over the British media on the same day?

Certainly, the later BBC report that expressed doubts over the claim was late – the Swiss media reported the glaring inconsistencies in the woman’s claims from the off. Even the tabloid Blick was much more measured than the BBC.

Forensic experts have concluded that this was a case of self-harm.

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According to the 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer, the public is now nervous of banks and finds itself reliant on government. Can you imagine any other survey results at this moment?

Don’t get me wrong. I love a survey: they’re fun. I love Edelman’s survey: it’s annual and so we get a decent run of material. I love it that my industry has a firm doing research, and doing it consistently.

Still, when anyone says they have survey data on people’s happiness, or who they trust, prepare to get forensic.

Edelman’s data are no surprise. And sure, restoring trust in some firms will be like climbing Everest without oxygen. At one level, the firms face a technical job: getting solvent again. They also have to overcome a well-earned reputation for vanity and cockiness. That’s a human issue of huge interest.

But what a fabulous opportunity this presents for the PR industry. Do our job right and we will be able to hold out heads high when our children ask: “What did you do in the Great Crisis of 2009, daddy (and mummy, of course)?”

CEOs and world leaders shouldn’t ski off the mountain’s edge in panic. Instead, they should interrogate the contradictions in the Trust Barometer’s findings. It seems three-quarters of consumers say they won’t buy products from a company they don’t trust. But, according to the latest IMF forecast, overall consumption and output in some markets looks set to drop by a few percent at most in the developed world. While global economic growth is still predicted to be a half of one percent, which is effective stagnation, rather than decline.

So either the public has more trust in firms than they say, or they are lying when they say they won’t buy from the “untrustworthy”.

Fact is lots of firms have retained the trust they need. And you could go further: we do in some sense still trust banks, since they are still doing most of what most of us ever used them for.

If people are not buying cars or houses, a lack of trust has nothing to do with it. The problem is a shortage of money and credit. We can’t have it both ways. We don’t trust banks now because they were so profligate before. Being mean makes them hateful, but more trustworthy.

When people say they won’t buy goods from corporations they don’t trust we should not take take them at their word. We aren’t shopping now because we are all shopped-out after a decade-long binge, and we’re feeling insecure. But I don’t hear consumers refusing to be customers of this or that firm through lack of trust.

I think people are talking nonsense to Edelman’s researchers.

They are expressing their anger about the state of the economy and sending an emotional message via a survey. Given the mess we are in, who can blame them?

Governments might well be more trusted than previously. Any port in a storm. Besides, the whole point of “The State” is to be a lender and regulator and everything else of last resort. However nobody seriously expects or wants governments to take over any industry, including banks, except as a temporary measure. The public is arguably as angry at state intervention with taxpayers’ money as it is at the private sector’s recent incompetence.

Moreover, Edelman reports that NGOs are getting the most trust in every region of the world except Asia-Pacific. But we don’t trust or expect NGOs to run banks, manufacturing or even our regulatory systems. So, it is an interesting point that they are liked more than before, but not a very insightful one.

Besides, we may be trusting NGOs because trust has to be placed somewhere. If you stop trusting journalists, politicians, businesspeople, etc – in some sense other non-controversial bodies (like charities) seem comparative beacons. They didn’t earn more trust. It got dumped on them. Nothing changed.

But, sure, we’re a bit short of people to trust just now. Good, one might say. A bit more scepticism (a bit less trust) might have kept us safer all along. Richard Edelman is quoted saying:

It has been a catastrophic year for business. It’s going to be harder to rebuild our economies because no institution has captured the trust that business has lost – trust is not a zero-sum game.

But isn’t this circular? We’re frightened. But the trouble will pass and we will become less frightened.

Other key findings also come with a measure of upbeat signs. Here’s a script:

Edelman: Trust in nearly every type of news outlet and spokesperson is down from last year. Trust in business magazines and stock or industry analyst reports—last year’s leaders—decreased from 57% to 44% and from 56% to 47%, respectively.
PS: Why would we trust the media which didn’t warn us of our impending doom and has no striking solutions for it?

Edelman: Globally, only 29% trust information about a company from a CEO—down from 36% last year.
PS: Perhaps, but the Edelman survey also reveals that sixty percent said they need to hear information about a company three to five times before they believe it. So they are more likely to want to hear more – not less – from everybody, including CEOs, analysts, experts, academics and media. Leaders still have to lead and show they have confidence in their ships’ ability to float.

Edelman: Only 13% trust corporate or product advertising—down from last year’s low of 20%.
PS: Sure. Why not say you distrust everything, just to be safe?

Edelman: In the UK, France, and Germany, trust in business was already at a low level of 36% among our tracking audience of 35-64 year-olds – and stayed there this year. The only EU countries where business made a notable gain in trust were the Netherlands and Sweden.
PS: What? No change? That shows that events had no impact. So perhaps we need to dig deeper into what message respondents are sending us. How do we square the absence of trust in corporate utterance with the mainentance of trust in the bodies as a whole?

Edelman: By a 3:1 margin, respondents say that government should intervene to regulate industry or nationalize companies to restore public trust.
PS: Regulation and nationalisation are profoundly different things. And both come in lots of  forms. The question and answers are sort of meaningless.

Edelman: In the major Western European economies of the U.K, France, and Germany, three-quarters say that government should step in to prevent future financial crises (73%, 75%, and 74%, respectively); in the United States, not even half (49%) say that the free market should be allowed to function independently.
PS: The public currently hates the “free market” and wants more government control. Who doesn’t? But again I doubt any very large or long-lasting politicial shift here. We’ll see.

Edelman: Globally, the call for government intervention also extends to issues like energy costs, global warming, and access to affordable healthcare, as respondents, by at least a 2:1 margin, say government has the primary responsibility for solving these issues. But business must collaborate: Two-thirds (66%) expect business to partner with governments and advocacy groups to solve these issues.
PS: Great. Death to socialism! Long live the state fixing market failure with the minimum of intervention.

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Not at all. He’d sent out a letter to all the bank’s depositors. It starts out saying that many of us have been unnerved by the mess the bank finds itself in and goes on:

We understand your concerns and admit that we, too, have made mistakes.

Hang on a minute, when Kurer says “we, too”, he implies we, his customers, made mistakes that helped create the bank’s mess; or at a stretch the customers made mistakes investing with UBS in the first place. Maybe he meant, but failed miserably to say: “we like other banks made mistakes”.

OK, OK, I know. English is a foreign language at UBS. Still, UBS is a global bank and anyway English is the global language of business.

To be fair, my wife’s version of the same letter in German does not blame UBS’s customers for having made mistakes along with the bank, or whatever. It just admits the bank made mistakes. So it was just English-speaking customers the bank insulted, if anyone. I’m assuming it was a momentary slip, a cack-handed small blunder.

Never mind. It’s not a bad letter. The important thing is that the bank says:

We apologize for not always having been able to fulfill your expectations during this difficult time. Which is why your loyalty is all the more important to us – and is something we by no means take for granted.

….we do not have any immediate influence on how things develop. There are no doubt further challenges ahead. We will still have to confront the occasional setback and make difficult decisions.

Actually, if you want to get picky, I’m not sure I am very worried about the bank’s behaviour in the present “difficult times”. I’m hacked off by their behaviour during the “boom” times when a bit of caution would have helped.

Let’s stick with the seasonal good cheer. This letter goes some way to showing that UBS are not a complacent bunch of Swiss bankers. They have apologised to their customers for their mistakes. They have done so in a letter signed by UBS’s three most senior executives. Even customers with no money in their accounts received it. They have warned us in writing to expect more surprises in the future.

Switzerland’s crisp chill winter air refreshes the spirit. It melts the heart; even if it freezes other parts. So I’m full of Swiss bonhomie. I’m inspired by my neighbours clearing their own street at 7 AM with shovels in the freezing cold while the snow fell. The young helped the old. Smiles and jokes were shared. I’m in a forgiving mood.

Peter Kurer’s letter is exactly what the reputation doctors called for to restore trust. There’s a long way to go. Meanwhile, I’m confident money invested at UBS is safe as it can be with any bank right now and that UBS executives are fighting the good fight in defence of their reputation.

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Last week I had coffee with a PR executive who helped manage Thursday’s UBS shareholders’ meeting in Lucerne. We met at Sprüngli on the Paradeplatz, the branch of the posh chocolate, cake and coffee shop favoured by wives of Zurich gnomes. He gave me an insider’s account of his work to restore trust in the Swiss icon.

He said the bank’s strategy was to rebuild trust in its competence piece by piece, issue by issue. He described how UBS was managing a series of crises ranging from toxic debt, excessive executive bonuses, plunging share price and accusations of facilitating tax evasion and abusing banking secrecy rules in the US.

This was the fourth shareholders’ meeting of 2008. Besides ratifying a government bailout, he told me how Thursday’s meeting was about communicating that UBS’s culture is changing. It was about saying sorry again, and trashing the image of arrogance. It was also about reassuring stakeholders that investments in UBS were safe and about setting out the new course for the bank.

He stated that UBS was developing a formula for managing executive bonuses that the rest of the banking industry was sure to emulate. UBS chairman Peter Kurer certainly tackled the controversial bonus question head-on. He renounced his own bonus entitlement this year and announced:

We want to give shareholders a greater say in decisions on compensation. Starting with the general meeting in 2009, we will make our decisions on the principles and guidelines for compensation within the framework of a consultative vote.

This time around the sceptical audience was more subdued than at the other shareholder meetings. News that former UBS chairman Marcel Ospel and two colleagues had renounced their right to collect CHF33 million in bonus won some applause. But chairman Peter Kurer’s enthusiasm to clawback the bonuses of others won still more. However most of Peter Kurer’s speech was heard in silence.

My friend explained that on some issues the bank will just have to take the blows. For instance, when Peter Kurer praised board member Rainer-Marc Frey for his contribution to the bank, there were whistles of derision – this being the man who sold all his UBS shares before the worst of the you-know-what hit the fan. There was no news on the level of recent withdrawals from the bank, which fueled speculation that yet more taxpayer-cash would be required soon.

But Peter Kurer was certainly a contrite CEO. He said:

We have admitted to our mistakes several times in recent months – and have also apologized for them.

Some letters have accused us of arrogance and say that we need to get off of our high horse. This, too, may have had an element of truth in it in the past – at all levels.

But let me reassure you, ladies and gentlemen, there is no room for arrogance in the UBS of today – nor will there be in the UBS of tomorrow.

Peter Kurer, it seems, values the role of PR in ensuring UBS’s recovery. He even praised the around the clock work of his communications department to shareholders in Lucerne. My friend had nothing but praise for his chairman’s commitment to communication.

They would both agree, I think, with what Leslie Gaines-Ross says in her timely book Corporate Reputation, 12 Steps to Safeguarding and Recovering Reputation, recovering a lost reputation is a marathon task, not a sprint.

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The BBC reports today on a national vote in Switzerland that made it government policy for heroin addicts to be allowed to inject the drug under medical supervision. The issue was not controversial or considered to be a radical step, despite what the BBC claims. The Swiss are lot more cool than Brits suppose.

The issue was hardly mentioned ahead of the vote by any newspaper including the tabloid Blick. The vote purely ratified an accepted practice.

What was controversial about this Sunday’s referendum votes was a proposal to legalise cannabis. The conservative electorate was overwhelmingly against. However Switzerland will continue to turn a blind eye to moderate use (smell it on the train, see police seeing people smoke it without taking action).

My Swiss friends laughed when they read the BBC report. One said the only explanation she could think of for the BBC’s shock was that the UN had long been against Switzerland’s policy of prescribing heroin to addicts. Another asked whether Britain’s alternative treatment for addicts of prescribing methadone was any better. Yet another asked why the BBC saw the need to sensationalize an uncontroversial vote.

I guess it is because the BBC is not so much interested in Swiss drugs policy as what the British will make of it. The Swissness of the moment was lost in translation.

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