Edelman’s Trust Barometer is a major highlight of the PR calendar because it provides global and historically comparative data we can mull over. This year there’s a welcome shift in Edelman’s narrative. Gone is the anti-profit, anti-business and all stakeholders are equal tone that I’ve criticised in the past.  Read on ›

Why are so many PR pros embarrassed by what they do for a living? This normally hidden angst becomes transparent whenever they attempt to define the essence of our trade. Nothing illustrates this better than the four supposedly modern definitions of PR being discussed by PRSA and CPRS, all of which share one fundamental flaw: evasiveness about what PR is really about. Read on ›

Of course PR is about building relationships. Even more than most, our business is diplomacy and even schmoozing and wooing. But let’s not get too soft about our game – or our clients’. Read on ›

Here is some more work in progress for my book On Message: Propaganda, persuasion and the PR game. It examines the moment when the manipulation of the message became a game of representation, positioning and managed perception that is recognisably modern. Read on ›

I have just been to Italy. I went on a slow-paced Swiss train from cloudy Zurich past Zug and then over snowy mountains and on to sunny Lugano, Como and Milano before catching the high-speed train to Turin. There at the Industrial Union of Turin I debated Luca Poma about whether CSR was a human responsibility. Of course, I played the bad guy in contrast to Poma’s good guy persona. Read on ›

This second installment of a two-parter on Queen Elizabeth I describes how PR acts in support of leadership and authority using rhetoric’s persuasive powers. It tells the story of the emergence of modern PR practice and the modern world it shaped. (It is work in progress for my book: On Message: Propaganda, persuasion and the PR game.) Read on ›

Who should PRs work for? Well, according to Rosanna M. Fiske, Chair and Chief Executive, Public Relations Society of America, everybody has the right to have their voice heard in the global marketplace of ideas. I agree. But Ms Fiske doesn’t, not really. Read on ›

Here is the second in my series profiling important figures in PR. It is the first of a two-parter looking at Queen Elizabeth I of England (1558 – 1603). (I am working my back to the Romans and Greeks who got this whole game going.) Read on ›

So, we’re all agreed that bribing the police and hacking the phones of celebs, dead soldiers and murdered schoolgirls is immoral, and some of those seem to have been the unique preserve of the Murdoch empire. (We’ll see.) We can probably agree that if the Murdoch empire obstructed police in their enquiries, that may turn out to be the longest, deepest issue of all. But there is no consensus on what we should learn from this sorry saga. In fact, I fear the wrong lessons are being drawn. Read on ›

I have noticed that there’s an increasing interest among PR pros in Chaos Theory. It might be because we’re in recession, the result of recent earthquakes and tsunamis, or even the new complexity that social media throws up. But whatever motivates them, here’s some insight into why they are misguided. Read on ›