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 ›

Last week there was “outrage” over the bonus awarded to Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland. This week we are set for another moral outburst when Barclays announces expected profits of more than $9 billion, which will result in its CEO Bob Diamond pocketing around $3 million. In the midst of a global crisis that heralds austerity for many, what strategy should be adopted by PRs tasked with defending banks, bankers and bonuses? 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 ›

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’m sitting lakeside near Zurich after a swim, and I surf on my friend’s handheld electronic thingamajig. It lands me on Paul Holmes’s eponymous Report. There I click on a video by Richard Levick, CEO of Levick Strategic Communications. He’s discussing three common mistakes that companies and countries make when faced with a crisis. Oops, and he then makes four classic PR errors himself. Read on ›

So, the scandal-ridden English FA accuses the scandal-ridden FIFA of corruption. The media are calling for Mr Blatter’s head on a platter. PR Week’s PR “experts” are urging FIFA to cringe and apologize, reform and move on. (What we call ARM PR.) Meanwhile, Mr Blatter asks, crisis, what crisis?

Read on ›

It has been handbags at dawn between Facebook and Burson Marsteller (BM). The former say they never asked BM to organise a covert campaign undermining Google; the latter say they should never have accepted Facebook’s brief which stipulated just that. Read on ›

The media says Fukushima is awful because it is worse than Three Mile Island (TMI), even if it’s nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl. But the case for nuclear power survived TMI and Chernobyl, so it can easily survive Fukushima. In fact, even with its accidents, nuclear energy is still worth the cost and it remains the safest of all the major energy sources. Here are some PR messages we need to get out… Read on ›

Nobody can be anything but shocked by the devastating impact of the earthquake and Tsunami on Japan. The scenes were on a scale hardly envisaged by a Hollywood disaster movie. Yet that’s no excuse for the media’s seeming loss of nerve and perspective over the troubles at Fukushima nuclear power plant. Read on ›

In Egypt the authorities have imposed curfews, restricted access to the internet, Twitter and Facebook. Even mobile phones are not working properly. That’s what states do in a crisis; close-down the streets and cut communication links. Let’s explore this some more. Read on ›