In 1994 Tony Blair promised to turn the UK into a “stakeholder society” when he declared New Labour, New Britain. It was the cornerstone of his “Third Way” politics. But nobody’s talking about either term in the current UK General Election. Maybe the wheels will come off the “stakeholder” rhetoric in business too.   Read on ›

Thanks to Richard Edelman I’m flagging an upcoming book every PR should read: Capitalism 4.0 by The Times economics analyst Anatole Kaletsky. Here’s a preview. Read on ›

Being socially aware didn’t make Big Pharma innovate. Here’s a risky piece reminding us that profit matters more than seeming nice and safe, whatever the Davos savants pretend or their mantras might say. Read on ›

My football club has been sold to pornographer David Sullivan and to Ann Summers‘ naughty lingerie-chain owner David Gold. Am I worried? Am I heck. Read on ›

What’s the difference between marketing and PR? That’s a good question, particularly when the likes of Lord Chadlington and Lord Bell are, rightly, calling for more integration between the two disciplines. Read on ›

France Telecom has been getting unwelcome attention. It stands accused of driving 24 of its workers to suicide over an eighteen-month period. Rather than fight its corner, the company seems to prefer the old bad PR strategy: ”apologise, reform and move on”. Why so? Read on ›

Before I head off to Montreux for a few days’ rest, here’s a quick response to today’s FT report on Edelman’s trust survey’s mid-year update. Once again the survey’s findings are topsy turvy, particularly when it comes to how Edelman interprets its own data. Read on ›

Some of the remarks about PR’s need to reform in McKinsey Quarterly journal (Rebuilding corporate reputations) are OK if hackneyed. But the wider thesis is very shaky. Here’s why. Read on ›

Boyd Neil has written a valuable manifesto in favour of CSR entitled “CR on the Hotseat” on his PR blog The Intangibles. Here’s my manifesto and it isn’t against Corporate Social Responsibility. I just put honesty as the highest responsibility. And I do think CSR has such a bad image it should be ditched in favour of sustainability, eventually. Read on ›

The Financial Times’ management columnist Stefan Stern and others have been assessing the point and meaning of this year’s Davos. Much of it comes to the need for capitalism to express itself differently. Read on ›