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 ›

Oh! My! God! Organizing for America, the successor to Obama for America, is searching for a Social Networks Manager: apply here. But before you do read this. 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 ›

When local boy Roman Geiser, Burson-Marsteller’s Swiss CEO, was catapulted into the stratosphere as Chief Operating Officer for EMEA, I just had to make the twenty-minute train ride to Zurich to interview him. 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 ›

If we want a glimpse of where PR might go over the next ten years, we should examine Japan. The world’s second-largest economy’s property bubble burst 20 years ago. Since then deflation, recession and reality have broken the country’s commitment to consensus building, as Leo Lewis argues in “Japan’s harsh new reality” in today’s Times. 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 ›

PR Week reports that the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) executive director of communications Lesley McLeod says the banks are getting a bum rap because of “inexperienced’” reporters who “fail to understand the crisis” or the “issues” it presents. What, and the BBA has to sit idly by? Why doesn’t it get stuck in? Read on ›

Here is a good example of preemptive crisis management. It is a text-book example of how to manage a controversial issue by facing up to market realities. Read on ›