Recently I spoke at the Battle of Ideas festival in London about whether lobbying is a dirty business. On the panel with me were Peter Bingle and Christine Thompson, and the session was chaired by Kirk Leech. A few days later in Zurich I co-produced with Angus Kennedy a Battle of Ideas satellite debate. 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 ›

Britain’s David Cameron just spent three days schmoozing the unschmoozable FIFA bigwigs. But did he and Prince William really delude themselves that their assorted PR team, powerpoint presentations and charm could bring the 2018 World Cup to England? Let’s hope not. Read on ›

Robert Crampton opines in The Times that Zurich “scores top marks for utter bone-breaking tedium”. I guess he’s writing this stuff as a warning to wannabe tax exiles. So allow me to give them some informed insight into elite and popular lifestyles in Zurich.  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 ›

Here’s an example of the risk of fast-news. This morning the BBC reported an alleged racist attack by three skinheads at a Zurich railway station on a pregnant Brazilian woman that caused her to miscarry twins in the station’s toilets. By the afternoon, important bits of the story collapsed.  Read on ›

I’m sitting at home on Zurich Lake. The world’s elite are overhead in helicopters on their way to the World Economic Forum in Davos. They will hear from PR supremo Richard Edelman that trust in banks and other corporations has collapsed while Government is back in favour. For this, they disturb my afternoon nap? Read on ›

Cleared snow from our road. Went to Basel. Got back and my wife said I had a letter from Peter Kurer, chairman of UBS. Whoopee. And yikes. Perhaps he’s suing me over my blog. Read on ›

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. Read on ›