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 ›

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 ›

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 ›

I loved Dr Calcutt’s piece. It was fluent and persuasive. But I want to contradict every bit of Dr Calcutt’s analysis. Read on ›

On the night of Wednesday 8^th June, Alastair Campbell issued a stark warning to British journalists. Speaking ‘in conversation’ with Bill Hagerty, editor of British Journalism Review, New Labour’s former spin doctor warned that journalism risks losing even more integrity by shifting its ‘centre of gravity’ further towards celebrity culture. Read on ›

The president of the United States presides over a sluggish economy. Unemployment is increasing, gas prices are high and his administration’s various initiatives to boost the depressed housing market – a key economic influence – have all failed. Consumer and business confidence remain low and economists are downgrading growth forecasts. Yet Barack Obama’s approval ratings remain above 40 per cent and he seems as popular in Europe as his predecessor was reviled. Is this simply down to public relations? 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 ›

Welcome to my redesigned online review. It’s got one big new feature: it handles essay-length material better. These pieces are intended to last longer than your average blog. That’s part of my wider mission now. I want to sketch out some scenarios for the future of PR and produce a book about them. They are mostly to do with how respectable our business ought to be. 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 ›