Remember when Web 2.0 was all about creating, sharing and collaborating to produce Long Tails that favoured small players at the shallow end of the bitstream? Well, now Chris Anderson says the World Wide Web is dead. Goodbye “Free”, hallo value. Read on ›

There’s been a hullabaloo about how Tony Blair’s gift of £4.6 million profit from his book to fund a Royal British Legion rehabilitation centre backfired. So allow me to defend Tony Blair’s acute sense of aligning his PR with the public mood. Read on ›

What happened to Mark Hurd at HP was the stuff of Hollywood. Michael Moore or Oliver Stone to the fore? Read on ›

Here’s a tale highlighting why the C-suite requires speechwriters. Lucy Kellaway at the FT was accused of moving too far from reality when she covertly inserted the words of a true-life financial services chief into the mouth of her satirical character Martin Lukes. Read on ›

I’m home refreshed after two weeks in the Swiss canton Ticino on the shores of Lake Lugano. It didn’t take long, however, for me to get my focus back and decide to take a swipe at some PR nonsense. Read on ›

Imagine the outrage if gaffe-prone BP chief Tony Hayward had said yesterday that the Gulf Coast places were “as vibrant and just as beautiful as they’ve always been”. Well, that’s what First Lady Michelle Obama did say yesterday. Read on ›

‘Do No Evil’ Google has, rightly, returned to China. However, Google was also right when it withdrew because its reputation and survival were at stake. Read on ›

The last in my trilogy on the Stockholm Accords is dedicated to rebutting the authoritarian notion that public relations professionals (let’s just call them ‘PRs’) are “ideological governors of value networks”. Read on ›

Prudential CEO Tidjane Thiam has just learnt the hard way that he is accountable first and foremost to his shareholders. His climb down over the £24.6 billion proposed bid for AIA now looks set to cost his company £450 million and might yet cost him his job. We care partly because the Pru has for decades been the watchword of, well, prudence. Read on ›

Who’s to blame for the blowout in the Gulf? It’s a fair bet that the corporations involved will get stuck with most of the opprobrium. But I’m more inclined to blame the regulators and their masters, the politicians. What’s BP to say about its plight? I’d say the big thing is for them to stress that, with luck, they’re here for the long haul. They want to fix the problem, clean up the mess, learn the lessons and go on aiming to be the “best in class”. The rest of the truth will need to be told by third parties.  Read on ›