Proctor and Gamble’s Gillette has released a commercial promoting razor blades, which sends out the message that men are such a menace to women that they must be tamed. But no matter what one thinks of #MeToo, we should all question the politicisation of mass consumer advertising. We need to ask why the marketing department at Gillette thought it was a good idea to produce an advert caricaturing their customers as brutish stereotypical sex pests; who require a health warning and moral policing. It is, indeed, gobsmacking that anybody at Gillette thought it was smart for a corporate Goliath to traduce the integrity and character of their core market. Read on ›

A few thousand tabloid-loathing Stop Funding Hate campaigners, exercising their wrist action on Twitter and Facebook, have persuaded Paperchase to abandon an advertising promotion, which offered readers of The Daily Mail two free sheets of Christmas wrapping paper. What should the advertising and PR community make of this debacle? Read on ›

As Bell Pottinger prepares to put itself into administration following its expulsion from the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA), here’s an opinion piece, which calls out the PRCA’s humbug. Read on ›

The success of both BREXIT and Trump tells us that the world is changing. Their triumphs mark a transformation of the public’s mood, which is causing the rules governing media schmoozing and managing relations with the masses to be rewritten, as fast as the authority of existing elites evaporates. Read on ›

First published on spiked, September 2015 Read on ›

I know I’m late getting to this story (it’s thanks to a recent Twitter exchange with @josifmck, @prconversations, @greenbanana and @ggSolutions123). But better late than never. Back in April last year, Emma Jacobs published a piece in the FT titled Publicity is free with no PRs. Now I feel obliged to engage. Read on ›

When a leading global provider of research on corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) positions ethical banking as a feel good investment package, we should push back. Ethics is about what we ought to do. It is not about what’s expedient and driven by self-interest.

 Read on ›

It is not former Co-operative Bank Chairman Paul Flower’s peccadilloes that bother me. That’s merely an amusing sideshow. It is the bankrupt Bank‘s audacious reinforcement of anti-business sentiment and its bashing of its competitors’ practices that drive me mad.  Read on ›

On Wednesday I debated Professor Oyvind Ihlen at the London School of Communication’s conference PR and Disruption: Embracing and managing Change. I argued that PR’s main role should be to encourage economic growth, while Oyvind called for placing more emphasis on enhancing civil society. Here’s what I said. Read on ›

I’m going to debate Professor Oyvind Ihlen at a one-day conference, PR and Disruption: Embracing and Surviving Change, 10th July, 2013, at London College of Communication in central London.  Read on ›