What words might best describe Charlie Gard’s last months on earth, when he couldn’t move, breathe or swallow without the support of machines and other intrusions, which were eased by morphine? Read on ›

21^st Century PR Issues maintains that within PR circles there is a near-universal conformity governing the industry’s self-destructive, poorly thought-through response to the Culture Wars. In short: the PR business is currently leading clients in the wrong direction. So here is a PR manifesto that sets out how things could be turned around so that we can help our clients keep their end up in the 21^st_century Culture Wars. Read on ›

Societies in the 21^st century are increasingly defined by rapidly fragmenting socio-cultural outlooks and competing ways of life. Personhood has been politicised and commodified: we have identity politics and firms track our tastes. Whether it is the words we utter, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, or our taste in holidays, music and sport, or how we demarcate our sexual, racial or national identity, cultural chasms and schisms divide us, even as we are supposed to empathise more intensely and widely. Read on ›

What unites all the major political parties in South Africa: the African National Congress (ANC), the Democratic Alliance (DA), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)? The answer is their determination to divide the country along pre-existing racial fault lines. Yet the DA, South Africa’s main opposition party, has had the audacity to lodge a misconduct claim against Bell Pottinger (BP) with the UK’s Public Relations and Communications Association, accusing it of “sow[ing] racial mistrust, hate and race-baiting, and [encouraging a] divided society”.  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 ›

I am pleased to announce the launch of the Zurich Salon. It advocates freedom of expression and rational discussion in the Enlightenment tradition. It promotes open-ended debate in an atmosphere of mutual respect. The Salon has a committee of six professionals including me. The first big debate on its agenda is the “limits and potential of neuroscience” on March 27. 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 ›

We PRs cannot avoid philosophical matters because, as Martin Sandbu says in his new book Just Business – Arguments in Business Ethics, decisions made by business have consequences for other people. Read on ›