News & views

I see two PR people generated interesting news headlines for all the wrong reasons last week – by picking up jail sentences for fraud. But arguably the judge's comments were far more damaging for the PR profession than their scam ...

I recently saw a great presentation that hammers a lot of sense into the faddish subject of consumer marketing and brand engagement.

Barclays' financial results today provide a good prompt to look at how the bank is faring, having been rocked by crises over the last year. Profits have plummeted by a staggering 96% and 3,700 jobs are set to be axed. But all's not as bad as it seems and there's much we can learn from the company's latest actions.

It’s the time of year when everyone makes predictions about the 12 months ahead, isn’t it?

Suddenly finding it’s almost the end of 2012, I thought about the most notable communications campaigns I’ve encountered in the last year.

I blogged the other day about how you can’t control what people say about you – especially in this digital age – but that you can and should influence it. So my attention was caught by another blog post this morning which, on the surface, presented the opposite view.

It’s striking how dramatically social media are changing the types of company communications that are really effective. Informality is the big driving factor, enabling enlightened businesses to let their corporate hair down somewhat to good effect.

I’ve just read an article by Alastair Campbell in the Corporate Reputation supplement to today’s PR Week.

I recently heard a fascinating talk by research expert John Kearon about the role of content vs emotion in marketing. I don’t think he's got everything right, but he highlights a fundamental point we’d all do well to think more about.

I’ve just read a good article in Forbes about effective marketing. If you skip over the naff headline, there’s a lot of sense in it and it struck a chord with my experience ...