Not a great morning for the Royal Family and their troupe of PR wranglers. Although the Netflix #MeghanandHarry documentary redefines hagiography, this self absorbed reality confessional is straight out of the Kris Jenner play book. The tragic couple seems to be consumed by their own hubris. Nevertheless it will be a hit in US – certainly thrusts a dagger into the heart of the Monarchy. It drops on the day the Last Dambuster Sqn Ldr Johnny Johnson, has died. Perhaps “H” should think about his self absorbed whining, and should reflect on the WW2 generation who sacrificed so much, yet asked nothing in…

There’s a fascinating discussion around Annie Liebovitz’s photo of Ronaldo and Messi for Louis Vuitton. The symbolism of the image is brilliant; a chess match between football’s two grandmasters atop a trophy case containing the world cup. Ronaldo, the personification of a self-assured, single-minded purpose; Messi, studious and analytical, weighing up all the options. The chess board shows an iconic knife-edge draw between Magnus Carlsen and American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura: every detail is at least satisfying, always stylish, and often brilliant. Another achievement that shouldn’t be overlooked is that, in an age where every attempt at sincere expression is fair game for mockery,…

In some ways the return to austerity is being messaged cleverly. The level of cost-cutting being trailed will have a human toll and a political cost, earning the ire of both the anti-tax right and the anti-cuts left. However, not so long ago Cameron and Osborne won a majority from a similar platform, and this programme also positions the government as fiscally responsible grown-ups, a badly needed break from the previous two regimes.The reason the government so urgently needs to distance itself from its predecessors is partly that they were deeply unpopular and their perceived incompetence, corruption and content for…

The world cup in Qatar is quickly turning into the #pr equivalent of Pandora’s Box.Hosting such a major event is a significant soft power exercise itself, but one that totally backfired for Qatar. From allegations, including by the US DoJ, of ‘buying’ votes during the tender to host the tournament – a subsect of a wider corruption scandal currently engulfing football’s governing body, FIFA, we then lurched to the grizzly alleged affair of stadiums built in unsafe conditions effectively using slave labour, with a death toll allegedly in the 1000s.As the tournament itself appears on the horizon, Qatar’s ugly, regressive social policy –…

Sending solidarity and sympathy to anyone who has fallen foul of the 2022 Arts Funding Massacre. But there’s a lesson and a warning here too. We’ve had a government that has been nakedly hostile to the Arts in most of its guises throughout twelve years in power. During that time, the industry has had ample time to relearn the twin arts of speaking truth to power and hitting the right notes when blowing its own trumpet. However, we now seem to exist in an environment in which effective, unvarnished championing and advocacy of the arts that truly illuminates their importance…

If Boris Johnson leaves a legacy on British politics, it will be his decimation of the notion that senior public servants must be serious people.Matt Hancock going on ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ is the perfect case study, but it’s unclear whether his motivation for entering the jungle is more about personal fame or a circuitous route back into frontline politics.The MP first came to wider public consciousness when his ‘Matt Hancock’ App was relentlessly memed for being a feeble parody of The Thick of It, but it was also the technological embodiment of his ego, and desire for individual notoriety as…

‘I’ve had enough’ asseverated Tory Grandee, Sir Charles Walker, seemingly close to tears. ‘I’ve had enough of talentless people’. Speaking to the BBC hours after the resignation of the Home Secretary, and hours before the resignation of the Prime Minister, his words struck a chord internationally.Even before Liz Truss slashed the record for the shortest-serving Prime Minister, critics had been lamenting the calibre of Westminster’s post-2016 politicians. Branding the crisis ‘chilling’, Germany’s Die Welt was quick to note that the UK has now had as many Prime Ministers in six years, as Germany has had Chancellors in fifty.There’s now a…

A lot of people are sending me Rob Mayhew’s sketches about agency life, correctly praising how funny a performer he is and how he’s nailed the universal experience of working in Advertising, Marketing, PR and their various adjuncts.  Taking nothing away from Rob, certain of his sketches are so close to home that they cease to be comic exaggerations of our industry, and instead paint a damningly accurate picture of a vapid, superficial, bureaucratic, status-over-substance creative wasteland.  https://lnkd.in/e8mABiZ6 The sketch about the agency brainstorm is particularly resonant in this respect because not only do I know from long and painful…

An excellent TikTok by Mandy Lee https://lnkd.in/eKcNAQks it articulates something that those of us who work in the cultural sector have long felt; that aspects of the scene have been swallowed whole by consumerism, marketing and ‘content’. Coachella was her chief target, noting that the ‘fun’ of the festival is essentially a way to lure people into partaking in capitalist excess, self-perpetuated by the added pressure to “perform fun on the internet” – hence our association of the festival with Instagram posts of girls in “Disco Bohemian in the Dessert” outfits, rather than live music.It was a brilliant expression of something we’ve…

Commentary on Elon Musk’s grab for Twitter has ranged from its potential impact on the simmering tension between big tech and society at large to the possibility of the elusive ‘edit button’ finally being added to the app, but the reputational impact of the deal on both Twitter and its major new shareholder is equally intriguing.Twitter has played a significant role in Elon Musk’s ascension to fame and influence over the past decade. Despite his protestations that his Tweets are simply stream-of-consciousness small talk and not business or brand strategy, a significant minority of his 80M+ followers have formed a…

Almost the first voice in Will Smith’s ear after slapping Oscars host Chris Rock for making fun of his wife, Jada, was his publicist. If we assume this wasn’t an elaborate stunt, this week the world may be wondering more than usual what on earth a publicist can do to influence a situation like that, and what Chris Rock and the Academy’s representatives will respectively be advising their charges.The full extent of Meredith O’Sullivan’s input into Smith’s acceptance speech for his Best Actor award shortly afterwards is unclear, but the overall tactics were much more transparent and surprisingly coherent given…

 As the outrage over the P&O scandal reaches the point of inertia, here’s my (slightly disheartening) take: We all saw the disturbing news of P&O Ferries sacking 800 people with no notice last week and the justifiable outrage it caused. We have seen protests from unions on the docks, captains refusing to leave their ships or let new crews (of underpaid foreign agency workers) onboard against a backdrop of unified condemnation from media, social media and across the political spectrum.   But will this abhorrent treatment of workers impact P&O Ferries’ brand and profit? Sadly, I suspect not. Time and again we see big businesses bully…

As the world tries to understand and learn from these horrific unfolding events, one aspect of Russia’s vicious attack that hasn’t been interrogated to the same extent is the battle of images and words that has been a constant sideshow to the geopolitical and military developments.Vladimir Putin is no communications mastermind and is (rightly) often mocked for his attempts to project a strongman image, but Russia cultivated a psychological advantage with its deluge of images in the days preceding the invasion of tanks rolling seemingly unopposed towards Kyiv. Those images were countered in the UK only by the picture of…

Brewdog’s downfall has been a long time coming. And BBC’s Disclosure exposé ensured that, even if the business continues to go from strength to strength, the reputation of its founders as freewheeling punks with progressive hearts of gold is dead.The problem is that in self-defining as renegade rulebreakers while also peddling the mantra that ‘everything is marketing’, James Watt and Martin Dickie overlooked the fact that marketing, PR and communications have sets of unwritten but utterly intrinsic rules that govern the long-term health of any public entity’s reputation.Instead of abiding by these tenets, the duo became mired in hubris and…

There’s a logic to the decision for Essex to rebrand and distance Itself from TOWIE; the county is inarguably so much more than fake tan, nouveau riche nightlife and relationship dramas. https://lnkd.in/exPc2H4iBut the decision-makers must be careful about throwing the baby out with the bath water. Firstly, they’ve tried it before and it clearly didn’t work if they’re at it again. (For ref: https://lnkd.in/e_aJfFsk)Secondly, there’s no denying the cultural (and, I’m certain, economic) impact of TOWIE on Essex’s fame and for me, the ideal campaign would acknowledge these positives, even use them as a way to introduce lesser-known facets of Essex,…

I have talked extensively about how the values of #genz and younger millennials are reshaping the concept of fame and creating new icons. Zennials such as Marcus Rashford, Greta Thunberg, Emma Raducanu and even cross-generational idols like Captain Sir Tom have built their reputations on authenticity, substance, consistency (lack of hypocrisy) and humility.As if to prove this theory on the new DNA of fame, the antithesis of these values was on display in every corner of media land this week, with adverse consequences for all involved.Firstly, in a fittingly 2022 update of Tolstoy’s How Much Lands Does a Man Require? – Stephanie…

The GuardianIt seems like only yesterday that we were all enjoying the memes and videos parodying the decline and fall of Matt Hancock. The incredible brevity of his time in exile seems to strain the laws of PR physics, and suggests that the fallen minister still enjoys support at the highest levels of government.A hasty press call, a mea culpa in front of a bush: his resignation speech was haphazardly choreographed. The time-compressed media age seems to have eaten away our powers of recall. Public figures are sacrificed daily to the gods of Twitter. News items that, at their peak,…

The star power that Adele was able to bring together for her prime-time TV publicity juggernaut was truly something to see. In the US we saw Lizzo, Melissa McCarthy, Ellen Degeneres: the star-studded cast that went into the spectacle and its UK twin showcased the pulling power that Adele has to marshal old-school, highly engineered and choreographed (big-budget) entertainment publicity. However, it also served as a stark reminder of the old vs. the new ways of building brand fame and raised questions about whether Adele’s decidedly traditionalist PR push for her album ‘30’ can compete with the rivals who were…