Corporate Story

The response of businesses to COVID-19 has revealed both saints and sinners. What should business Communication teams be looking out for in their organisations to ensure that their company emerges with reputation intact? If there was ever a moment for the rhetoric of “corporate purpose” to be shown to be a reality, this is it.

As one YouTube comment had it, Gillette's marketing team clearly sat around and decided that their next advertising campaign should be "Let's blame everything that's wrong with society on our target market - men!" Faced with a 5% decline in razor sales, Gillette's latest TV advertisement shifted from product marketing to advising men to end

Is it your job as a private sector company press officer to promote business and capitalism to the world? Or is that the role of business organisations like the CBI and the IoD? Or maybe each company blowing its own trumpet leads to a better collective reputation? It’s Monday 18th November. The ‘companies’ page of

Or how brave should you or your organisation be in the face of criticism that you are or have been offensive or ‘inappropriate’? Some related reputation management incidents will no doubt have caught your attention recently: Waitrose sought the resignation of its magazine editor, William Sitwell, after freelance journalist, Selene Nelson, revealed how ‘shocked’ she

It has been easy to criticise Pret-a-Manger’s clunky response to the tragic death of one of its customers due to an unlabelled, sesame-seed infused baguette. It always is when you are not inside the organisation and party to the debates and decisions. Yet sorrows come not as single spies but in battalions. Now there is

Jesus:                   Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. Pontius Pilate:      What is truth? Since the election of Donald Trump, debate has raged about whether the flood of ‘fake news’ on the web swung the election to him. Leaving to one side Trumps’ own contribution to a ‘post truth’ world – and

I was at a seminar this morning about corporate storytelling. Evening Standard journalist, Anthony Hilton, suggested that PR teams often over-react to what should be seen as low-level criticism, especially online. His thesis was that even intelligent people can't remember yesterday's newspaper headline. Therefore reacting to every little negative is a waste of time because