Many years ago I applied to be a press officer for Prince Charles. I didn't get it and instead went on a journey to protect the reputations of the legal sector. So when the ginormous PR disaster of epic proportions unfolded recently starring Prince Andrew vs Emily Maitlis I felt...
Sorry-not-sorry. It’s such a cliché – we make fun of it. No one likes to mess up, and we strive to avoid it. But social media has an immediacy that is part of its power – consider all the angles, ponder the wisdom of a post, and you might miss...
Suppose you get a call at 11 o’clock at night from an employee alerting you to a social media disaster that’s taken off on your company’s Twitter account. Screenshots of the tweet have now gone viral and the prestige reputation you’ve spent years building, has now gone up in flames, all...
Who doesn’t like a show? I’ve a strong suspicion that Sainsbury’s chief executive Mike Coupe does, and has seen the acclaimed London production of the musical 42nd Street, providing him with the tune he now regrets humming when he thought he was not being filmed, ‘We’re in the money!’, in between...
Humour on social media can be a high-risk, high-stakes thing. This is nowhere clearer than in the now-famous Twitter spat between Thameslink and Poundland. Thameslink’s woes stem from the introduction of a new timetable. If you want to know how that’s going, go to National Rail Enquiries’ ‘Live Departure Boards’ page,...
It's been a tough week for men who attended the Presidents Club fundraising dinner 2018. One moment they were drinking champagne with their mates and perhaps allegedly trying to cop a feel of a ‘host’ who’s young enough to be their daughter while bidding for lunch with Boris Johnson –...
Halloween divides the population. There’s the group who live for it: loving the excuse to dress up, spending hours or even days preparing for their big night. There’s the half-hearted: a ripped Primark t-shirt and a dousing of fake blood and they’re away – they look ridiculous but they don’t...
If you work in PR then you may remember where you were when you heard communications agency Bell Pottinger had been expelled from its own industry body – the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA). Together with ad giant Saatchi, the agency, founded by the still-living Tim (Lord) Bell, was the comms...
I'm sure over the summer holidays with all the family at home (or even worse in a hot car) there has been the occasional flare up. One such example of online bickering that the Daily Mirror thoughtfully summarised in this article, was an eye-catching Twitter row between the accounts of the...
Even as we started to learn about him, and guess what on earth his appointment meant for the world, Donald Trump's potty-mouthed communications director Anthony Scaramucci had been fired. It's widely reported that he was "10 days into the job" - in fact his official start date would have been...
