Tag Archives: public relations

How to rehabilitate the reputationally ruined

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As a communications advisor, I’m frequently asked how an individual or an organisation can repair their reputation after a public relations disaster.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution here. Time is a healer for some, but not all. Humour is always a good bet, but not immediately and certainly not for all. You can smirk at corporate missteps but laughing at criminal convictions would be a tough gig.

Photo shows typewriter with the word 'crisis' typed on a piece of paper

British retailer Gerald Ratner can finally joke on X about ‘that speech’ when he told the UK Institute of Directors in 1991 that some of his jewellery products were ‘total crap’, leading to the company’s near collapse. If it takes three decades to see the funny side, there’s probably a quicker strategy.

Oops. My bad

Fast food company KFC ran out of chicken in 2018, forcing 600 of its 900 or so UK outlets to temporarily close. After recovering, it published adverts in a number of British newspapers, scrambling its initials to say ‘FCK’. Funny for some, offensive for others, maybe.

Full-on apologies do usually work. To err is human, after all. Hands up the last corporate communications team that allowed an intern to leave with all the passwords for its social media accounts?

The challenge for individuals who transgress personally rather than professionally is much tougher. I’m prompted by the launch this week of a substack (blog) from the disgraced BBC newsreader Huw Edwards. No, I’m not linking to it.

Edwards was so much a part of the BBC furniture that he was the man entrusted with telling the nation that the Queen had died.

Edwards pleaded guilty in 2024 to making indecent images of children. Up to now he has been living a relatively reclusive life following the resulting scandal.

On his substack he describes himself as a ‘journalist, political commentator, mental health campaigner’.

The reaction in the media to his new blog was predictable – ‘How dare he?’; ‘Has he no shame?’ and so on.

Edwards may feel he has ‘something to offer’ as a former journalist and commentator. While he may think so it seems few in his prospective audience can yet see beyond his disgrace – especially while the BBC complains they haven’t had any of the money back that he was paid between the date of his arrest in late 2023 and his conviction the following year.

So how could an individual who has fallen from a great height rehabilitate themselves? Well, contrition and regret will need to be front of stage in any such effort.

Are some people beyond rehabilitation?

That’s why there’s no prospect of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor being rehabilitated. He denies any wrongdoing, I have to say. But public opinion has another view and he’s in disgrace following the fallout of his relationship with the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his own disastrous Panorama interview with the BBC’s Emily Maitlis.

Mountbatten Windsor is not the role model here. John Profumo, ex Secretary of State of War, might be. His political career ended after he admitted he had lied to the UK House of Commons about his relationship with a 19 year-old model, Christine Keeler.

Profumo spent decades working in the East End of London for charity and declined to comment on his previous life or on the scandal that cost him his career. His charitable work helped restore his reputation and he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1975.

Keep out of the public eye, Huw…

Similarly, Edwards needs to find something to do that does not require him to be in the public eye. There is not much appetite for hearing the views and opinions of a convicted sex offender, after all.

A charitable endeavour of some sort beckons. Edwards says he’s a mental health campaigner. Maybe that’s the cause to embrace. But it will take some genuine self-reflection by him to be convincing in this role. And a charity willing to take him on. Neither seems too likely at the moment.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

NCP collapse: why the parking giant’s failure has provoked mirth rather than upset

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Photo shows a multi-storey car park with the NCP logo on the side

The German language has a great word to describe the public reation to the collapse of NCP, once the dominant name in British parking. It’s Schadenfreude, literally ‘the satisfaction one takes in the misfortune of others’. The failure of NCP has triggered a wave of such satisfaction.

For many people, the company’s fall into administration feels less like an unfortunate casualty of shifting commuter habits and more like the inevitable consequence of a corporate model that pushed customers to the limit for too long.

For years, NCP symbolised a kind of unavoidable urban frustration: high charges, confusing tariffs, aggressive enforcement, and the sense that convenience came at whatever price the company felt it could get away with.

I should declare an interest. My partner received a stiff fine for overstaying her welcome in a London multi-storey run by NCP by five minutes. Her defence was the presence of two very drunk aggressive men sitting on the floor by her car. She didn’t feel safe walking alone to her vehicle. There was no one in the ticket office who could help, and although a random passerby did step in, NCP still issued a penalty and rejected her excuse as ‘groundless’.

So being worried about your personal safety is not a defence. Good to know.

This is why, as the administrators were pointing to structural losses such as ‘inflexible leases’ on some NCP sites plus the long tail of the pandemic, the public conversation has focused on something basic: trust. Or rather, the lack of it.

Convicted in the court of public opinion

When a company becomes shorthand for overcharging, it loses the reservoir of goodwill that might otherwise soften the blow when times get tough. Instead of rallying behind a familiar brand, many people have responded with a shrug or, worse, a sense of poetic justice. The comments section of today’s NCP story on the Daily Mail website, that well-known barometer for public opinion, is full of posts that start ‘Hahahahahaha’. That reaction may feel harsh, especially for the 682 employees now facing uncertainty, but it reveals something important about how consumers judge corporate behaviour.

People are increasingly unwilling to support businesses that treat customers as captive revenue streams rather than partners in a long‑term relationship. In an era where alternatives are only ever a few taps away, loyalty has to be earned, and pricing is part of that. When companies push too far they sow the seeds of long‑term vulnerability.

NCP’s collapse is a reminder that public support is not a given. Once it’s lost, it cannot be summoned back in a crisis. It’s a timely reminder for everyone in corporate communications.

Photo credit: Uran Wang on Unsplash

AI won’t kill corporate communications, it’ll make it impossible to ignore

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Those of us who work in communications hear a lot about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to eat our lunch by wiping out our jobs and taking over ‘everything’.

As is usually the case with sweeping statements like this, the reality is somewhat different.

It’s true, AI is rapidly reshaping corporate communications. But while it will take over some tasks, others are still up for grabs.

Yes, AI is going to take over low-value, labour-intensive activities, there is not much question about that. But it will drive communicators to more valuable, strategic tasks.

As automation takes over routine things, like drafting press releases, managing distribution lists, and carrying out a lot of template-driven work, communicators will be freed up to focus on higher‑value work, such as advising executives how to root communications in their values and business strategy, and focusing on driving stakeholder engagement and trust.

AI-driven content generation does make us more efficient. It speeds up everything from drafting press releases to optimising headlines and search engine optimisation (SEO). This also ensures messaging is consistently refined for maximum engagement.

At the same time, hyper‑personalization allows companies to move beyond broad, generic outreach. Communications can now be tailored to individual preferences, behaviours, and contexts, at scale.

Predictive analytics is becoming a cornerstone of modern reputation management. With real‑time monitoring and trend forecasting, organizations can anticipate issues before they escalate, shifting from reactive crisis response to proactive reputation stewardship.

AI also enhances operational efficiency by automating scheduling, reporting, and meeting summaries, freeing communicators to focus on strategy and creativity.

Global teams benefit from real‑time multilingual translation tools such as DeepL, which eliminate language barriers and support seamless cross‑cultural collaboration. And as audiences increasingly rely on AI-generated answers, visibility will depend on appearing in AI-powered search results, a step beyond traditional SEO.

What does all this mean for communicators?

It’s mainly good news. Communications teams will need fewer people. But the jobs on offer will be more valuable, more strategic. Human judgment, such as context, nuance, and emotional intelligence, remains irreplaceable, even as AI handles tactical execution. New skills will emerge as essential: AI literacy, data interpretation, and ethical oversight.

AI isn’t replacing communicators, it’s elevating us. Those who embrace this partnership will, I believe, lead the next era of corporate storytelling.

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

When PR won’t save a leader’s reputation

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Every communications adviser knows there are moments when their job shifts from shaping a message to quietly bracing for impact. I have a real-life example from early in my communications career.

A senior executive stood in front of a room full of his employees, announced they were – sadly – all being made redundant, and then, beaming, shared that he’d just been promoted.

“Every cloud has a silver lining,” he added, as if delivering a line from a corporate pantomime. It was a pure David Brent moment: excruciating, tone‑deaf and instantly unforgettable. (David Brent, if you don’t know, is the hapless, out-of-his-depth corporate manager portrayed in Ricky Gervais’s excoriating series The Office, also reshot for the US market with the brilliant Steve Carell in the lead.)

What makes these gaffes so damaging is that they reveal something PR can’t fix: character. A poorly worded memo can be rewritten. A clumsy interview can be reframed. But when an executive publicly displays a catastrophic lack of empathy, the problem isn’t the message, it’s the messenger. No amount of media training can retrofit emotional intelligence into someone who doesn’t instinctively understand the weight of their words.

These moments also spread with remarkable speed. Employees these days could record them and share them on social media. Fortunately my example took place long before 4G and iphones became a thing.

Still, our executive’s faux pas was leaked to the Guardian newspaper and was published long before the communications team had even drafted a holding statement. By the time PR arrived to mop up, the story had already become a symbol: of arrogance, of detachment, of leadership gone wrong. And symbols are far harder to manage than stories.

The deeper issue is that executives often underestimate how closely people watch them. In times of uncertainty, every gesture is amplified. A misplaced joke becomes a verdict on leadership. A careless aside becomes evidence of indifference. When livelihoods are at stake, humour is not a bridge, it’s a trapdoor.

This is why the most effective protection for executives isn’t spin; it’s self‑awareness. The ability to read a room, to understand the emotional temperature, to recognise when silence is wiser than wit. PR can polish, guide and prepare, but it cannot save someone determined to sabotage themselves in public.

The lesson is simple: leaders don’t just communicate strategy, they communicate values. And when those values appear hollow, no adviser on earth can put them back together.

Photo by Pablo Varela on Unsplash

Corporate culture and respect for all

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Obama fist pumps a White House cleanerYou can tell a lot about an organisation by how its leaders treat their most junior colleagues.

As a newly hired writer on a financial magazine back in the 1990s, I was summoned in my second week for lunch with the senior partner of one of the UK’s leading accountancy firms. As my soup grew cold, he took me to task for my title’s ‘attitude’ to his firm, berating me for the numerous apparent editorial transgressions of colleagues. Continue reading →