Today is Europe Day. The anniversary of the 1950 ‘Schuman Declaration’ that started the process that created what is now the European Union. The declaration was made by the then French foreign minister Robert Schuman in the aftermath of World War 2.

This year it is more important than ever for patriotic Britons to celebrate Europe Day. The future of the United Kingdom is under threat from those who seek to destroy all the benefits that membership of the European Union has given the people of Britain. We have a prime minister that risks forcing us out of the European Union. Not for practical reasons that it will benefit the UK. Not because he believes it is ideologically right. But because he is weak and hopes to make short-term political gain by jeopardising our nation’s future.

The UK’s membership of the European Union has benefited businesses and workers alike. Men, women and children enjoy greater freedoms and are safer than they have ever been before.

I am proud to be a citizen of Europe. I am proud to be a citizen of the United Kingdom. I have grown up in a Europe that is peaceful and prosperous (read Smile if you’re European by Simon Kuper in the Financial Times magazine). I want our five-year daughter to enjoy the same European peace and prosperity that her parents have.

That’s why the best way to display your British patriotism is to celebrate Europe Day today.

EU and Union Jack flag picture courtesy of LSE British Influence blog.

European Commission building in Brussels taken by me on May 7, 2013.

Infographics can be fantastic, awful or simply work. This example from Philips is the latter. It simply presents the quarter one earnings for Philips in an alternative format. It’s good to see a genuine corporate communications, rather than marketing communications example. At a time when infographics are being exploited by PR, marketing and digital people this is a what I’d like to see more of in the future – not brilliant, not awful, just good.

I spent yesterday at the European Parliament in Brussels running a training session for MEPs and their staff about Wikipedia and best practice. Most of what I said was based on the CIPR’s Wikipedia Best Practice guidelines that we produced last year in co-operation with Wikimedia and I had a small hand in helping to create.

On the Eurostar home I discovered that the training I delivered might already be out of date as yet another PR and Wikipedia ‘scandal’ had erupted this time about BP’s Wikipedia page. However, this time it appears that the ‘guilty’ parties probably aren’t BP’s PR team who appear to have followed all the best practice, but the online ‘chattering classes’ and some Wikipedians who’ve taken offence at PRs at a ‘big, bad’ corporate following Wikipedia’s own guidance.

Basically the story is that Arturo Silva, a member of BP’s corporate communications team in Houston, created the Arturo at BP Wikipedia user account and used it to interact with the Wikipedia community in order to improve the BP Wikipedia page.

His user profile is fairly comprehensive, explains what the account is for and makes it clear he will only contribute to BP’s Talk page:

“Welcome to my user page. I have established this account to help improve BP-related articles in line with Wikipedia standards and guidelines. In the interest of full transparency, I chose “Arturo at BP” as my username so that my affiliation with BP is abundantly clear to all parties I may interact with on Wikipedia. Per WP:ORGNAME, I believe that this username is appropriate, and I should point out that I will be the only person to use this account.

Out of respect for guidelines on conflict of interest and the importance of a neutral point of view, and in recognition of the ongoing debate regarding companies’ involvement on Wikipedia, I will only be editing Talk pages and will not make any edits to encyclopedia articles. My primary goal in being active on Wikipedia through this account is to improve the overall quality of BP-related articles in line with Wikipedia guidelines.

Any delays in responding to inquiries are due to my other roles and responsibilities at BP which take up a significant amount of my time, so I appreciate your patience with me. I do look forward to working with other editors, and welcome any questions you may have on my Talk page.”

Most of this is inline with Wikipedia’s own guidelines and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Wikipedia Best Practice Guide that was created last year by the CIPR’s Social Media Panel in conjunction with ‘Wikipedians’ and Wikimedia.

I’d have recommended that the user profile stated absolutely that he worked for BP’s corporate communications team and there is question mark over if the company name should have been included in the user name, but apart from that it is all pretty good.

Arturo Silva then used his ‘userspace’ on this account to draft improvements to the BP page which he then pointed to on the BP talk page. He wrote everything from a neutral point of view and importantly always provided credible third party references for everything he wrote. This is precisely what is recommended in the CIPR guidelines and the idea is that this information is then checked by independent ‘Wikipedians’ and eventually incorporated into the actual Wikipedia user page by those independent third party editors.

Where it appears to have gone wrong is that despite Wikipedia’s commitment to a ‘neutral point of view’ the reality is somewhat different. The CIPR guidelines state that the definition of a neutral point of view is:

“All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopaedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias. Fundamentally, where there is a contentious issue associated with a topic, Wikipedia content should be a good reference for the debate. In a few words, neutrality means this: report the debate, don’t take part in it.”

The problem is that people don’t agree what “representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias” actually means. However, for some Wikipedians, and some member of the social media chattering classes, big business is always suspect and they would prefer for it not to be included as a ‘significant view’. It’s fine for an environmental activist to actually edit the page (as long as they don’t actually work for Greenpeace), but not for a ‘big, bad’ company to follow Wikipedia’s own guidelines.

On reflection I think my training yesterday is still valid as I caveated the CIPR’s Wikipedia Best Practice guidelines with the advise that it was always best to err on the side of caution. There are some brilliant, sensible people who devote hours of valuable time to editing and improving Wikipedia. But, as in any community, there is also a minority (who are always the most vocal) who aren’t reasonable and want their personal micro-view of the world to be inflicted on everyone.

It’s that minority you need to be careful of and reflect in your dealings with Wikipedia which is why I advised “Just because you’re allowed to do something, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea”.

This blog post started as a comment on Stephen ‘Wadds’ Waddington’s thought-provoking article about ‘The public relations industry’s confidence problem’, but it was so thought-provoking the comment rapidly became too long.

His central thesis is that public relations is too introspective and needs to have more confidence of the role it plays in the broader economy. I’d go further and say public relations doesn’t just play a significant role in the economy, but also in politics and society/social. The first three of the PEST analysis, which are all being changed by technology.

If advertising and digital agencies don’t eat PR’s lunch, then management consultants might

Wadds says there is a “turf war taking place between advertising, public relations and digital”. Another war that Wadds hints at, but doesn’t mention, is when he talks of “earns the place that it deserves as a management discipline” is with management consultants. Public relations professionals are not the only people to recognise that public relations should be a serious business discipline and that means we’re also competing with the big global management consultancies.

I think a major reason for public relations’ confidence problem is its identity problem. Public relations practitioners aren’t even sure and can’t agree on what it is we actually do. Worrying how we define ourselves seems introspective, but it’s hard to be confident about who you are if you don’t know yourself. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that others do ‘define’ public relations, usually incorrectly in narrow and derogatory ways. Too many public relations practitioners don’t do our business any favours by perpetuating the myths about what PR really is.

PR is not just part of marketing

If we are to be seen as a true management discipline as Wadds asserts then we can’t allow ourselves to be defined as mere publicists or as simply part of marketing. Public relations and marketing are totally different disciplines and the confusion arises because both will often use some of the same tactics. It’s quite legitimate for public relations to use paid media. It’s not even new, I did it 20 years ago with full-page display advertisements in trade press across the world, as part of a corporate restructuring.

Part of the challenge we have as public relations professionals is that we don’t start off with the same budgets or even ‘share of mind’ within clients as some of our competitor disciplines do. Advertising and digital agencies typically have bigger budgets so can afford to experiment. Using a small percentage of their existing spend they can try something new to see if it works in this time of massive change in society and media. In contrast you’d need a bigger percentage of most public relations budgets which means you don’t have enough left for the tried and trusted. Therefore the leviathan advertising agencies can ironically be more agile than the theoretically smaller more nimble public relations consultancies.

Wadds’s example of a retail brand working with a peer analytics firm such as Klout, Kred or PeerIndex to identify and target online influencers could be done by an advertising agency simply pulling one or two TV slots to find the budget. A PR agency might need to significantly reduce the time it spends working with influential journalists in order to spend that budget on working with the new influencers.

The challenge from management consultants is that their consultancy day rate frequently dwarfs the day rate of a public relations consultancy. This in turn means they pay bigger salaries and get better people. That’s not to criticise public relations people, but the fact is that many of the best do it because they enjoy it. They are bright enough people that if they’d entered a better paid profession such as management consultancy, law or accountancy then they’d earn a lot more. They chose public relations because they enjoy it. But this makes it hard for the public relations profession to attract the brightest and best graduates.

Is PR too introspective?

Wadds claims that the public relations industry is too introspective because it is obsessed with “inward focussed issues such as whether it is a profession and the issue of measurement”.

So what’s the answer? I think Wadd’s blog post perhaps starts to provide some of them. He’s right we need to win the professionalism debate through action. Despite being a Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) member for my whole career I didn’t complete its continuous professional development scheme until 2012. That’s wrong and I know I should become a chartered practitioner, but I’m not afraid to admit that the time involved still makes me hesitate. As a newly elected CIPR council member I feel obligated to at least complete CPD, but really I should also complete the accreditation to become a CIPR Chartered Practitioner.

He says that solid work is now being done by organisations such as AMEC to improve measurement and evaluation. This is one area where public relations could be more confident. Public relations is perceived as not being very good at measurement and evaluation. The fact is that we’re getting a lot better. The dirty little secret of much of the advertising and digital agency world is that they might be better at measuring stuff, but much of their evaluation is just as flawed as that used for public relations. Public relations needs to start being confident about what it can measure and evaluate, rather than worrying about what it can’t.

“The debate about who owns social media is flawed…”

… says Stephen as “The future will be owned by the practitioners that define it”. And he’s right. It’s also a sterile debate as social media doesn’t necessarily need to be owned by anyone. The fact is that social media needs to be used by human resources, legal, customer services, marketing, IT, public relations et al. As well as using social media itself one of the main roles of public relations is to ensure that others within the organisation don’t abuse or use social media badly, which will inevitably lead to reputational damage.

Public relations therefore has a dual role with social media. Firstly to use if effectively itself. Secondly, to coordinate and lead its use by others. In most companies and organisations public relations has a unique 360 degree perspective because reputational issues can arise from anywhere. That makes PR uniquely placed to lead on something that also has a 360 degree impact on the company or organisation. The danger is that there are disciplines out there, such as marketing and advertising, who might want to ‘own it’ and those disciplines are far more narrowly focused so while capable of doing brilliant work won’t necessarily sufficiently get the wider implications. That’s what we need to guard against.

It’s time for public relations professionals to take the advice of Mark Borkowski and Stephen Waddington and “find our swagger.”

by Ben Ward

After a year working from home again, and occasionally enjoying cheese and biscuits for lunch, I thought I’d share some thoughts about the experience.  Both myself and Karen my wife work mainly from home. I’m a PR trainer and consultant, specialising in digital corporate communications, online PR and digital public affairs while Karen is a local councillor and now chair of the local area committee.

Before I start you’d think that Mayor Boris Johnson would understand to enjoy cheese properly it can’t be eaten straight from the fridge and needs to be at room temperature. So it was really two Boris gaffes in one!

On a more serious note you need to realistic about the benefits and disadvantages of working from home. Much of the commentary I’ve heard like the ‘skiver’s paradise’ from Boris has been quite polarised. I’ve tried to identify some of the benefits and disadvantages of home working from my own personal perspective.

Benefits of working from home

More time. No matter how short your commute working from home will save that time. I was lucky when running Wolfstar as it was only a half hour journey, but twice a day that still adds up to the equivalent of about an extra 30 working days a year (assuming 20 days holiday on top of public holidays and weekends)!

Save money. With no fuel, parking or public transport costs the saving can be considerable. Factor in expensive lunches (even a visit to a supermarket for a cheap, nasty sandwich costs more than it would to make a far tastier one at home) and those over-priced buckets of weak coffee from Starbucks and the savings become even more considerable. Even after you’ve invested in a nice espresso machine and good coffee.

More productive. This is a more complex one because ‘skiving’ can be what actually makes you more productive. Everyone who works in an office knows that there are times you’re on fire and rattle off quality work at a rapid rate. But there are also times when you’re just not as motivated and you suffer from blank screen syndrome. The beauty of working from home is that frequently you can choose to work when you’re feeling productive and ‘skive’ when you aren’t.

Work/life balance and family time. I just interrupted writing this blog post to walk my five year old daughter the five minutes to school for 8:50 when it opens. Something that working from home gives me the ability to do. Just as it’s easier to pick her up at 15:20. It’s also easy to take the odd ten minute break when she’s at home and then resume work. Yesterday I spent a quarter of an hour practising her writing with her and then she was happy to write and draw on her own for awhile. The alternative would be rushed, frantic time in the morning to get her to school in time and me and Karen to the office.

Social interaction. As you can read below this is also one of the disadvantages. But one brilliant way of turning it into an advantage is by using some of the time you’ve saved by not commuting and using it to do voluntary work. It gets you out of the house, meeting new people and potentially learning new skills. It can be anything you want – a campaign group, your local community association, a political party, a charity, a school governor – the list is endless. You benefit and society benefits. A great win for all.

Disadvantages of working from home

Need space. I know there are some people who work from home using the kitchen table or small desk in a bedroom or living room, but that would never work for me. Absolutely the only way I could work from home is because we’ve turned a whole bedroom into a study/home office. You’ve then got the one off expense of converting and equipping that room. This provides enough space for a big desk and storage space. Losing a room is a huge disadvantage (even assuming you’ve got the space to be able to do that) and if I ever return to office working that could be one of the big reasons.

Extra expense. There will be some extra costs such as increased fuel bills (mainly in winter from having the heating on during the day instead of just evenings). You might also have to factor in amending your insurance policy to cover home working (although you’re also reducing the risk of burglary as the home is occupied more of the time) and perhaps upgrading your broadband connection to have a bigger data cap. You’ll also probably have higher phone bills, but this can be mitigated by choosing the right home and mobile packages and by using services like Skype. However, all of these extra costs are likely to be more than compensated by what you are saving.

Social interaction. Depending on your job this isn’t actually a disadvantage. When you work in an office you talk to the same people all the time and get a lot of social interaction so don’t need to create those opportunities. You can get high quality interaction, but with a relatively limited group of people. Work from home and you’ve got to make more effort to get out and meet people for lunch and coffee, but the huge benefit is that it is a much broader more diverse group of people.

Home working from an employer’s perspective

From an individual’s perspective I’d come down slightly in favour of home working, however the advantages from an employer’s perspective are less clear cut.

Firstly, the time saved in commuting comes out of the employee’s time and won’t necessarily result in them spending more time on work related activity.

Secondly, it requires experience and self-discipline to be able to work from home without succumbing to the many distractions such as daytime TV, radio and music, video games, DVDs, Sky+ recordings and that novel you just can’t put down. And that’s only some of the indoor distractions! Many less senior staff don’t have the experience, even with training, to make the most of working from home.

Thirdly, it can seriously impact on good team working. You should be able to get round this by using technology such as shared project management systems, commercial online meeting/confereing systems or simply with Skype or Google+ Hangouts. However, the reality is that people tend not to use these systems properly and it’s the old GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) problem.

The final big problem is maintaining quality and productivity. Without other team members around to help, support and mentor it is likely that standards can slip and there is far less ‘learning by watching’. That means investing more time and money into training, but with less return as you’re still missing a big element of that ‘passed on’ learning from the skills and experience of other team members.

Related articles

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The year started with several discussions with companies that were interested in acquiring or investing in Wolfstar. For a variety of reasons – some on their side, some on ours – none of these actually came to anything in the end. But what these discussions did do was make me start thinking far more about the future.

Since starting Wolfstar in June 2007 it had been a bit like a roller coaster ride. It was always going to be a challenge starting a new business in what soon turned out to be one of the most turbulent and pessimistic economic periods this century.

Despite this in less than four years we succeeded in growing Wolfstar into a PRWeek Top 150 Consultancy, a Top 40 Digital Consultancy (top of the table of specialist consultancies for the percentage of income derived from online PR) and Top 40 Technology Consultancy (the largest outside London).

We pitched for and won some fantastic clients including Sony Ericsson, First Direct, HSBC Unilever, PayPal, Discovery Channel, Philips, Carlsberg, GlaxoSmithKline, Smith & Nephew and the NHS.

We worked with the United Nations to produce the world’s first international research report into how FT Global 500 companies use social media to support their CSR (corporate social responsibility) strategies.

For a small PR consultancy headquartered outside London to provide international public relations counsel to such prestigious clients was quite an achievement. Especially considering that to win most of them we pitched against big, global PR agencies.

But then in March tragedy struck. Mark Hanson, my very good friend and the deputy managing director of Wolfstar, took his own life. It was a traumatic experience – for his family, his incredibly wide network of friends, his colleagues at Wolfstar and for me personally.

Life would, could, never be the same again. Hard as it was life had to go on.

Inevitably this also had a negative effect on the business. Mark was an exceptional individual who it would be impossible to replace.

It also made me start questioning what I really wanted out of life. The start of Wolfstar had coincided with the birth of my daughter Esme and for me there is nothing more important than family.

Although family is my first priority, work is inevitably important. Simply to keep a roof over your head and food in the cupboard it is where you will spend much of your time. But the most important thing for me about work is actually enjoying what I do and feeling like I’m contributing and achieving. One of the issues with starting a business is that the day to day realities of growing it and running it prevent you from doing many of the things that made it possible for you to be successful in the first place.

I feel pity for those whose happiness appears to be wrapped up in wealth and material things. Family and job satisfaction will always be far more important to me than a big house, a fast car, the villa in the sun or that holiday resort that is frequented by those who have lost touch with reality.

In May my heart was filled with joy and pride as my wife Karen defeated a Liberal Democrat councillor to become the first Labour councillor elected in Rothwell in the 21st century. She’s got off to a cracking start and I’m looking forward to her being joined by a second Labour councillor in May next year.

By June, after numerous discussions with my business partner, I finally took the decision to relinquish my 50% stake in Wolfstar to him so that I could focus on my family and actually doing work that I enjoy. The deal was finally complete in August.

Since then I’ve been able to enjoy my daughter’s first term at school, contribute chapters to a forthcoming book, increase my level of political activity for the Labour Party, start some new strategic communications consultancy and online PR training work, resume writing this PR blog more frequently and meet some fantastic people to discuss opportunities for 2012 and beyond.

That is why as we enter 2012 I am far happier that I’ve ‘gone plural’ and decided to pursue a portfolio career. That will be the subject of a second blog post, early in the New Year.

Seasons greetings and all the best for 2012 to all my readers, with apologies for this rather personal ramble. A normal service of posts about international public relations, corporate communications, public affairs and social media will be resumed soon.

It seems a month can’t go by without Bell Pottinger, the UK’s self-styled ‘leading’ lobbying company, embroiling itself in a scandal. Today’s Independent article has certainly sparked off a plethora of criticism and commentary, much of it ill-informed and ill-conceived. It’s important to try and separate fact from fiction and cut through the spin on all sides of the debate.

Is it right for a public affairs or public relations company to represent a state like Uzbekistan?

Absolutely not, it’s a disgrace to even talk to a country that is run by such a despicable regime appears to be the thrust of the Independent’s article. But if you actually stop and look at what Bell Pottinger said then you’ll see that the first few slides of its presentation (embedded at the end of the post) are all about how a communications and influence campaign won’t work to improve Uzbekistan’s reputation unless the government makes real steps to improve its behaviour.

‘If, however, the government is committed to real and lasting reform then there are many things that Bell Pottinger could do’

‘… change is essential in order to change international attitudes.’

‘But we must be able to show our target audiences that change has begun, that long term goals have been defined…’

‘Once we have the assurance that genuine, verifiable reform is being introduced, we can put in place a communication and media strategy that tells the story of how Uzbekistan is changing for the better.’

That’s pretty unequivocal about saying that Bell Pottinger will only work for the Azimov Group if the government of the Republic of Uzbekistan cleans up its act. Surely that’s what we want it to do, therefore this is a good thing, isn’t it? The fact that Bell Pottinger’s strategy is to ‘tell the story of how Uzbekistan is changing for the better’ recognises that the communications must acknowledge previous bad behaviour, otherwise logically it will be impossible to show improvement.

If the UK government under John Major and Tony Blair had taken the attitude of you don’t talk to or help bad people because they are beyond redemption, then we’d never have had peace in Northern Ireland. This is practical, real world politics. If you want to make the world a better place then you have to engage with people.

It appears in this case that Bell Pottinger was acting correctly. What isn’t so clear is how well it has behaved in the past with some of the clients it has represented. Looking at its track record it could be surmised that this is Bell Pottinger turning over a new leaf. If so, then surely a company improving its behaviour is something we should welcome.

Is it wrong to claim that you as a public affairs company can influence government?

One of the roles of politicians is to listen to what people want, weigh up the arguments and make decisions based upon the evidence available. A good public affairs consultancy simply helps to make the case on behalf of companies, trade organisations, charities, pressure groups and trade unions. It is an entirely legitimate process and helps to ensure that legislation and policy is effectively scrutinised and that the end result is better than if a decision had been made without the full facts available. It is a similar process to going to your local MP’s advice surgery to ask them to do something to support your favourite charity or special interest group. Frankly, I’d be alarmed if a politician said they weren’t influenced by the people they are meant to represent.

What Bell Pottinger does appear to be guilty of is making exaggerated claims about and over-inflating the importance of contacts. Any really good professional public affairs professional will tell you that contacts aren’t as important as the uninformed like to think. But, let’s be honest what company, organisation or even individual hasn’t been guilty of that to some extent at sometime or other?

What is quite surprising is that Bell Pottinger’s major claim appears to be that it ‘got’ the UK prime minister to raise the issue of intellectual property theft with the Chinese prime minister. My main thought on this is that it isn’t a very big achievement, as surely it’s David Cameron’s job to stand up for British manufacturing.

Now that my quick defence of Bell Pottinger is done, let’s move on to what I think it got wrong.

How could self-proclaimed digital experts miss the lack of a digital footprint?

It is standard business practice to do some basic due diligence on potential new clients. It’s inconceivable that a ‘magical’ team of digital reputation experts would miss the fact that the Azimov Group, and the people meant to be involved in it, wouldn’t have a bigger digital footprint than its own website which is just a holding page on Google Sites. Ironically the proposal even highlights that ‘Google searches for ‘The Azimov Group; brings back only one relevant website.’

Given the history of journalist stings that should have set alarm bells ringing – especially if you claim to be media relations and reputation management experts. It’s kindergarten stuff.

Did Bell Pottinger offer the right counsel?

It is on the digital public affairs counsel provided that Bell Pottinger really comes unstuck. The first mistake is that it doesn’t appear to have done even the most basic digital due diligence. But its presentation includes even worse as it appears to advocate ethical malpractice and potentially even illegal behaviour.

Bell Pottinger’s recommended ‘Actions’ include:

‘Create and maintain third-party blogs which are used to seed positive content containing popular keywords that ranks highly in Google search results’

If this means what I think it does – that Bell Pottinger will create and run fake blogs pretending to be from genuine people, then it is not only unethical it is potentially illegal. It could be perceived that this would be pretending to be a consumer, which is illegal under the Consumer Protection Regulations 2008. It’s certainly not within the spirit of the law, even if it is within the letter of the law.

Creating fake blogs like this also doesn’t work that well! You can buy crude software tools that will automate the process for you so there is absolutely no need to pay a substantial retainer for a technique that doesn’t even work. It’s a technique that is used by unscrupulous and usually ineffective SEO companies.

‘… we would create a dedicated and independent website e.g. www.uzbekistancottonreform.org…’

Let’s give Bell Pottinger the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume it would be 100% transparent about who was running and funding this ‘independent’ website, although given the previous recommended action it’s hard to be certain. If it was a genuinely open and transparent site then the recommendation could be seen to make sense.

The Bell Pottinger team presenting didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory by sounding rather clueless about what digital reputation management and online public affairs actually is. Talking of a ‘magical’ digital team and a team that could ‘sort’ Wikipedia made them sound rather amateurish, rather than the professional image I’m sure they were trying to portray.

The lack of specifics when talking about ‘search’ also make the proposal appear amazingly amateur. What terms are people actually searching for to find the negative coverage about Uzbekistan, what is the volume of searches? Both of these matter a lot and effect how easy or difficult it will be to achieve the desired result. Although even if search volumes are low it can still be very important if those searches are being conducted by key influencers such as policy makers, politicians, special advisers, political researchers or think tanks.

It also doesn’t make clear quite how Bell Pottinger would ‘sort’ Wikipedia, but one would hope that it wouldn’t involve violating Wikipedia’s codes and best practices which would prohibit the team from making the changes directly themselves or masquerading as third parties to do so. A legitimate and effective way to ‘clean up’ Wikipedia entries is simply to use your own online properties such as a blog or multimedia newsroom to point out the inaccuracies and link to evidence. Legitimate Wikipedia editors and users will then almost certainly ‘clean up’ the entry for you. The Independent has already covered PR people unethically manipulating Wikipedia (including a quote from me).

The rest of Bell Pottinger’s claims, offers and recommendations are more or less what you’d expect although the Independent article tries to spin some of them to make them sound sinister. Simple search engine optimisation (SEO) activity is described as attempting to ‘manipulate Google’.

In conclusion, this episode once again hasn’t left the public affairs profession covered in glory, but neither is it as shocking or disgraceful as the Independent is trying to spin it. What is does highlight is the need for far greater transparency and openness about what is being done on behalf of clients. That way not only do we help to reduce and hopefully eliminate unethical behaviour, but we also start to rid the profession of amateurism and over hyped claims of what can be achieved.

UPDATE: The Independent now has a transcript of the video in which Bell Pottinger MD boasts “”We’ve got all sorts of dark arts. I told him he couldn’t put them in the written presentation because it’s embarrassing if it gets out because he’s so good at it.”

BellPottpresentationtoAzimovGp1

Thanks to Harry Cole for the embed.

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CEO.com has created an infographic on the Future Social CEO looking at the future of C-suite social engagement.

via Mashable.

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Yesterday I spoke on the Future Social Strategies day of the Future Digital Strategies Summit on the ‘Top 10 tips to get senior management buy-in for social media’: