A one-star review appears before breakfast. An AI-generated answer describes your service inaccurately. By mid-morning, a regulator's letter is sitting in the inbox, and the founder is asking the same question every team asks in that moment: what do we do first? Online reputation management is no longer a marketing clean-up exercise. It affects customer […]
Most advice on PR campaign planning still starts in the wrong place. It starts with a press release, a big media list and the hope that volume will compensate for weak relevance. That approach doesn't hold up in UK newsrooms. Editors and reporters are dealing with inbox overload, aggressive promotion, AI-assisted content and constant pressure […]
PR is harder to measure than it is to launch. Ninety-seven per cent of UK and Ireland communications professionals say they struggle to measure PR effectiveness, at an average annual cost of £80,000, with many teams still reporting coverage, traffic and engagement instead of leads, behaviour change or ROI (UK and Ireland communications measurement research). […]
The phone rings just after 2am. A Glasgow hotel has a flood in the basement, the Wi‑Fi is down, a guest has posted a video from reception, and the manager on duty is trying to work out whether this is an operations problem, a safety problem or a reputation problem. In that first ten minutes, […]
You're probably staring at a campaign that looked clean in the deck, then hit a compliance wall once legal, product, and risk got involved. Maybe the statement is ready, maybe the media team is already asking for comment, and the launch date is still moving because someone has flagged wording that sounded harmless in isolation […]
A criticism lands badly because it rarely arrives at a convenient moment. You're between meetings, checking your phone at dinner, or about to walk into an investor call when a review, email, comment or journalist's question hits a nerve. The instinct is usually the same. Correct them. Defend yourself. Explain what they've missed. That instinct […]
Corporate reputation in the UK is worth £1.7 trillion, yet approximately 25% of firms ignore it, exposing themselves to unmanaged shocks, according to research highlighted here. That should change how any founder or director thinks about risk. Reputation isn't soft. It isn't decorative. It sits behind sales conversations, investor confidence, regulator trust, recruitment, retention, and […]
The call usually comes at the wrong time. You're between meetings, legal wants sign-off on a statement, and a producer from a national broadcaster says they need someone live this afternoon. The subject sounds simple enough until you realise it isn't. They don't just want facts. They want a calm, quotable human being who can […]
A decision usually feels hardest at the exact moment you can least afford delay. A journalist is asking for comment. A customer has posted a damaging video. Your legal adviser wants caution, your sales lead wants speed, and the founder wants the whole thing gone before lunch. That's where most SMEs come unstuck. They don't […]
The email lands at 7.12am. A regulator wants answers. A customer has posted screenshots on LinkedIn. Staff are messaging each other on WhatsApp. A journalist has left a voicemail asking for comment by 9am. This is the point where legal advice and PR stop being separate workstreams. In a real SME crisis, they have to […]