Weekly Wrap Up: Minimise risk to your Corporate Reputation

The value of a good corporate reputation cannot be understated. It’s one of the main reasons businesses invest in communications and public relations. That’s why tracking media trends and watching for developments that signal risks, as well as opportunities, should be part of any corporate communications strategy.

This week there was a prime example of exactly why this matters so much. CEO of fashion retailer Next, Simon Wolfson, made headlines when he criticised an organisation dedicated to urging businesses to pay a so-called living wage. He claimed that £6.70 an hour is enough to live on for some people. Coming from a man titled Lord, worth an estimated £100 million and who took home a £4.6 million pay package last year, this out-of-touch comment would have been a PR disaster at the best of times. However, his outrageous remark came on the same day that Next posted bumper annual figures: pre-tax profit increased 12.5% to £794.8 million and the dividend rose by 16.3%. These results should, and probably would have, dominated media coverage of Next if not for Lord Wolfson’s poor judgement.

It would have helped if Lord Wolfson, or his communications advisors, had been paying attention to just how controversial living wage discussions have become. In the US, for example, Walmart and McDonald’s were among the major corporations that were villainised in the press due to their refusal to pay a living wage. Low paid employees at both companies even went on strike to demand a better wage.

Corporate missteps like this naturally generate plenty of bad publicity and are detrimental to an organisation. But arguably the worst part is that this damage could have easily been avoided by tracking recent media trends. If that had happened at Next, maybe they would have realised that someone who makes £4.6 million a year should refrain from providing “thought leadership” on the living wage debate.



This week Abchaps welcomed some of our UK IPREX partners to our offices, to discuss how our complementary services can further benefit our clients; joined Equity Development for an evening where they hosted three exciting and innovative company presentations within the media and technology sector for the City and PCIM community; and also attended Gorkana’s breakfast briefing, hosted by Director magazine. This newly relaunched title offers a direct line to C-Suite occupiers, and with its new look, Director does away with the usually drab vision of the board room.



Simon MacKinnon has been appointed Asia strategy adviser at the asset management firm Old Mutual Global Investors. Panmure Gordon has hired Patric Johnson as head of securities. He will also serve on Panmure’s Board.



“Living wage” - the amount an individual needs to earn to cover the basic costs of living. So maybe Lord Wolfson does know a thing or two about a living wage? His £4.6 million pay package should be just about enough to survive in London.



What says Hipster more than food served from a van? Get your kicks this weekend at Urban Food Fest, a revolving cast of food stalls and trucks serving a UN worth list of food cultures. All taking place in a Shoreditch car park, it could only be more zeitgeist if it came with a moustache.

Continuing the theme of facial hirsuteness, it is currently impossible to be more than six feet from a man with facial topiary. Love it or hate it, it has become part of our culture. So celebrate or castigate at Somerset House, whose exhibition Beard is open until Sunday.

Benedict Cumberbatch may have been taken off the market, but the Museum of London is still offering the opportunity to Sleep with Sherlock. Included in this all night event are a plethora of themed opportunities, ranging from a three course dinner, talks from detective specialists, right through to ghost stories told in the depths of the museum.

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Weekly Wrap Up: Boris Johnson - zip wire to Prime Minister?

This week Mayor of London Boris Johnson announced the explosive news that he will, “in all probability”, work towards becoming an MP at the next general election.

As with every statement that Boris puts out, the media coverage was both wide ranging and abundant. The Express was kind to the incumbent Mayor, quoting the Culture Secretary Sajid Javid “it’s fantastic news”, whilst The Guardian was more sceptical. It focused on how the announcement “drew accusations of hypocrisy” in regards to his previous statements that he would not hold two political offices at once.

Stepping past the issue as to whether or not he would make a good MP (again), the dramatic announcement through Bloomberg says more about his long-term political intentions than his short-term plans to become an MP. A Mayor of London running to be an MP is not a new thing. It is exactly what his predecessor Ken Livingstone did for a year, so the news should not have attracted as much attention as it did.

Some in the City have speculated that Boris will do anything for a headline, an idea that suggests this announcement was just another headline grabbing ploy ahead of a much bigger campaign. Few can forget the famous zip wire event of 2012 when he was famously left stuck and dangling and his name subsequently splashed across the media. Did the zip wire really stick by accident, or was it planned?

Fast forward two years... Does Boris truly plan on running for MP and then “sticking” with these two roles? Or is he simply building his reputation ahead of a bigger and more prime ministerial campaign?

Almost every piece published on the topic speculated that this move could simply be a small step for Boris ahead of challenging David Cameron for the role of Tory Party leader / Prime Minister. Cameron’s quote, interactively shared through social media, suggests that he was delighted with the news. He said that he has always wanted his “star players on the pitch”. Whilst this comment is clearly very supportive towards his old friend Boris, we must bear in mind the old adage: keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

If further building his reputation and positioning himself as a potential PM was Boris’s intention when announcing his MP-ship plans, he satisfied his objective.

Of the comments that resulted from the news, many contained expressions of delight at the idea of Boris becoming Prime Minister:

BBC: Corrigenda (6TH AUGUST 2014 - 16:10): Excellent news. This will liven up politics and will much increase interest and further eclipse Milliwatt-Balls.

nj (6TH AUGUST 2014 - 12:36) I would really love to see this MAN as our Prime Minister who speak TRUTH and stand by his words. Who walks with the current times.

Twitter fans also shared their views: Chris Beech ‏@chris1310beech (Aug 6): Yess Boris Johnson says he is going to run for priminister, come on Bojo!!!!

For now we have to wait and see what comes of both the 2015 election and the Uxbridge & South Ruislip seat. What we can do, however, is take stock of the media coverage that Boris achieved this week and keep an eye out for more headline grabbing moves on Boris’s political road to Westminster.



There was a flurry of activity in the Abchurch office this week with two particularly good Market Lunches taking place. Following the successful float of Savannah Petroleum last week, there was lots to talk about at the Natural Resources lunch. The take-home point from the Environmental lunch was that it is down to larger tech companies to bring environmental technologies to the forefront of consumers’ agendas and so solve the current energy crisis.



This week we congratulate Anne-Sophie Girault on her appointment as managing director of EMEA business development at RBC Global Asset Management, having moved from Aviva Investors. Meanwhile, RPC appointed David Gubbay, from Dechert, as a Partner in their corporate team, whilst Stephenson Harwood announced that Ben Stansfield will join as a real estate partner after having worked in the environment and planning group at Clifford Chance.



“Political stunt” - When a politician seeking to influence a politician or governmental policy takes an action they know will gain attention but is not likely to achieve its stated goal.


Prudential RideLondon FreeCycle will take place this Saturday. 10 miles of road in central London will be closed for the occasion, enabling cyclists to pass through the city safely without regular traffic. The route features Buckingham Palace, Tower of London, and many more sites along the way.

For fans of underground opera, Grimeborn Festival of New Opera will take place from 4 August to 7 September, featuring new composers, musicians, and artists. The festival is taking place at Arcola Theatre in Dalston Kingsland.

The 3 Crowns Wine Fair will take place near the Silicon Roundabout. Branded Portuguese, French, and Italian wine will be available at £5 per glass. There will be original folk music performance throughout the event.

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Weekly Wrap Up: What is the cost of good content?

Jim Edwards, it seems you were right.

Just one month on from the “The Sun” controversially hiding its online content behind a paywall the statistics have shown that whilst the Red Top may have been enjoying greater revenues, they have paid for it with deteriorating audience numbers.

The latest report by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (released yesterday) reveals that since the Sun introduced its pay wall, its numbers have dropped by as much as 60%.

And it doesn’t seem that this disgruntled 60% simply stopped consuming their rouge-news after August 1st… They simply tapped a different URL into their internet search engines and surfed off elsewhere. For example, last month Mirror.co.uk enjoyed a boost of nearly 20% of daily browsers in the wake of the Sun’s pay wall crashing down.

There was a great deal of controversy when the Times implemented its “hard paywall” back in 2010. As Edwards has predicted for the Sun, The Times did suffer from depressed readership and became the least-read “quality” newspaper in the UK. However its paywall introduction wasn’t a total failure; they managed to accrue over 100,000 paying visitors and are still successfully operating from behind this subscription line. Three years into its pay wall era, CEO Mike Darcey says that although their reach was reduced, their number of “meaningful readers” has been maintained.

But should the Sun and the Times be punished for wanting to charge readers to their content?

With the new revenue produced from paywalls, news publishers can afford to spend more on their staff, resources and technology, thus producing even better content. In an age where print is dying and citizen journalism is under-mining the power and resources of accredited journalists, should we not be supporting our news publishers?

Do we, the ever demanding news-starved rabble, deserve free web-content that in years gone by we would have had to pay for in hard copy?

And where does this leave the world of corporation communications? Do we steer clear of feeding reports at paywalled publications simply because we see their numbers dwindling, or do we continue to provide them with stories, information and interviews that would help keep their (now costly) content engaging, useful and (above all) informative?

Perhaps the simplest solution would be for all news sites to operate from behind a pay wall. This would then remove the inorganic competitive edge and would ensure that all publications could be free to charge their users and thus re-invest back into producing good content and accurate reportage.


For now, however, perhaps the public should just take the bitter pill and pay for their news. The Sun shouldn’t be embarrassed by its resultant dwindling figures (it has since withdrawn itself from the ABC web traffic audit) and we should all accept that in this life you don’t get anything for free…



A busy week for all, attending some great events including Smith & Williamson’s wonderful Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition 2013 with guest speaker Rt Hon Michael Portillo; Stephenson Harwood’s corporate finance team’s annual party, hosted by John Inverdale and Warren Gatland; and ‘A Late Night @ Bird & Bird’. We also hosted two market lunches, the Corporate and Financial Group Committee meeting and a day of clay shooting for our Northern region contacts.

As well as welcoming another new graduate, Abchaps also attended the Global Mining Finance Autumn Conference, a CIPR seminar on Social Media as Market Maker, and entertained some guests at the Chelsea vs Basel Champions League match…. Quite a week!



Law firms Brown Rudnick announced the appointment of new corporate partner Sophie McGrath, who joins from Morrison & Foerster, whilst Pinsent Masons appointed Peter Rosher, formerly of Clifford Chance, as partner in the Paris construction arbitration team. Accountancy firm Crowe Clark Whitehill appointed Andrew Manning from Deloitte as partner in their not for profit team.



'Tabloid': a newspaper with a compact page size smaller than a broadsheet. Commonly now it is popular to reflect a populist style of journalism and reporting.



Enjoy street food and live music tomorrow night at The Urban Food Fest on Shoreditch High, running every Saturday night for the next month.

If you can get to Camden Town for the iTunes festival this weekend, you’ll see Primal Scream, HAIM and Ellie Goulding.

Head down to Firth Street to see the latest in design from around the world at London Design Festival.


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Weekly Wrap Up: Corporate Complaining Goes #Twiral

When BA flyer Hasan Syed decided to complain about his lost luggage he did not decide to do it in the conventional way but instead bought a sponsored tweet: “Don't fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous”.

Although his tweet achieved 25,000 impressions, sending his complaint viral, it didn’t quite top the coverage achieved back in 2009 by musician Dave Carroll. When baggage handlers for United Airlines broke his guitar on a flight to Nebraska, Mr Carroll used a comical youtube video to complain.



Within one day the video had been viewed 150,000 times, and it has since accumulated over 13 million views. The story hit the headlines, and in May 2012 Mr Carroll published a book titled: United Breaks Guitars: The Power of One Voice in the Age of Social Media.

Both stories demonstrate the power of the #tweetcomplaint... Instead of Mr Syed’s and Mr Carroll’s greivances being hushed, hidden and dealt with discretely (as used to be the way) they were branded over the internet and the stories made famous.

These anecdotes act as a reminder to companies that they cannot just enjoy social media for the purpose of self-promotion, but must also monitor them for just such “rotten tweets” that could infect the rest of their corporate apple…

This new media power is a good a thing; it gives a voice to the people. Without wanting to sensationalize, it forces companies (and even countries) to be more accountable and democratic. At the macro scale, consider Malala Yousafzai and her 2009 blog promoting women’s rights under the Taliban ruling. Without social media and her connection to the BBC, the world might never have known about how limited female opportunities were in Pakistan. Similarly, without twitter BA might never have been forced to scrutinize its baggage handling policy to improve customer service…

So companies now have a new challenge to face: the challenge of social media. They must now manage their public profile, not simply control it as they used to. They must have their eyes open and their ears to the ground to ensure that whatever is being said about them is being noted, responded to and examined.

This challenge can be seen as nuisance to many companies, who have not the time nor the expertise to manage their twitter profiles as well as doing whatever it is they actually do. Social media is now an integral part of business, and if your business isn’t social, then you could be in trouble.

And even if you are able to monitor your own company’s profile, that isn’t enough. Just because your sales are up and revenue is looking good it doesn’t mean that you can’t also be hit by a negative comment going viral. Social media has meant that industry scandals are now contagious, and so if a competitor’s stocks are plummeting due to negative PR it is very likely that your stocks will quickly follow suit. The plunge of the Potash industry just this week is an example of how inter-connected and mutually vulnerable industry companies are…

So, take note of what is being said about you, your company and your industry. Consider how seemingly un-related news pieces could potentially spill over into your patch and destroy your reputation. Above all, make it easy for consumers to complain and manage your twitter account…



This week, Abchaps attended the Conservatives in Communications Young Professionals Committee meeting, whilst the market lunch programme continued its renaissance with focuses on social media and mining. The team also enjoyed the Edison Investment Summer Party at Skinner’s Hall.


Law firm Dentons has strengthened its technology, media and telecommunications division with the recruitment of Bavette Marzheuser-Wood from Field Fisher Waterhous, and Canaccord Genuity has been appointed as Financial Adviser and Broker for Tungsten’s acquisition of OB10 and resultant admission to trading on AIM.


'Twiral' - A tweet that goes viral either due to its scandalous nature or intriguing content.



Dust down the D-J for the Last Night of the Proms and Proms in the Park and celebrate as the BBC concludes its summer season. Get all classical with selection of mesmerising tunes from Elgar, Britten and Handel and Vaugn Williams; all led by the first female conductor Marin Alsop.

This Saturday London hosts a pub crawl with a twist: ‘Lit Crawl London’. The free literary festival is a raucous ramble through Convent Garden and Soho and gives attendees a chance to sample the local brew and also the words of up-and-coming writers, authors and poets.

Meat-lovers can rejoice as Meatopia returns to London’s Tobacco Dock tomorrow night. Feast on a cornucopia of barbecued and grilled meats from world-class chefs such as Hawksmoor’s Richard H Turner and BBQWhiskyBeers’s Sam Daffin and dance to diverse mix of live music from Groove Armada to Electro Blues.

This weekend you could be watching Back to the Future, Zoolander, or Grease on a rooftop in Shoreditch from the comfort of a hot tub, oh yes.

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Thought Leadership: The future of communication or useless jargon?

The contemporary corporate environment has changed considerably over the last few decades. Changes fuelled by increased stakeholder engagement, demand for corporate transparency, constant public scrutiny, and sharpened competition pose several challenges, as well as opportunities for organisations' promotional efforts. Thought leadership and issues led PR are communications strategies that embrace the opportunities, rather than merely reacting to the challenges. Underlying my explicit interest in the approach is the ability to combine all of the above challenges, and proactively present the organisation and its stakeholders with innovative solutions to industry issues.

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Online discussion about the definition and practises of though leadership are thriving. However, opinion leaders, professionals, and organisations cannot seem to agree upon what thought leadership actually entails. It is evident that a range of organisations and individuals say that they practice thought leadership, but can they call themselves thought leaders? Does it merely require a strong opinion and a twitter account? Has the term thought leadership been so misused that it is on the verge of losing all meaning and value?

Some commentators are shouting their disapproval of the strategy.  The Economist, for example, recently explained that organisations seek to provide what they annoyingly call “thought leadership”. Whilst disagreeing that thought leadership should be declared useless jargon, I accept that the prevalence of the term in nearly every industry study/ report (e.g. surprisingly The Economist Intelligence Unit) may have tainted the usage and therefore its reputation as a valid corporate communications strategy.  To further explain, thought leadership, as well as other clichéd phrases like CSR, is only effective if the organisation is truly committed to that strategy. Thought leadership therefore requires a large amount of internal buy-in and support in order to not only be credible, but to sustain and advance that position. True thought leadership will then turn regular organisational activity into intellectual capital, demonstrating a preeminent industry position and issue ownership. Thought leaders will then effectively become the “go-to-people” in that market. But what are the reputational consequences if the strategy goes wrong? Without any safety warrants, is it worth spending time and resources building this approach?

I believe true thought leadership outlines everything that is required in a current corporate communications strategy. It sets the agenda, it involves stakeholders, and it certainly facilitates industry discussions as I observed yesterday at the TLQ launch by TLG Partners Ltd. Thought leaders recognise that organisations are not just profit-making entities; they are a vital part of the wider community. With this in mind, thought leadership could well become the future of communications, or at least an essential part of it. Perhaps we just have to revaluate the terminology.

Guest post from our IPREX partner Marte Semb Aasmundsen


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