Category Events

June 24, 2015,  Council of Ministers, data protection, EU General Data Protection Regulation, European Commission, European Parliament, Events  No comments

Speaking after the first Trilogue meeting today, Jan Philipp Albrecht, Rapporteur for the European Parliament said that agreement between the European Commission, Parliament and Council of Ministers may be achievable by the end of 2015 alongside the Data Protection Directive for law enforcement – the so-called EU Police Directive.

Speaking to reporters, Albrecht said: “The Trilogue (negotiations) today showed very clearly that agreement is feasible if all parties are open to compromise. All parties are committed to the timetable. The texts are actually a lot closer to each other now than we thought a few months ago.”

He was referring to the versions of GDPR that each si...

March 27, 2015,  Events, The Art of Influencing and Selling  No comments

On the 26 March 2015, the Faculty of Business and Law at Kingston University London was host to a delegation of students from the University of Berlin that were on an exchange visit.

Part of the itinerary, organised by Dr Amelia Au-Yeung was to explore whether students are adequately prepared for life in the world of commerce and whether business schools are doing enough to equip them to be effective salespeople.

To help stimulate debate as to whether it’s ‘nature or nurture’, I was asked was asked to pull together a panel of experts to debate the issue with our visitors from Germany.

Fatima Annan-Diab, Associate professor at the Faculty of Business and Law referred t...

December 16, 2014,  Events, News  No comments

Many organisations are now very concerned about the likely impact of the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation. This new legislation represents the first major overhaul of data protection legislation since the 90’s and is a response to the significant privacy issues arising from the rapid developments in data management, cloud hosting and social networking.

The new rules will require ALL companies – big and small – to manage data access and privacy with greater stringency, carrying very significant penalties for failing to do so. This new data requirement affects every financial services company in all EU Member States...

August 12, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle  No comments

It was just a few weeks’ ago that we were celebrating the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing in the Oval Office.

But according to the latest evidence, Americans have fallen out of love with space missions and that’s a terrible indictment on our thirst to further explore the boundaries of our tiny universe.

An 18-month enquiry by the National Research Council (NRC) has concluded that the project to put a man on Mars to be “unsafe, underfunded and doomed to fail” in its current form.

A real kick in the pants for NASA that must feel like it’s on the longest and loneliest spacewalk mission in history.

Apparently Americans were always ambivalent about reaching for ...

July 18, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle  No comments

British PM David Cameron is an effective communicator although perhaps not in the same league as Tony Blair. However, Cameron did learn his trade whilst working within the public relations industry as director of communications for Michael Green at Carlton Communications. I remember it well. I once had a meeting with both men. So it’s probably fair to assume that Cameron recognised the PR challenge that was starring him in the face.

The fate of the Tories in winning the next General Election remains in the balance despite the resurgence in the fortunes of the UK economy as evidenced by a recent spate of research and statistics that show Britain’s economy is growing faste...

July 17, 2014,  Events  No comments

A thousand years ago the great cities of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo took turns to race ahead of the Western world. Islam and innovation were twins. The various Arab caliphates were beacons of learning, religious tolerance and trade. That’s a far cry from the state of Arabs today.

As The Economist reports, as Asia, Latin America and Africa advance, the Middle East is held back by despotism and is convulsed by war with Israel, which is a completely futile cause and never likely to create an outcome that the terrorists of democracy dream about.

There needs to be massive resurgence where moderation and the respect for other nations, cultures and religions once again becomes part...

May 22, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle, News, Thought Leadership  3 comments

Indian voters are pinning their hopes on their new Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the Hindu nationalist BJP, to make good on his promises – a factor that eventually forced the Congress Party to lose its grip on power and suffer crushing defeat at the hands of its rival.

Former India PM Manmohan Singh claims that the legacy of his presidency is a far stronger Indian economy compared to that when he took office a decade earlier.

But the octogenarian became susceptible to a string of corruption scandals within his own party as well as political paralysis where he was seen as being too aloof to stop.

Modi will be sensitive and mindful of the short-comings of his predec...

May 3, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle, Public Relations practice  No comments

No, this isn’t a crossword conundrum or trick question but in fact the essence of the debate I chaired on Thursday 1 May at the offices of BNY Mellon ahead of the PRCA’s PR Council Meeting.

Like most things in life, there are at least two sides to every story – whether it’s the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation that threatens to obliterate the freedom of marketers to track behaviour of consumers or the ethics of sponsoring education content in the classroom.

You can be sure that whenever you get two marketers in the room, you’ll have at least three points of view.

So when it comes to ‘content marketing’… well, you can bet there’s as many views on the ...

March 24, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle, Public Relations practice, Sponsorship News  One comment

This was the subject of my presentation at the 5^th World Communication Forum in Davos, Switzerland and my co-presenter was the dynamic Andrew Denton, Head of Media at Welcome to Yorkshire.

The topic we were asked to address was how global events can stimulate economic development. What you may not realise when you’re reading this blog post is that Yorkshire won the bid to host the first stage of the world’s most famous cycle race, the Tour de France.

The Grand Depart will begin in Leeds on Saturday 5 July 2014 and will be broadcast in 88 countries to millions of viewers around the world, many of whom may not have a clue about where Yorkshire is or indeed how stunning it is...

March 19, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle, Public Relations practice  No comments

As Crimea becomes the focus of media attention here in the West, it’s easy for the facts to become obscured in the race for getting a headline grabbing news story as the public relations battle between Russia and the West picks up pace.

In the wake of the Crimea referendum on Sunday 16 March that was observed by more than a hundred bona fide international observers from 23 countries – although not affiliated with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe – it’s easy to dismiss President Putin as conducting ‘gun boat’ diplomacy when he addressed the Russian Parliament on Tuesday 18 March in what many commentators see as one of the defining moments of his presid...