Instead of emphasising the value that work experience provides interns, we need to recognise the value that interns bring to a company. Edelman views internships as a partnership between our team and those that are starting out in their PR careers. We demonstrate this partnership through a commitment to many internships each year that are paid at the London Living Wage and have been for almost a decade. The work that interns do for us as well as the collaborative nature of our placements means that Edelman gains just as much from them, as we hope they do from their time with us. It is our belief that paying our interns shows just a little appreciation for the immense contribution that they bring to the business.

We’re always on the look out for brilliant new talent, if you think you’ve got what we’re looking for, please check out our available vacancies here

Written by Claire Anderson, Edelman HR Administrator

I was honoured to be invited by our very own Sarah Richardson to the Annual Council meeting for the election of the new Lord Mayor of Westminster last night. An evening of ceremony and a demonstration of people who give back to their communities every day. Sarah works in our Public Affairs and Corporateteam, and her dynamic and extremely smart thinking – together with her community spirit –  has also underpinned her role as a  Westminster City Councillor.

Last night her hard work over the last few years was recognised by her peers as she donned the Lord Mayor robe and chain for the very first time. An evening decked in heritage and formality was lightened by an accompanying choir and Sarah’s own, deeply personal and deeply moving speech. Sarah is now Mayor of the most amazing part of London with the landmarks of Buckingham Palace, The Houses of Parliament and 10 Downing Street, together with the entertainment and culture of Soho, the shopping of the West End and the beauty of the Royal Parks. She is also the youngest Mayor ever. Amazing.

Sarah has elegantly trail-blazed her way to her many achievements. She kindly acknowledged me and Edelman in her acceptance speech and highlighted the support of her husband and family. As a working mother, she juggles all of the demands and opportunities very well, and now she will manage the Mayoral role as well as the day job with us! But she would be the first to say (as she has done to me) that it is also a challenge to ensure that everything gets done the best way.

With all the publicity around Sheryl Sandberg and her rallying cry to “lean in,” I do think it’s important to celebrate what we achieve as working women. And while I applaud ambition, success and drive to the very bottom of my heart, I also worry that the “lean in” advice actually pressures women in ways that are not helpful. We can only try and succeed in ways that are appropriate to us and can be lived by us as individuals.

In a clip from an interview with Oprah, Sandberg says, “We expect people to adhere to stereotypes… The stereotype of men is leadership qualities: leader, decisive, going to make things happen. The stereotypes of women are communal qualities: care-giving, sensitive. Because we expect those qualities to be in opposition to each other, it means when a woman does anything other than be nice first, she’s judged badly.”

I don’t agree with this at all. And I think Sarah Richardson is living proof that you can be a leader, make things happen AND have communal qualities. And that’s something to lean into and celebrate.

Jackie Cooper is global chair of creative strategy.

“Trust has risen up the company agenda,” acknowledged Angela Knight, Chief Executive of industry group Energy UK, “and any company that is not putting it on the agenda is making a serious mistake.”

This is not about the feelgood factor of company bosses that want to be loved; trust is a bottom line issue, says Laurence Evans, President International of Edelman Berland. According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer survey, companies that are distrusted find themselves in a deep well, with 57% of people ready to believe negative information after hearing it just once or twice; a mere 15% will consider positive information. Contrast that with a firm that has earned the public’s trust: at most a quarter will believe negative information about this firm, while more than half will readily accept positive news.

“People will trust the energy industry only if they can trust the market again, once it’s competitive enough,” said Labour MP Caroline Flint, who speaks for the main opposition party on energy issues. The problem, though, is how to make the market competitive. One key problem was the failure of industry oversight, said Richard Hall, Head of Energy Regulation at Consumer Futures. The lack of a “credible deterrence” against poor industry practice had allowed unacceptable behaviour to “become the norm”. But what is the right kind of regulation? The current debate in the UK – where a new Energy Bill makes is way through parliament – demonstrates how tricky it is to find agreement.

If there is one lesson that could be taken away from the event organised by the Energy and Industrials Group, then it’s the fact that transparency is central to any solution.

Stephen Fitzpatrick, founder of UK energy provider Ovo, said his young company had developed a “very clever system” to win customers: “It’s called Telling the Truth”.

“Trust equals transparency plus consistency,” he argued, even if it might cause a company embarrassment. Angela Knight agreed, and suggested that the energy sector could only thrive in a world where regulation was “appropriate, relevant and properly policed.”

If the missed the event yesterday you can listen to a few soundbites via the links below:

Angela Knight: Q – What can be done from an industry perspective to regain trust both from the retail end and the energy generator end?

Caroline Flint: Q – From a regular Conservative Government point of view, what can be done to restore trust in the industry?

Stephen Fitzpatrick: Q – What has the industry got to do to restore trust?

Writer:

Dr Tim Weber, Director, Edelman Tim is a Director in the Energy and Industrials team at Edelman UK. He is a technology and content specialist and experienced media trainer. Before joining Edelman in July 2012, he was a highly experienced and widely respected business and technology journalist at BBC News, where he was the business and technology editor of the BBC’s interactive services, in charge of online sections that reach several million readers every day.

Digital Disruptors and a Nexus of Converging Forces: Phrases that you might find at home in the latest blockbuster movie offering a glimpse into our high-tech futures. They are actually used by industry experts as lenses that enable us to observe, understand and adapt to changes shaping enterprise IT today.

Nevertheless, in Alex Proya’s iRobot, a 2035 Chicago detective played by actor Will Smith pays for a beer with technology that clearly resembles an evolution of Near Field Communication (NFC). Similarly, Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report set nearly 20 years later shows a man sitting on the train reading a Tablet inspired newspaper, which updates in real-time with the latest stories in text, pictures, graphics and video.

The fact that these movies were imagined only a few years before the sight of a Contactless Payment terminal or iPad demonstrates how fine a line there can sometimes be between hype and reality. However, right now disruption in enterprise IT is at risk of causing havoc for future gazers, and those who need a firm footing in the present.

Disruption

“In every industry, digital disruptors are taking advantage of new platforms, tools, and relationships to upend markets, undercut competitors, and get closer to customers,” claims a new book from Forrester Research titled Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation. Written by Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst James McQuiver, Digital Disruption states amongst other things that: ‘businesses need to disrupt themselves by making disruption a C-level priority, eliminating internal barriers to disruption, and creating small internal teams to focus on disruptive opportunities.’

Disruption also features highly in the Gartner’s Nexus of Converging Forces, which describes ‘the convergence and mutual reinforcement of four interdependent trends shaping the IT industry: social interaction, mobility, cloud, and information.’

Radical or disruptive change is inevitable and often necessary, but for many organisations change of any sort is difficult to embrace, especially when it feels unachievable and even more so if it requires a temporary suspension of disbelief.  Ask too much of people and the risk is that they take the least complicated route – indecision.

Paralysis

In an article in Wired Magazine, Tamar Kasriel, MD Futurereal offers an interesting critique on a society steeped in disruption:

“It is only once a technology is embedded in our social fabric that it can start to change how we operate as humans. Human needs do not get disrupted, they evolve. If people are incessantly fed a diet of disruption, then the risk is that change and intervention are cast as the only sensible strategic options. But positioning a world that is so thoroughly disrupted as to be unrecognisable gives people an excuse not to plan at all – a kind of disruption paralysis.” 

Disruption Paralysis is a potential reason why disruptive technology models such as cloud computing are only now seeing a degree of mainstream adoption. Indeed, a recent report The Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) notes that rate of cloud adoption has accelerated in recent months but then also shows that in the UK alone 39% of businesses large to small, public and private have yet to adopt any such solution.

Trust

Disruption Paralysis can distort our vision of the future. In a post on Big Data and Analytics, a key component in the Nexus of Forces, Freeform Dynamics’ Programme Director and Analyst Tony Lock reveals interesting insights into to the reality and perception of disruptive technologies.

According to his firm’s survey of IT decision makers, developments in storage, access and analytics are allowing the majority of them to tackle problems today that were either too hard or too expensive to deal with in the past. However, very few believe that vendors and consulting firms are well geared to provide them with the support and services needed to take advanced storage, access and analytics on board effectively.

Somewhere between this void of real world enterprise technological capabilities and perceived IT industry culpability lies the ultimate challenge: Trust.

In his concluding remarks Lock notes that over three quarters of those taking part in the survey consider the term big data to be over-hyped and the associated marketing around it to be unhelpful. Indeed, in CIFs own analysis of cloud adoption it points out that: “the background debates that consume the most time and attention are not related to technology per se, but rather relate back to more commercial and governance issues of security, protection, sovereignty and portability.”

If we are to ever reach the nirvana that will no doubt be seen in the next visionary blockbuster, trust must be at the heart of technology and business change. The bigger risk is two-fold: On one side, as a result of Disruption Paralysis, businesses will increasingly neglect strategic IT imperatives that will determine future success. On the other side, and at significant pain and cost for IT vendors, the true potential of disruption will take that much longer to achieve.

Trusted Disruptors

Despite the range of views around the meaning, timeline and impact of disruptive technologies, it is clear that changes taking place in today’s enterprise IT environment provide a blueprint for a what will be a truly blockbusting future.

With the right approach, the big opportunity for communicators in the enterprise technology space is positioning disruption as a mechanism for building trust.  Kasriel herself states that good futurescaping should be about trying to eke out continuities we can understand and build on, not just provoke with the shock and fear of the new.

Writer:

Sat Dayal, Director, Edelman Sat works in Edelman’s Technology team in London, and is the lead on Enterprise Technology. He’s responsible for developing client strategy and solutions drawing on over a decade of experience in working with brands in this space, alongside others in consumer, entertainment and telecom technologies. .

The elections saw loses for both the Coalition Parties, although these fell short of the major defeat forecast by some. Labour achieved limited progress, wresting back control of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire but falling short in a string of other marginal authorities. It was the UK Independence Party that achieved the most dramatic results of the night. Nigel Farage’s Party saw its tally of County Councillors rocket from just 8 four years ago to nearly 150.

As the top tier of local Government across much of England, the results of this year’s County Council elections have significant implications. County Councils are responsible for the delivery of a diverse range of services, from Education and Highways, to Planning, and Economic Development.

To illustrate how the political map of England has been transformed, Edelman’s Public Affairs team has prepared a detailed guide to these elections.

Click here to download the map

Writer:

Benedict Surtees, Account Executive, Edelman Benedict is an Account Executive in Edelman’s public affairs team. He provides political intelligence, research and stakeholder engagement for a number of corporate clients, specializing in the infrastructure, property and telecommunications sectors. Prior to joining Edelman Benedict studied for his masters at Oxford University, having graduated with first class honours in History & Politics (BA) from Leicester University. He previously worked as a Parliamentary Agent for the Conservative Party where he coordinated winning campaigns at Local, Parliamentary and European levels.

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Edelman’s Public Affairs Queen’s Speech Representatives:

	Dominic Pendry, Director, Edelman Dominic is a director in Edelman’s public affairs team. He provides strategic oversight for a number of corporate clients, specializing in the infrastructure, property and digital sectors. Dominic has had a successful career in political and media campaigning for over ten years, working for political parties, corporations and trade associations. Most recently, he was Network Rail’s Head of Communications for Property.
	Jessica Lennard, Associate Director, Edelman Jessica is an associate director in Edelman’s public affairs team. Previously a capital markets solicitor with City firm Linklaters LLP, Jessica entered politics in 2008 working on energy policy and communications on the staff of Greg Barker MP. She was a member of the Shadow Energy and Climate Change team and managed the Conservative Party’s highly successful ‘Climate Campaign’ out of Conservative Campaign Headquarters.
	Anthony Marlowe, Associate Director, Edelman Anthony joined Edelman in January 2008. He previously worked as a policy advisor in Parliament for Justine Greening MP, the then Shadow Economic Secretary and current Shadow Minister for London and Vice-Chair of the Conservative Party. While working for the Shadow Economic Secretary, Anthony worked with senior figures from a number of transport and environmental organisations. Anthony also acted as a policy advisor to the Shadow Treasury, most notably on developing potential forms of innovative environmental taxation.
	Camilla Horwood, Head of Health Public Affairs, Edelman Camilla is head of Health Public Affairs and leads on the development and marketing of Edelman’s Health Public Affairs offering as well as providing experienced UK health policy, market access and strategic political advice. Camilla has ten years’ of experience within public affairs and strategic communications both in-house and in agency settings. This has seen her provide senior political counsel and issues management advice to a wide range of organisations at CEO and board level, including: medical device suppliers, global pharmaceutical companies, private healthcare providers, health insurers, patient groups and charities. Prior to joining Edelman, Camilla was Associate Director/ Head of Health at Portcullis Public Affairs.

Join us on the 5th June to explore the impact of multi-screen engagement on the entertainment industry and how this effects the audience experience. Gail Becker, Global Head of Edelman’s Digital Entertainment and Technology Practice will present findings from the 2013 global study. Furthermore, Neuroscientist Dr Jack Lewis will explain how brands can ride the new wave of multi-screen audiences, continuing to provide content that connects, retains the attention of and most importantly, entertains.

If you’d like to express your interest in attending the event or would like more information please email edelmanuk@edelman.com

2013 heralded a new approach to this; user-generated content was obviously not deemed interesting enough, so now brands are educating us on how it is done. Anyone with a Twitter feed can expect to see a continuous flow of high production value videos for us to share and promote.  For some, the definition of what is acceptable content has been lost. As a result some major brands have realised the media and most importantly the public’s tolerance levels do have limits and this is catching people out.

So far this year Ford decided that female kidnapping was suitable content for a print advert. Not to be outdone, Hyundai felt suicide was an untapped resource in getting people to consider an environmentally friendly SUV.

What all of these have in common is that they were all produced by respected agencies; all in theory received full sign-off (anyone who works in this industry will know that nothing happens without going through an approval process that would test the patience of a saint) and all were placed on very public forums so that you have to assume that they were designed to be seen.

And boy, were they seen. The backlash against all of these was pretty instant and what was very clear from an issues management point of view was that not one of these brands had invested any time scenario planning for the potential issues. All three brands were subject to high profile scrutiny. In Hyundai’s case this all took place online and in one afternoon the subject became a trending topic and developed into a national news story. In all cases the brand’s responses were confused, uncoordinated and very reactive.  A good example of this could be seen by Hyundai USA who worked hard to distance themselves from Hyundai Europe with this statement. “We at Hyundai Motor America are shocked and saddened by the depiction of a suicide attempt in an inappropriate UK video featuring a Hyundai,” it said. “Suicide merits thoughtful discussion, not this type of treatment.”

From an issues management point of view the sources of each of these pieces of content are worthy of scrutiny.  What becomes clear is the ‘power of one’ is very a much truism that those responsible for brand protection need to be acutely aware of.  The whole Hyundai issue grew from one well written, articulate blog. Despite the fact the conventional media had already reviewed the advert and indeed praised it, this later blog completely turned the story around. Further scrutiny, using the Edelman Berland Flow 140 Twitter analysis tool, shows that the original tweet was retweeted 700 times in two days, but in fact it only took three people to start and drive the conversation. In other words 0.4% of people involved generated 97% of all online conversations.

To Hyundai UK’s credit within 24 hours they had promoted tweets in place containing their apology and position and while this showed an understanding of where the conversation was being played out, the phrase “too little, too late,” springs to mind.

Protecting reputation is all about preparation and awareness. In all of these instances advanced thought on the potential issues, where they were likely to play out and how to respond would have given all of these brands a fighting chance of, at the very least putting their position across; instead they were forced into publicly withdrawing their work. They are forever going to be referenced as case studies and the damage to their longer term reptutations is still to be determined.

Writer:

Duncan Gallagher, UK Crisis Practice Lead, Edelman Duncan is head of the UK Crisis practice, and has over 17 years PR experience and is a specialist in crisis and issues management. With a keen interest in the digital space Duncan has developed and delivered scenario planning and training sessions for a number of blue chip international companies, presented media response training sessions, produced internal crisis communications manuals and written training guides.

A recent study has shown taht  only 50 Non-execs within the entire FTSE350 have substantive Marketing experience and that marketeers still often rely on hunches and experience to inform their insights and decisions. These two pieces are very much related as marketing, despite its importance, still struggles to compete against other ‘serious’ disciplines like finance, due to a lack of financial understanding and an inability to offer the board tangible, evidence based business analysis, decision-making and proof of impact.

This week on Edelman Editions Stephen Cheliotis, head of brand and creative meets with JT, UK managing director, Edelman Berland and Erica Buckley, senior manager of insights and strategy, Edelman Digital to talk about the role of marketing in the bigger business picture and the importance of measurement and insights. The discuss why marketeers need to base strategic and tactical recommendations on evidence and to undertake effective measurement to prove real cause and effect on brand equity and underlying business success.

If you’d like to talk to Edelman about any of the points discussed in the podcast above please contact edelmanuk@edelman.com

It has raised interesting questions and some ferocious debate online around the extent to which consumers should be demanding accountability from these companies when they buy products. The idea of a £5 t-shirt from Primark has always felt a little wrong – the quip regularly seems to go ‘oh well, that will be slave labour going into that then.’

What the media coverage of the factory collapse, and the protests outside Primark stores this week that resulted, clearly shows is how important it is for companies to work even harder to examine their supply chains. They should also be prepared to respond publically in the case of such a disaster, whether or not there was actually any more they could have possibly done to avert it.

As part of a growing sustainable and responsible business agenda companies have known for a while that they can’t escape the complexity and depth of their supply chains. The rise of content shared online quickly opens up pictures of worryingly poor quality working conditions or environmental disasters in factories that produce the goods we see on the High Street. And you have to be ready to be falsely accused if you have counterfeited products with your logo all over them being made in unregulated factories (a problem many big brands now face).

In the clothing industry in particular, the International Labour Organisation and NGOs such as Clean Clothes Campaign and Oxfam have kept up the pressure to drive transparency and accountability from the big brands that have the buying power and (hopefully) consumer support for driving best practice. I for one would be pleased to pay more for a product with guarantees that standards are being upheld.

I know from working closely in the past with one of the leaders in this space, Levi Strauss and Co, that a supplier code of conduct must be put in place and a robust system of auditing and regulation set up along the supply chain. Companies can also communicate openly with customers about where products have come from, for example publishing lists of supplier factories as HP recently did for the smelters that supply materials used in the production of its computers and other electronics.

Some would argue that it is the responsibility of the local governments and authorities to uphold suitable working conditions, environmental standards and living wage. It is a tough one to resolve, particularly when you get into moral debates over economic contributions vs. expected levels of working conditions. What has been abundantly clear for markets such as Bangladesh is the need to clamp down on corruption and insider dealing amongst a few powerful players.

As the FT pointed out last week in their report on the disaster, members of the government have significant financial interest in the garment sector and western retailers claims to ethical sourcing can be quickly undermined if the source country’s basic administrative processes cannot enforce basic local rules such as, in the case of the recent building collapse in Bangladesh, building codes. But an FT editorial the same day in the paper also stated that retailers have a duty to use their economic muscle and intelligence to press for change.

Primark and other retailers have now reacted well by offering support to the victims to dampen some of the bad PR they have had, but ultimately it will be the work they can do, alongside the rest of the industry, to enforce supplier codes of conduct that will be the real test.

Consumers would also do well to remember the simple common sense of investing more than £5 in a t-shirt in the knowledge that it will last longer, reducing the impact on the environment and hopefully going towards better conditions for those who helped to make it.

Writer:

Ed Grattan, Account Director, Corporate and Financial, Edelman Ed joined the corporate & financial team at Edelman in November 2010 and currently works on the Shell, Levi Strauss & Co and Rolls-Royce and SC Johnson accounts. Previously he was at Euro RSCG Biss Lancaster, where he was working for Standard Chartered Bank on their worldwide CSR programme and on employer brand marketing for Royal Bank of Scotland.