Taking a break part one

The blog is taking a break…..but, in the meantime….

Kipling as prophet

Reading a review by Jonathan Barnes in the TLS of a new edition of Rudyard Kipling’s On the Orient, a collection of his travel writings, the blog was struck by some of the Kipling quotes which are remarkably apposite today. He speaks of never-satisfied dilettante travellers and describes them in turns which capture not only his contemporaries but also the boring comments of those who post on TripAdvisor today. But what seemed most apposite is a comment on the Hong Kong markets. Asking a passer- by “how is it that everything smells of money?” he is told “it is because everything the island is going ahead mightily. Because everything pays….it is not a boom. It is genuine. Nearly every many you meet in these parts is a broker and he floats companies.” Not apposite, of course directly to Hong Kong which is, when compared with Chinese markets, relatively sedate but very much to current Chinese markets. It’s good to know booms and bust are always with us. read more

Are conservatives happier?

Over recent years a number of studies have suggested that conservatives are happier than more liberal (in the US sense of the word) people. As this is where most of the studies have been done the blog will stick to the US usage even though it is potentially misleading in a European or Australian context. read more

What makes a good conference?

The blog has always thought a good conference is one where you learn something you didn’t know; get prompted to think anew about something you thought you knew; and where you get hot under the collar about some speaker’s comments.

The recent Military History and Heritage Victoria conference – The Great Debate: Conscription and National Service 1912-1972 – managed to tick the boxes for all three success criteria. read more

Odds and sods – Iwo Jima, Libya and parliamentary poets

Australia is not alone when it comes to sacralising war and memorials. Tony Jaques has just sent the blog a link to a CNN Money article about a T-shirt manufacturer, Under Armour, producing a T-shirt with a basketball version of the famous Iwo Jima photograph.

In the T-shirt case the figures are raising a basketball net rather than the US flag. The shirt was dubbed the “Band of Ballers” See http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/18/news/under-armour-iwo-jima-shirt/ .The company, after a social media storm, removed the shirt from sale and said: “We deeply regret and apologise that a t-shirt that was not reflective of our values in honouring and supporting our country’s heroes went on sale.” The apology fails the ‘who was to blame?’ test, which Jaques has discussed in his regular issues management newsletter, with its passive voice formulation of ‘went on sale’ and its mealy mouth obfuscation. read more

Australia joins an unlikely team

What do Australia, Libya, Albania, Venezuela and Zimbabwe have in common?

We know ANZ CEO, Mike Smith, once said Australia was heading in the Venezuela direction and that at the time government and commentators scoffed. But in fact, according to a new study by the Center for International Development at Harvard University (CID), Smith was right even if not entirely for the reasons he suggested. The study shows that Australia – along with Libya, Mauritania, Venezuela, Bolivia, Azerbaijan, Namibia, Albania, Qatar, Zimbabwe and Georgia – were amongst the biggest losers in terms of factors which reflect a nation’s productive knowledge. read more

How opinion is formed

Discussing information, persuasion and communication over the past two odd millennia is impossible without understanding the history of western churches and the various religious upheavals associated with them.

For most PR people praying is a pastime mainly devoted to hoping their message gets used in whatever outlet they have targeted (well at least if they are sophisticated enough to avoid blanket distributions)  but for the religious praying goes hand in hand with thinking about how to persuade others to pray in the same way. read more

Surprise, surprise

Moral decay, drug-addicted, violent, drug-taking – just a few of the terms frequently thrown around about today’s youth.

Peter Costello, our former Treasurer, told us “we do not have to look far to see evidence of moral decay all around us.” We don’t think he was talking about the Howard Government and Tampa nor the dodgy data which got us into the Iraq War and its ‘embarrassing’ failure to find weapons of mass destruction. Nor the wanton budgetary policies which squandered the benefits of Australia’s best yet terms of trade and the massive income from the resources boom. Instead he was talking about our young and their musical preferences. read more

CSR – living the commitment

In the small German town of Weil am Rhein, just across the border with Switzerland, is perhaps one of the finest examples anywhere in the world of corporate social responsibility which is not an add on but something intrinsic to a corporate culture.

It is the Vitra campus – the centre for the Vitra Design Museum and a collection of buildings ranging from factories and warehouses to a fire station. See https://www.vitra.com/en-au/campus. Vitra is a company famous for owning the rights to the more famous Eames chair as well as producing a range of products – from office equipment to domestic stuff – which epitomise everything which is best about functional, minimalist designs which also have a fun element. read more

They would have loved it

In the latest version of confected horror at Anzac exploitation social media has got very upset about Bauer Media’s Zoo magazine’s Anzac  edition featuring a scantily clad model Erin Pash (nudge nudge wink wink).

Now the blog sadly has not heard of the magazine, nor the online controversy about its Anzac edition, but Australia’s pre-eminent issues and crisis management scholar, Dr Tony Jaques, brought it to the blog’s attention. The details can be found at http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/mens-magazine-zoo-weekly-sparks-controversy-with-anzac-commemorative-issue/story-fn907478-1227319442706. Tony , by the way, monitors emerging issues rather than being a Zoo reader. read more

The problem of sacredness

The major problem with making things sacred is that it inevitably leads to both commercialism and hypocrisy.

The pre-eminent example of this in European history was the pre-Counter Revolution Catholic Church. In Australia the pre-eminent example is the Anzac Day commemorations which will take place tomorrow. read more

An insider’s view of how public relations really works