"The brand is our promise, our reputation is how well we live up to it. Or not." Is that really the case? Is it that binary? Isn’t branding all about design and badges – the colours and shapes we can and cannot use as defined by the infamous brand police? Oh, and the odd expensive ad campaign or three?   Isn’t influencing and curating the firm’s reputation what we comms and corporate affairs people do?   Let’s accept that every organisation does need a brand and that brand needs to be...

At the Little Questions, we’re always at the forefront of current events – whether that’s the Great Fire of London or the Battle of Hastings, we’re ready to chew the topical cud on all manner of things but, as ever, wearing our PR and comms hats. Today we're going to talk about:   Whether corporations should dictate what words should and shouldn’t be used?  1 in 3 would have ‘complete confidence’ in AI handling crisis comms; 47% would be ‘somewhat confident’. Really? What does this mean...

Five years ago, a number of us came together to launch a new strategic communications firm, Apella Advisors. We'd either led large consultancies or held senior roles as corporate affairs directors at some large organisations. But we saw an opportunity to do something a little bit different. So as we reach this five year mark, we thought we'd use this edition of the Little Questions podcast to lift the lid a little on the running of our business. The ups and downs, the do's and don'ts. As...

In the world of communications, it pays to be current. Whether you are working in-house or at an agency, being the first to say “But have you read that piece in the FT today?” makes you appear as though you have a finger on the media pulse. This week on the Little Questions Podcast, we attempt to sound like we’re at the cutting edge of public discourse. Today we’re going to chew the topical cud on:   Why have a Budget Statement when everything in it has already been publicised in the...

Having a coach in business is a relatively new phenomenon and in Corporate Affairs, arguably even rarer.  But could having a great coach be what takes you and your corporate affairs team from pretty darn good to stand out brilliant?  How do you know when you need a coach and what are the signs? How do you go about finding the right one? Could having a coach be seen as an admission that you’re struggling and potentially not up to the job? And, what is the difference between coaching and...

The world is changing. There appears to be an increasing reluctance amongst CEOs and senior leaders to engage with mainstream business and financial media. From the corporate world’s perspective, you can see why this makes sense. Why have your carefully crafted messages interrogated by a grumpy intermediary from the press when you can go direct via your owned channels? From the journalist’s view, this is disintermediation laid bare. If we believe the role of the fourth estate is to give...

There's no I in team but there is a me. So goes the schoolboy humour level adage. We come together in teams because, as the entire sweep of human history has taught us, we can achieve a hell of a lot more than on our own, or scrapping amongst ourselves. But that doesn’t stop us does it? It's in our nature. Especially when a fair majority of those team members are opinionated, creative, dare I say a tad on the emotional side, extroverts, like you might find in your everyday common or garden...

We’re back again for another chew through the cud that is corporate communications. It’s been a while since our last one so there is much for us to consider.  Amongst several items of fluff we’re going to muse on: out of touch leaders, ancient and uncool British sports, upcycling, fat shaming and you won’t be at all surprised to hear, the horror and tragedy that was, possible still is, the Post Office from 2003 well, to pretty much to today. As ever we’ll attempt to use the magic that is...

One of the longest running game shows on UK TV was Family Fortunes. For more than 40 years, families would compete for big cash prizes, trying to second guess what the Great British Public had answered in a survey of 100 people. Just as opinion polling was the foundation upon which this globally successful game show format was based, so too is it used for PR purposes. Scratching around, waiting for your company or client to do something newsworthy, polling is a means of creating news and...

We all have our Christmas traditions don’t we? That film you just have to watch every Christmas Eve, Carol singing in the village square, setting up the nativity, betting when Great Uncle Albert will fall asleep in the comfy chair.  At Little Questions towers, one of our Christmas traditions is to take a look back over the year that was.  With dotage fading our memories and entirely unscientifically, we like to consider our PR heroes and villains of 2023.   We’d love to hear what you...

After the roaring success of our October “chew through the topical comms cud” we’re back again to cast a critical eye over what was November.  We are going to have a look at: enquiries, unexpected comebacks, codenames, northern supermarkets and AI.  We’ll attempt to distil a little insight which we professional communicators can take from how these events played out and what, with the magic of hindsight, we might have done differently. Matt Young is an Apella Advisors partner with 25 years...

Everyone loves a party don’t they? A gathering where you can have a good catch up with those you haven’t seen for ages. Make new friends, trade gossip, learn something new and perhaps even let your hair down. But not too much! Parties, or events as we like to call them in the corporate world, come in all shapes and sizes - conferences, seminars, AGMs, award dinners, product launches, journalist trips, internal and external, virtual, hybrid or in person. When you list the activities of...

We've decided to go all topical in this episode. What has been happening in our world of PR and comms? How has our profession been advising on some of the current issues? Would we have handled these differently? Of course, we're conscious of commenting on current events as the horrific and tragic events unfold in Gaza and Israel. These are times when PR or comms seem inconsequential to what is happening around our world. However, it is at times like this when words matter, or, when the...

This week's podcast episode was influenced by a chance remark about a haircut...  Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a CEO of a large corporation knew the corner office was theirs for as long as the shareholders, customers and maybe the government were happy.  Now, they have to delicately navigate a minefield of social norms. It used to be a pretty rare thing for a chief executive to lose their job over events that were the focus of society at large, rather than just the city. That...

Apella Advisors Parter, Andrew Brown: "Early on in my comms career I was taught that conflict, strife, disagreement – that’s fundamentally what people are interested in and what helps our journalist friends sell newspapers." It is hard to get genuine cut through, where everyone knows and has heard of who you are and what you do, especially if you are a small firm trying to make it big. But, one tactic that has worked consistently well over the decades is the art of picking (and winning) a...

Do companies and organisations really get value from attending the party conference?   As Corporate Affairs Director, one of Matt Young's tasks every year was to set the departmental budget. That would include the annual discussion about whether to attend the political party conferences. Would it prove good value, in both time and money? Will the cost be worth it for the hotel, the travel, that expensive bar bill? Well, it was more fundamental. Why would we subsidise the Westminster...

Recorded at the Royal Society of Arts in London, in front of a live audience, Little Questions Live 2 asks 'How do you communicate through times of uncertainty and change?'.   To tackle this not so little question, Apella Advisors Partner Jenny Scott is joined by a panel of industry experts:   - Steve Hawkes - Reputation and External Affairs at Flutter UK, former journalist at the Times, The Mirror and Political and Business Editor at the Sun - Rachel Hopcroft - Corporate Affairs...

On this episode of The Little Questions, we are joined by one of our industry's most respected practitioners, Basil Towers. Basil has been advising organisations on how to be trusted for 40 years. He's researched it, he's taught it at Oxford Saïd Business School, he's advised FTSE 100 CEOs on it and one thing he has found in that time is that not all trust is of equal value.  Join Jenny Scott and Andrew Brown from Apella Advisors, as they chat in depth about trust with Basil Towers on this...

Admin. Forms. Process. Dull, dull, dull.  It’s what gets in the way of doing the actual job that we all love, right?  Talking to journalists, coming up with that clever policy idea, pulling together a brilliant new social campaign or perfectly nailing the messaging in a complicated sequence of regulated announcements. The bureaucracy, be it functional or corporate, just slows us down. Or does it? Is your comms grid really used to plan and activate in a co-ordinated manner or has it become...

This week, Andrew and Matt chew the fat about the lessons learned after four years of creating the comms agency, Apella Advisors. And it's after those four years, with a few clients under our belt, a slightly larger team, and perhaps most unexpectedly of all a podcast that people actually listen to! We must be doing something right.  People occasionally ask us if creating this consultancy has changed the way we think about and do comms? Do we look wistfully back at our in-house days or...

As Comms professionals who aim to provide clarity and understanding in everything, are we failing in that aim with certain generations? Is it time to learn the languages of different generations? Should we be smarter in thinking about the way different generations receive and respond to communications? Matt Young and Andrew Brown from Apella Advisors discuss this little (big) question this week. However, having a couple of Gen X's ponder on this generational topic and come up with our usual...

Every now and again in the world of comms, the firewall you’ve thrown up around your organisation fails, and something you’d rather wasn’t “out there” gets through. Perhaps the CEO has said something she shouldn’t have in that profile interview that took months to set up. Or a sensitive email has ended up in the hands of a colleague in the media.  If you’re in this game and you’ve not been there, you will. It’s as inevitable and irresistible a force as gravity. So. What do you do? Can you...

The term ‘doyen’ is overused, but in the case of our guest today, it feels appropriate. For the last 25 years Danny Rogers has been a leading commentator and speaker on the comings and goings of the public relations industry. Now the editor-in-chief of PR Week, Danny started as a journalist with the FT’s Creative Business and the Guardian’s media section, and then he moved to Haymarket group as editor of PR Week magazine.  An author, his book, ‘The campaigns that shook the world’ shone a...

Much of the work done by the corporate communications function goes unnoticed. But there is one piece of activity you can be sure will grab people's attention… the set piece leader profile. Get a full page spread in a Sunday paper with a cracking photo and you can be sure everyone in the organisation, and beyond, will read it. Get it right and you can have your CEO come across as a visionary, yet down to earth leader successfully delivering a great strategy. This can become a genuine moment...