After juggling two blogs for a while, I have decided it is time to say good bye to Chattering Class.  I hope you will join me at citizenrenaissance.com.

Yesterday morning, we (Edelman) hosted an event that stared into the Crystal Ball to consider the business and economic outlook for 2009. Illustrious panellists included the Lib Dem’s Vince Cable; Jim O’Neill from Goldman Sachs (father of BRIC and described as the ‘rockstar of all Economists’); David Frost, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce and the voice of Middle Britain businesses; and John Waples, Business Editor of the Sunday Times. Their perspectives varied from the depressing to the apolocalyptic, with very few rays of sunshine in between.

(David Brain has summarised the content succinctly on www.sixtysecondview.com and there is a film of the panel, available to view on www.edelman.co.uk or on www.despatchblog.com).

Although all four speakers poo-pooed one question (from Anthony Kleanthous, co-author of ‘Let Them Eat Cake‘) on whether the blind pursuit of growth really is an answer to our economic ills (it isn’t), there was a surprisingly green tinge to some of the thinking. John Waples insisted that good corporate citizenship would become more important, not less, in these recessionary times – and that a firm’s environmental responsibilities would be central to their reputational balance. Likewise, David Frost called for a significant up-weighting in investment in green technologies and companies with environmental innovation at their heart. Why are all our wind turbines manufactured in Scandinavia or South Korea, when they could be an important stepping stone to manufacturing recovery in Britain? A neat vignette, I thought.

Meanwhile - as the Experts analysed, discussed and debated the height of the cliff-top on which we all now perch and from which we may all soon plunge – my Inbox was being peppered with interesting and indeed heart-warming news. First, that the DG of the CBI, Richard Lambert has called upon the Government not to abandon its environmental commitment – see
http://climatechange.cbi.org.uk/
(disclosure: I sit on the CBI London Climate Change Taskforce); and, second, that the Godfather of Hedge Funds, Stanley Fink (another disclosure: an Edelman client) is launching a $5 billion Eco Fund, Earth Capital Partners (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bc00743e-c1a4-11dd-831e-000077b07658.html). The first three Earth Capital funds will invest in solar power and waste-to-energy; agriculture in the southern hemisphere; and financial backing for companies developing new technologies. More of this, please.

These are encouraging signs. Cynics argued that the environmental agenda would die amid the pain of Recession – but there are clearly those among us who can see both the economic and well as the environmental imperative and sense of it all. Consuming more is not the answer, as Anthony K properly pointed out yesterday. Large scale, infrastructure investments - that can re-shape business models and help re-engineer consumption habits and give us real, long-term assets - might just save us yet.

Amid all the gloom, a flicker of real hope.

One of the great disappointments of Tony Blair’s Premiership was his failure, in the excitable and fervent aftermath of the ‘97 landslide, to effect some of the profound constitutional changes that would have had a dramatic and positive effect not only on the long-term general wellbeing of British society, but also on the mid-term economic outlook for the country. His suffocation of the Jenkins’ Commission recommendations was perhaps the first indication of his determination that political pragmatism would defy wider political principle. We are paying the price for his inaction today.

As Jonathan Freedland argued in his excellent 1999 book ‘Bring Home The Revolution: The Case for a British Republic‘, the fundamental lack of democracy enshrined within a monarchy that demands subject (or subjugated?) status from its so-called citizens, has had a consistent and negative economic impact on the UK since we parted company with the Thirteen Colonies in 1776. In simplistic terms, America’s sense of enterprise and love of entrepreneurship finds the same root as its commitment to constitutional freedoms (however odd some of their Amendments seem to us bleeding heart liberals). This embedded enterprise culture will most likely mean that the US pulls itself out of Recession faster than we in the UK are able to do; we will all still be watching Dragons Den and Alan Sugar on The Apprentice for our voyeuristic dose of ‘enterprise’ instead. Read the rest of this entry »

It is now five months since we moved into our sparkly new offices - the design of which is celebrated in an article in today’s Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1385fe50-ac1e-11dd-aa46-000077b07658,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F1385fe50-ac1e-11dd-aa46-000077b07658.html&_i_referer=

Just to set the record straight… we meet clients in the cafe over a latte or cappuccino (darling) and save the Martinis for much later.

A big Thank You to our friends at Gensler, both for designing the space and for placing the FT piece.

Yesterday, PR Week published a series of essays on the Future of PR. I have reproduced my copy below. The communications model of the future is one of the key, concluding themes in Citizen Renaissance - where we argue that marketing, having been part of the problem in the Twentieth Century, now can and must become part of the accelerated solution in the Twenty First. I very much hope that this new way of being can start within the PR industry, with my own firm at the vanguard.

THE FALL AND RISE OF THE C WORD

The future of PR belongs to the Citizen. The Consumer Age is coming to an end. Corporate Reputation and Brand Marketing are converging. In tomorrow’s world, constructive dialogue, engagement and a new tripartite contract between Citizens, Businesses and Government will drive the Communications agenda.

There is a free radical somewhere deep within me that believes we are facing the end of consumerism as we know it. The global financial meltdown of recent weeks has served as a timely reminder that the death of Capitalism may be upon us also. There are real lessons to be learned from recent events: consider the inconsistencies and the lack of responsible regulation in the financial sector over the past decade – and think through the implications this may have if Governments and Citizens fail to actively intervene on an environmental level, to properly safeguard our planetary future. Read the rest of this entry »

There are few things that are more heinous in the new world order than to measure success using old ad agency standards. It is almost as if we claim ownership of the revolution but then still use the language of the Ancien Regime.

The most recent stats. from the current Wonderbra campaign speak the true language of the post Revolutionary era:

Currently the fourth most viewed entertainment video on YouTube worldwide, with well over 350,000 views on YouTube alone

Sites linking to sexysciencebydita.com: 500+

Twitter impressions: 118 tweets to 20,971 followers

This is impressive stuff.

More impressive still is the role that ‘PR’ played in the Dita creation. Here’s a quick summary by Creative Director, Jackie Cooper:

“The strategy, the creative, the talent negotiation, the casting, the styling,  the music score, the shoot, the production, the post production, the distribution, amplification and pr …. including stunt photocall in Covent Garden and a raft of bradcast interviews”.

Welcome to the Content Revolution.

Wonderbra, as blogged before, is at the vanguard of a new communications hierarchy, which sees the decline of the traditional ad agency and its monologue legacy of the thirty-second spot.

David Brain expresses it all rather neatly: “…other than the great creative exploitation . . . the story is we can do ALL this now.  The only reason the ad agencies get it all at present is the inertia that they always did and they controlled the channel (TV) that used to be the primary vehicle for delivery of film.  But now that WE THE PEOPLE are  a much more credible and now pretty scalable broadcasting system, PR firms have the chance to run the creative for brands.  That is a marketing services revolution”.

Spread the word. Feel free to join the revolution. Speak the language of the New.

I have to admit a somewhat irrational distaste for Andrew Gilligan - the sort of irrational aversion I have long held for Freddie Ljundberg. It dates back to pre-Hutton days (the Gilligan moment, that is) and was exacerbated by his attacks on the people’s Ken last year.

But here he is chipping in on the Planetary/Wellbeing debate in tonight’s Evening Standard:

‘The wider slowdown will do more to reduce consumption, reduce carbon and help the planet than any amount of ministerial eco-blather’

Yes, it probably will. That’s what we say in the book. But we must also all, as citizens, keep up the pressure to turn ministerial eco-blather into ministerial eco-action. The Recession is not an excuse.

Gilligan also usefully connects the current crisis with a potential revival in Wellbeing - questioning those who work endless hours at jobs they don’t really enjoy in order to pay for things they don’t really need.

A Buddhist friend of mine told me earlier in the week that the global turmoil is in play for a reason. The signs are there. Our over-consumptive lives are taking both us and the planet in fundamentally the wrong direction. Now may well be the time to slow down. Recessionary fears could yet turn into one of the developed world’s greatest lifestyle and life-changing opportunities. Our own Berlin Wall is crumbling.

Some will no doubt condemn this thinking as naive, possibly smug. I have no desire to celebrate the discomfort of others, as unemployment rises and mortgage repossessions increase. But Gordon nailed it yesterday when he insisted that the small guys must not be punished for the failings of the grotesquely avaricious. Let’s hope that a new citizen virtue can truly prevail - and, in this sense, perhaps our greatest challenge is still to come.

I awoke to a headline in The Guardian this morning that spoke directly to the spirit and direction of Citizen Renaissance:

“We’ve seen in this economic meltdown the bankruptcy of the idea that we don’t need citizens. Citizens would have insisted on regulatory oversight and democratic surveillance”.

The quote is lifted from an interview with American (uber-) political theorist Benjamin Barber - celebrated academic, author and Presidential advisor. The full article is well worth a read.

Barber’s arguments chime with those in Citizen Renaissance - not least the Chapter on Focus Group Politics and the Death of the Citizen. He attributes the current financial crisis, in part, to the erosion by politicians of rampant consumerism and links the need for civic virtue and a new sense of balance to the post Crunch world.

Quite.

Paul Lockstone, MD of the Financial Practice at Edelman UK, decided to guest on my Blog today….. time he got a Blog of his own, I reckon.

It seems appropriate that yesterday’s Sunday Times CD giveaway was that seminal Doors album Strange Days since the behaviour of the world’s regulators and lawmakers towards the financial crisis is becoming more and more idiosyncratic.  Take the case of the various European Governments that are queuing up to guarantee depositors’ savings.  In PR-speak, this is a classic case of perception becoming reality; the truth is that there is no risk whatsoever of any high street depositor losing their life savings because no Government can afford the political risk – never mind the financial or economic consequences – of allowing one of its major retail financial institutions to fail.  But the actions of first the Irish and now the German Governments have further undermined trust in the fragile financial ecosystem and may ultimately create an irresistible demand for European Governments to formally underwrite retail deposits with major institutions, as the prospects of ‘a run on the country’, with money moving to ‘guaranteed’ jurisdictions, become real. 

What is perhaps most disappointing in all of this is how quickly the global economy has unraveled and how national interests have risen to the fore; it’s all the more sobering to think that it is the arch Europeans of Dublin who have led the way in this process.  The inability to forge a European consensus on this issue poses very challenging questions that need to be answered once the dust has settled, in particular about how we provide consistency of approach to regulation of our global financial markets. 

It is surely no coincidence that this weekend’s collapse of Bradford & Bingley signals the final death-knell of those who converted from the Building Societies of yesteryear to the Banks of today. Of all those who  de-mutualised, none now remains independent -  either purchased by bigger Banks or by the Government. Of the original major players, only the Nationwide has clung  to its Society status - its stability (or so it seems) offering confirmation that ‘mutual’ may be a preferable system to ‘capital’ in its purest sense. A return to Mutuals, Trusts and Co-Operatives is a point we champion in Citizen Renaissance.

The obvious failure of the privatisation goldrush of the ’80s and ’90s, so beloved of Thatcherite economics, contains a delicious irony - as private ownership of homes (and especially those belonging to the poorer in society) effectively passes back, at a grand sweep, into ultimate State ownership. Gordon and Alistair are our Freeholders now, never mind the local Council. It is almost as though Maggie failed to spot the emergent sub-Soviet nightmare consequence of her actions.

In last week’s New Statesman, David Marquand mourned the lack of  an ‘inspiring new political idea’ in the face of the challenges we face today. The article summarised the thrust of his new book (’Britain Since 1918; the Strange Career of British Democracy’), which looks well worth a read. He, too, speaks of a new age of austerity being upon us - and clearly understands that ‘the environmental crisis stemming from climate change is no longer a distant threat’. He links the boom and bust of over-consumption with the impending destruction of the planet.

‘We now live in a society where everyone believes that they have a divine right to ever-rising living standards; that we have finally reached the sunlit uplands of ever-increasing consumption, and that, if the good times come to an end, our leaders must be to blame’, writes Marquand.

He argues that this contradicts 250 years of capitalist history - boom and bust swings being systemically embedded within our market economies. Furthermore, just as Rowan Williams has artculated that the ecomony is a sub-set of the environment, so Marquand points out that ‘the rising costs of food and energy are not acts of God … like the vast pool of debt that helped power the boom and now exacerbates the bust, they are the poisoned fruit of the age of abundance’.

Citizen Renaissance is about establishing a proper historical perspective; about understanding that The Citizen and Citizen Behaviour (Mutuals and Trusts, for starters) are more enduring than The Consumer and un-checked Consumerism. In this sense, Citizen Republicanism is the inspiring political idea, if only we can properly grapple it.

Marquand would, it appears, agree with the central tent of the Citizen Renaissance work: ‘The choice (now) lies between a gradual, controlled but still painful transition to a new age of austerity, and an infinitely more painful and destructive transition at a somehwat later date’.

The real choices are ours to make. Consumerism or Citizenship? Consumption or the Environment? We could start with a return to a Banking System that is more Quaker than Gordon Gekko in its construction, its temprament and its approach.