O’Conall Street

After 21 years on the Old Holywood Road, Weber Shandwick moves to the City Centre tomorrow. Our new des-res is in the wonderful Linenhall Plaza on Linenhall Street and everyone is very excited at the prospect of fresh coffee and beer on our doorstep.

We are one of many firms moving back into the City Centre after years on the periphery. The troubles created a rotten core at the heart of Belfast and peace has given it a whole new reason to live. Next post will therefore be all the more sophisticated and considered to reflect our new-found standing at the heart of things. 

I note my good friend El Blogador is hearing the same rumours I am about a British General Election on October 25th.

After that Brown speech its hardly worth Cameron’s time turning up for his go next week. And what a reply Neill Kinnock when asked at the Independent Fringe what he would do with the Tories: “Grind the b…….. into the dust”. A peer today but Labour forever! 

Brown came into his own as Labour Leader today with a bulwark of a speech. He did his party proud and delivered a typically robust and honest address in his first conference as Labour Leader.

Just catching up with him online courtesy of the bbc.co.uk/news. Not unexpectedly he announced his Britishness and celebrated the island he calls home. Brown is an honest man and communicates as such. What is interesting from an Irish perspective is that his nation is the island of Britain, Great Britain. He sees his nation as an island and his island as a great and disparate nation.

I believe his view of Britain as Britain is in fact the view of the vast majority of British people. In other words they don’t Northern Ireland as part of their ‘nation’. No problem for me because as it happens that is the same way I feel about this island, Ireland.

Brown has set out a big marker for progressive politics on these islands. He will likely have his vision endorsed overwhelmingly by the British people at the next General Election, be it next month or next year. The New Labour, New Britain message continues to excite and motivate - the ‘many’ are just not impressed by David Cameron - with his party infighting and appeal to the ‘few’.

I have written before that these are amazing times for these islands. Brown stands proud for his island; devolved, diverse, determined and ambitious. Seeking prosperity with equality and measuring individuals for who they are not where they come from. I think it is high time this island gave his vision a run for its money. When he talks about an island of diversity, I think Ireland. When he says his is an island of talents, I think mine is to.

Eddie O’Sullivan and the boys in green may have left us sad on Saturday but Gordon Brown, by accident perhaps, has mapped out a vision for this island. Who can argue with a place that in the words of the bible, treasurers the children and protects the poor, that celebrates success and rewards risk. It’s his Britain but sounds like the sort of Ireland, North and South, we should all aspire to.

Time we got on with it, I think.

ps - Slugger O’Toole reports NI has been left off the UK edition of Monopoly. Brown’s consensus is growing!

Belfast City Council is preparing to re-brand the city. Along with some twenty or so business leaders from across the city I have been part of a reference group which has met on a couple of occasions with the council’s brand consultants, Lloyd Northover, to assit with the development of the new brand.

 It’s been a very interesting process and we are now exploring different themes, some of which are genuinely exciting. The new brand should emerge in early 2008 and I am confident it will reflect a new and altogether more forward looking city. A strong brand will assist in the marketing of our city internationally, not just as a tourist destination but also as somewhere to do business, work and live.

Can’t wait to see the next stage of work in December.

Busy week of politics on this island. Fianna Fail announced their intention to organise in NI, Jim Allister MEP (formerly of the DUP) met with the rest of the Moygashell Mafia to plot a new beginning for Unionism and the southern Labour Deputy Leadership contest stepped up a gear, on you tube.

Fianna Fail’s decision is not all together surprising. The soldiers of destiny have been circling over a wounded SDLP for some time now and in classic Ahern fashion their move is a cautious and preliminary one, designed to provoke debate rather than revolution. North of the border there have been rumblings from some SF activists about FF joining the ‘peace’ when they sat out the ‘war’. Very last century and ever so slightly disingenuous me thinks. What will present FF with problems going forward was their suggestion that they would never take their seats in the House of Commons. Although understandable from a traditional FF perspective it’s a mile away from how their Northern supporters would see things. The one thing that sets constitutional nationalists North of the border apart from their SF cousins is their belief that you take the argument wherever it needs to be taken and work with who ever you need to work with to achieve your goals. This means going to Westminster to fight the fight for a new police service or for a harmonised rate of corporation tax. Ordinary decent nationalists in the North, Bertie’s ‘breakfast role man’ in the south, are Irish but they may carry a British passport and do not have any issue working within the UK system until such time as the majority decide otherwise. It is ironic that the party which most embodies pragmatic ambition and aspiration in the south should be so dogmatic about the North. This would also be an issue should the SDLP and FF want to sit down about working together or even ultimately merge. I cannot see the SDLP agreeing to be part of a political entity that was unwilling to represent people everywhere they had the right to have their voice heard. There are interesting times ahead.

 Meanwhile in Moygashell the continuity DUP met to plot an anti-agreement future. With four recent by-election bounces in GB, Gordon Brown may be very tempted to call a snap election. This may give Dr Paisley an early opportunity to test support for his power-sharing politics.

I get the feeling Joan Burton is making her mark on the Labour membership south of the border. She has definitely outperformed Jan O’Sullian in the media and the word is she is doing well on the hustings. With polls closing in little over a week its all to play for.

Fiona Scott MPRII, passed away all to prematurely this week from cancer. She was a client and a friend, too young to be taken from our industry and her loving family. Anyone who knew Fiona liked and respected her. She was smart, caring, courageous and beautiful and one of the finest communications professionals I have ever worked with. Fiona was Tourism Ireland’s Communications Manager up to last year and before that had spent several years in the tourism industry. I know her colleagues are hurting. To her husband Muiris and daughter Isobel we can only say we miss her too and wish to support them in the future.

Last night over 500 people from across the island gathered in Donnybrook to say goodbye to Fiona. We witnessed an amazing tribute from Muiris whose love and dedication for this fantastic woman was evident to all. Paul O’Toole, Tourism Ireland’s Chief Executive and Fiona’s boss until recently also paid tribute to her. “Fiona was a fashion queen, a style icon and the best of best” said Paul who spoke for us all.

 May she rest in peace.

The future of Northern Rock and its brand hangs in the balance this  morning following a 30% loss of value and a run on the bank triggered by the Bank of England’s decision to act in it’s capacity as ‘lender of last resort’ following the bank’s concerns about its trading position.

Looking at it from a reputation management and public relations perspective this is a classic crisis communications scenario which brought me right back to a symposium which CIPR in Northern Ireland held with Michael Register, a partner at the boutique London based crisis agency Register Larkin, last month. Michael is a great trainer and connects immediately with practitioners not matter how inexperienced with his charm and anecdotes. His approach to crisis management is the traditional one; be honest, be proactive and do what you say you are going to do. I remember when as special adviser to the Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development in Northern Ireland during the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak we recommended the same approach. It took a little while for the system (the civil service) to agree, as they had spent a very long time during direct rule working on a need to know basis only, but once we set up a series of communications channels to reach the major audiences and activated them with the right messages things began to shift in our favour. In a crisis you make your own luck and I was reminded of this by the impressive Mr Register.

Northern Rock had it hard this week. When the story broke on Thursday focus immediately was on the Bank on England bailout. Northern Rock’s share of voice was minimal and what messages they were communicating were reactive and focused on circumstances surrounding the bail out. Once trading opened on Friday the bank’s shares dropped 30% and it issued a profits warning. Next, customers, fearing for their savings, started to withdraw their money forming queues outside branches across the country. The media was in overdrive. This was a business story that had become a city story and was now their very favourite thing, a human interest story. Sooner of later the political correspondents would be in on the action. This came on Friday evening when the Chancellor began to comment. You would need an army of PROs (which I am sure they do not have) just to mange this media and customer questions but that wasn’t their only problem. At the end of the day there is no point having loads people in place if a; the systems to manage them are not good, and b; if the messages they are communicating are not robust and consistent. From this remove I would have worries about a and b.

 Staff do need reassured at times like this and the young Northern Rock Chief Executive did move on Friday to reassure them their jobs were safe. The Financial Services Authority also put its reputation on the line to reassure customers it believed this was a well run bank. Great, the bank was moving to reassure the markets, government and its staff. All very important audiences, but what about the poor old customer?. In a crisis you want people to back you up but at the end of the day the proof of the pudding is in the eating and when I went this morning to the bank’s website looking for some more info all I could find was a statement. This is a little worrying. 

I do hope they are getting some help in and quick. PLCs understandibly look to the market and put all their efforts into managing that relationship sometimes at the expense of the customer and a times of crisis this shows through. Reviewing the press coverage, Northern Rock’s own statements and the response of customers, this appears to have been the case on this occasion. The next few days will be an opportunity for the bank, if it survives, to begin rebuilding customer confidence and communications will play a big part in that.

It has been a sad week on O’Conall Street with the death of my father in law, Joe Murphy. He fought COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) for two and a half years but alas lost his battle on Tuesday morning. He was a great guy who lived life as a boxer, a merchant sailor and a professional Gardener with gusto. An extraordinay, ordniary man like so many of his generation in rural Ireland. 

COPD is a big killer. Each year it claims 30,000 people in the UK, 800 of them here in Northern Ireland and a further 2,000 in the Republic. The primary cause of this debilitating disease is smoking. One would hope that with the the significant legislative control on tobacco smoking and advertising now in place in Britain and Ireland, its incidence will decrease over the coming years. Indeed there are early signs of improvement in the Eastern Board area in Northern Ireland where the rates have began to decrease in the past decade. Too late for big Joe and the many others of his generation who will perish but a salient lesson to us all that smoking really does kill.

Online social networking may not be as deep as people think according to an interesting article by Dick Alstrom in today’s Irish Times. Sites such as BeBo and FaceBook have made it possible to recruit a network of ‘millions’ of friends online but according to today’s article, don’t count on them if you need a hand!

Alstrom was reporting on research being carried out at Sheffield Hallan University by Dr Will Reader at the British Association for the Advancement of Science Festival in York.

The Irish Times publishes it’s new Innovation magazine today for I think the third time. Available online through Ireland.com, the supplement is a useful tour of the so called knowledge based economy on the island of Ireland. My favourite article ‘From the Ashes’ is the story of business and ideas which picked themselves up after failure and went on to success.  Building on failure is a key characteristic of strong growth open economies in which high added value knowledge based companies succeed.

I blogged some time ago about the ‘creative economy’ in Northern Ireland. Since then it has been refreshing to see Queen’s University Belfast take a number of initiatives to attract top class STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) students. It’s a grand a year if you have three As! Not just a good idea but good corporate communications too.

Not saying anything about the poor Ireland sporting shows this weekend. The Rugby was disappointing, the NI soccer was poor and the Republic, well they were not much better. Just to rub salt in the old wounds the Walker cup boys fell short by a point. Not Good!