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The last few years have seen outrage that certain broadcasters and reporters weren’t wearing a poppy. This year, the rows seem to be sports orientated. FIFA says the England football team can’t wear poppies on their shirts in this weekend’s game against Spain (apparently it’s a political emblem and potentially offensive to German footballers. I suspect this viewpoint is of greater offence to the German people than a red poppy is). And the ongoing debate over whether Rugby League players can wear poppies on their shirts has now been cleared up with an affirmative.*

It appears that the decision to not wear a poppy is seen by some as tantamount to treason and the individual/ broadcasting house/ sporting organisation in question should be demonised and then hung drawn and quartered.

For me, it raises an interesting question; surely choosing to donate to any given charity is the right of the individual. It’s a personal choice, not a legal requirement. I wonder if anyone asked the footballers and rugby league players in question if they want to wear a poppy. I’m pretty sure they would, but these arguments could imply that it’s an enforced decision, rather than a voluntary one.

For any charity (large, small, local, national, children, sickness, research, animal, support services, the list goes on and on) corporate donations are one of the most lucrative means of fundraising. For the organisations in question, they have no right to force their employees to donate. They can encourage them to participate, but ultimately, it’s the fundamental choice of the individual.

Without a doubt, charities are operating in a tough and highly competitive world, but I’m pretty certain they’d rather donations came voluntarily rather than forcefully or resentfully. The latter hardly contributes to a positive “brand experience” and won’t help convert those individuals into regular donors.

Inevitably, I’d like to think that most people do donate to charity or buy a poppy, but who am I to tell them that they ‘have’ to do this or judge them for their decisions? No one has that right.

*As an aside, I did originally think who in their right mind would allow poppies to be worn on the football field – those pins are an accident waiting to happen. Fear not, it’s all about the iron-on poppy.

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It must be tiring for all those small to medium-sized businesses out there. Since the dawn of this recession economic experts have been saying that these businesses are the driving factors behind economic recovery and employment.

To quote Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange: “Companies that employ between ten and 250 people represent 12pc of companies but 36pc of economic contribution. This is where jobs will come from, not blue chips, and not Government. It’s the only sector that is going to work towards [reducing] unemployment.”

Yet, they get ignored again and again. The latest bad news is that credit easing threatens to ignore the smaller businesses. The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) is warning that Osborne’s plans to buy corporate bonds in preparation for setting up a SMB bond market “would miss the very smallest of businesses”.

Yep, you’ve got it. The businesses that are most likely to positively impact employment figures, are most in need of funds and most likely to be refused funds. It’s enough to give small businesses a complex.

Programmes like Project Merlin, the Enterprise Finance Guarantee, and these latest plans aren’t enough. Instead, the FSB wants the government to be “creative”, “bold” and “innovative”. (Much like the entrepreneurs and small businesses it is seeking to support.) With banks being squeezed and restricting their lending to small businesses, and entrepreneurs afraid to approach banks, these ‘saviours’ of our economy are going to have to turn elsewhere. That elsewhere could be alternative lending – read this blog by Jos White (client) Do we really need banks anymore? to learn more.

On the plus side, at least their (the small businesses, that is, not the banks) plight is being recognised by a wide range of experts rather than the vocal few. Even if current solutions don’t go as far as some would like, let’s hope that with enough lobbying and consultation from these various parties some positive news will result.

In the meantime, small businesses will continue to struggle. But, let’s be very British about it and adopt the Downton Abbey approach to more bad news [paywall]: cup of tea, anyone?

And possibly even a biscuit.

In today’s column, she calls herself a feminist because she frowns on “mumsy” types, yet didn’t want to get pregnant because she wanted to “keep her figure” and assumes the reason her friend went off the pill is because the husband had an issue with her looks. (Perhaps the issue in question was the friend’s self-esteem and well-being.) Looks are all important if you’re a woman, right?

Liz Jones; a figurehead for feminism that all young women can look up to.

To be as crass as Ms Jones herself; her sweeping statement advising men to be wary of women in their 30s and 40s for their capacity to steal their sperm and deceive them about wanting babies could be akin to a sweeping statement advising women to be wary of all men for their capacity to rape.

Obviously, Liz Jones’ personal history is unique – a marriage and a later relationship where the two parties want different things certainly pushes back the decision to get pregnant. As a successful career woman, surely the options weren’t limited to subterfuge? I wonder if she considered adoption, paying for IVF, or foster care and then raising the child independently. A daunting concept, of course, but not unprecedented or unachievable – particularly if her assumption was (as it appears to be in the article) that the father of her child wasn’t going to be around anyway.

What is interesting is that her article seems to be underpinned with a belief that the options available to careerist women are black and white: either focus on a career and forgo having a baby, or have a baby and forgo the career. I’m not certain this is the absolute case in today’s working environment, but that’s a whole separate can of worms to debate!

Suffice to say, why oh why did I read the article? All I’ve done, apart from be frustrated by the content itself, is to increase the traffic to the Daily Mail website (the irony of blogging about it is not lost on me, fear not). The newspaper’s editorial decision to encourage its writers to expose their darkest secrets and opinions to the public certainly guarantees high readership. I’d like to think it’s brave editorial guidance, but I suspect it’s just a numbers game.

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Research into how US charities are using Facebook, which was announced last week, found that only 0.4% of them have raised more than $100,000 from Facebook, 32% had raised less than $1,000 and 52% weren’t actually on Facebook.

These stats have given rise to debate in the UK over how the third sector uses Facebook and social media as a whole. One point has been that Facebook doesn’t have an inbuilt mechanism for donations and that a large fan base is pointless if the charity has to drive them to an external site. The response from some parties (particularly John Brunsdon writing for The Guardian last Friday) has been that there are Facebook apps available for donating via the social networking site and the charities need to be more tech savvy and find them, as well as collaborate on what they are doing in this space.

Every charity has its own diverse range of donor profiles that it needs to reach, which is what makes fundraising so challenging. It is also what requires fundraisers to keep one leg firmly in ‘traditional’ communications and the other bravely stepping into the world of social media. From my own experiences at Macmillan I am continually surprised at the number of fundraisers that aren’t email savvy, let alone engaging with charity via Facebook or twitter. Of course, a high proportion of donors/fundraisers are fairly switched on, but when you live in the online world it’s easy to forget that not everyone else is (even if you think they should be). The fact that not all donors have handily moved online is perhaps what has held some charities back from fully engaging in social media.

Regardless of sector, it can be daunting for any organisation to make an entrance online. Rather than an ad hoc foray onto Facebook, twitter or blogging any organisation needs to have a strategy; without a plan for growing a fan base and driving traffic to relevant websites there will be little reward.

It’s undeniable that social media is a fantastic means for charities to reach multiple audiences, bring supporters and fundraisers together, and be far more interactive with its donors. As a consequence, this can drive participation in fundraising events and fans and followers to donate. Yet to achieve this, some questions need to be asked beforehand to ensure the move online delivers:

-       Which of the donor audiences profiles do the different social media platforms reach

-       What information will be communicated to them

-       What is the communication style

-       How will online donations via social media be tracked? (If using an App, does it allow the charity to track what event and location the donation came from?)

For charities, a consumer’s positive experience of their ‘online brand’ may well prove to be the difference between clinching them as a life-long supporter for the charity, or not. In his article, John Brunsdon makes the valid point that there needs to be collaboration if charities are going to reap the rewards of social media. This is why I’m looking forward to the nicely timed mediaPro Expo next week (on twitter here) – where the likes of Breast Cancer Care, Breakthrough Breast Cancer and WWF will be sharing their online work. Most pertinently, Breast Cancer Care will be talking about how they used social media to raise money. I look forward to seeing you there!

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The comments on The Spectator’s Right to Reply by the Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Julia Unwin, in response to Coffee House Blog critique of the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) recent definition of poverty by Fraser Nelson make for absorbing reading.

Here’s a loose summary of the comments:

-          Educate people out of poverty with life and career skills

-          Get people out of poverty through confidence and self-worth

-          Don’t pay people to be poor

-          Labour bashing

-          Statistics bashing

-          Unwin doesn’t address the points raised in the original Coffee House article

-          Of course Unwin will say that

-          Exaggeration detracts from the real issue

On point three (don’t pay people to be poor), it’s worth noting that in Sweden (my seeming failsafe country of comparison when it comes to the UK’s social issues) unemployment benefits come in at less than £300 a month (well, so I’ve been led to believe anyway in a passing conversation at the weekend). Over there it’s doesn’t pay to be poor. But then, they have an above average education and standard of living.

Aside from commenting on the nitty gritty of the issue – for a start I’m no expert on social issues and generally find all this debate most enlightening – from a comms perspective it’s proving quite interesting. Having read Coffee House yesterday morning and thinking to myself ‘Joseph Rowntree Foundation ought to get on that’, I’m impressed that they responded as quickly as they did. A best practice example of speedy response that perhaps the comms team at RIM / Blackberry ought to take note of…

On the criticism that ‘of course she’ll say that’. Yes, of course she’s going to back the research! Why would you expect her not to; to comment as such is a waste of a comment. On the exaggeration point, perhaps it’s because I’m in comms, but it often surprises me that people are so naive about how the media works. Don’t they realise that if you give a journalist the choice between a hard-hitting statement and a wishy-washy statistic, they are in all probability going to go with the former (the one in question being “400,000 children will fall into relative poverty by 2015…”)?

In her response (whether it addresses Coffee House points or not), Unwin makes it clear that the overarching message of the research is that poverty levels in the UK are increasing. The headline statement is a means of carrying a core message, raising awareness of the charity and the work it does. The point has been made, the issue is now being widely discussed in broadcast and national media – and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation is in the middle of this.

Job done.

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Welcome news this week that the Department for Business Innovation and Skills is making headway into ensuring that interns and work experience people are paid (at the least) national minimum wage.

Last week PwC announced its latest crop of graduate recruits last week – its largest intake ever (carrying the positive message that ‘we, PwC, consultancy powerhouse are doing well in face of economic doom and gloom. We rock. Etcetera’. It’s obviously still a tough job market out there – the company saw an increase in applications of an astonishing 449% to 2009, and 192% to last year. That indicates a lot of unemployed grads out there.

But what interested me the most was that 18% were interns, and that the firm offers 95% of its interns full time training roles. This is obviously great for the interns but it’d be interesting to know if these internships are paid (even if national minimum wage). If unpaid, it excludes a huge strata of potential candidates who just can’t afford to work for free. If, paid, then well done them!

On to yet more positive news from the big consultancies – today KPMG has pledged to recruit more state school or state college leavers from to its six-year degree scheme. This involves paying tuition fees and a guaranteed starting salary.  Great recognition from a leading UK (and global) company that there is talent out there worth harnessing that comes from non-private schools and that don’t have freely available funds to go on to higher education or work for free to get work experience.

All to be applauded (or maybe I’m just having a glass half-full kind of day).

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Something to get the argumentative juices flowing in the morning – gender pay disparity continues in the UK. A Q&A (with me).

Are you aghast and shocked by this? No. More resigned, and the fact that male senior execs earn over £10k more than their female counterparts is incredibly disappointing.

On an up note – at least there are women in senior positions, right?! Absolutely – progress has been made. Or has it? Female execs are more likely to be made redundant than male execs (4.5% vs. 3%). Dare I voice it – it would be interesting to know of that 4.3% of redundancies of female execs, what percentage were part time or parents. But that’s me just being crazy; that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with a redundancy decision. It’s illegal for a start.

What’s the answer – quotas? It’s a toughie. If we look to Scandinavia, they have quotas for female representation at board level – and it works. Look at their thriving economy.

That’s it! We should look toward a country based on socialist ideals? Maybe so, but we can’t ignore the cultural differences between us, as these certainly impact business culture. For example, in Sweden, maternity/paternity is split equally between the father and the mother, and is compulsory for each. We are no way near that type of equality – I think most CEOs here would laugh in the face of such a suggestion. By contrast, in the UK (I’m making a general statement here) paternity leave is a miserly two weeks at below pay. Most new fathers I know found it more economical just to take holiday leave. Then there’s the cost of childcare issue. In the UK it can be prohibitive – see news today that the cost of going to work outweighs the incoming salary. (And yes, I know many gender equality think tanks and women will be indignant at this (old) argument – why should we be defined by our children, etc. Yet, when was the last time you saw a part-time dad be made redundant?)

Back to quotas – yay or nay?

As I say, it’s a toughie. Generally I think that, no, it’s not ideal to enforce quotas. The argument that all people should achieve something on their own merit is a sound one. The question is whether there are unconscious (or indeed, conscious) barriers in place within businesses preventing equal career progression*. Pay disparity, higher risk of redundancy at the top, and fewer female execs as role models (there are many female CEOs of FTSE companies to look up to, yet very few are actually from the UK. Check out the FT’s Women at the Top – top 50 businesswomen from 2010), could make it an uphill battle for high achieving women.

So, no quotas and we’re not a socialist structure, what do we do?

Why, thanks for asking. I agree with the expert pundits – it’s about transparency and monitoring. All businesses need to monitor career progression of their staff to ensure that they are promoting and paying people equality. This is all about structured line management procedures, and internal monitoring. Yes, it might seem a hassle at first – but once in place it’s fairly straightforward. And, the benefits to the business will be enormous – think of the talent that is being otherwise ignored!

Ultimately, we are living in a diverse society and our workforce needs to reflect this – be it gender or ethnicity. All individuals need to be treated equally when it comes to pay and career progression. Only with internal monitoring can we know that this is being achieved, and only with transparency can businesses be held up as being a truly equal organisation.

*To find out your own unconscious bias it’s worth taking five minutes to take this online test from Race for Opportunity: Know Yourself.  You might be in for a surprise!

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I’m disproportionately excited to hear about the latest expansion plans by WM Morrisons, which is currently preparing a £1.5bn bid to buy Iceland – the frozen supermarket chain, not the volcanic island.

Landsbanki, which took control of the Iceland chain in 2008, has put the chain up for sale. The bank’s own collapse obviously has not done wonders for the supermarket. The auction will potentially see a head to head offer from Asda, and a partial offer from Sainsbury’s.

So, if successful, what does this mean for Morrisons? Lots, that’s what. Success would catapult the northern supermarket chain into the top 5 of Britain’s food retailers. Market share would increase by 2%, landing it a mere 2% and 3% below Sainsbury’s and Asda, respectively.  Tesco would remain the undisputed leader.

Add to this, the 750 Iceland stores on top of Morrisons 442 would mean nearly triple the number of stores. And, although this is a food deal, the extra clout should only contribute to the success of its soon to be launched children’s offering (following the acquisition of Kiddicare earlier this year).

By ‘eck, the current giants of British food retail need to watch out: those canny Northerners are about!

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It’s interesting how the press is jumping all over Nick Clegg for taking advantage of his parents’ network to secure valuable internships in Brussels, Helsinki and NYC. They are quick to label him a hypocrite for this and to lambast him for his millionaire parentage and private education.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not fair that some people have early access to excellent internships when others don’t. Nor is it fair that these internships are often only suitable for those that have substantial financial support.

It’s well known that politics, and PR and communications, are some of the most closed off careers; surrounded by mystery over what exactly they do and how to get a foot in the door, let alone understanding which academic courses will help get them there. Research last year from our client Race for Opportunity, which campaigns for race diversity in the workplace, showed that the professions of Education, Banking/Finance, Legal/Law Media, Medicine, Politics as well as the Armed Forces and the Police, were seen as closed off to young people from a Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) background.

So, as much as this is an easy headline story for journalists, maybe they should take a second to recognise that their own profession (media) isn’t as open to those lacking parental connections and money as they might like to think.

I for one am proud that this morning Speed’s MD Stephen Waddington ran a PR workshop with interns from the fantastic Taylor Bennett Foundation, which seeks to directly to address the need for greater diversity in the communications & PR industry.

The cause of enabling social mobility is one to be applauded. It shouldn’t just be an opportunity to lambast Nick Clegg for the lucky breaks in his life. It just smacks of bitterness, right?

This headline story should be a taken as an opportunity for the media to put pressure on all businesses and professions to offer work experience and internships that are financially viable and open and accessible to people from all backgrounds and education; not just those with a private sector education or related to the Director’s best mate.

By ignoring a huge swathe of the next generation of employees, our economy is missing out on a whole load of untapped talent; and it becomes even harder for us as a nation to move away from a class-society.

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Morrison’s is like the baby in the family, competing against elder siblings Tesco and Sainsbury’s which started walking and toddling, respectively, a long time ago. The acquisition of Kiddicare and the rights to its technology platform, as well as talks about developing its own clothing range, is a clear sign that Morrison’s wants to take its share of the non-food market. But is it running before its walking? It has yet to deliver the anticipated online grocery shopping service, which is quickly becoming de facto standard for the main, and not so main, supermarkets. Although I’ve no doubt that Tesco will dominate for many years to come, it’s good to see Morrison’s making moves and forcing the market to be just that little bit more competitive for the consumer.

It’s certainly much harder being a supermarket these days. Not least the price war, which has seen Waitrose match its prices on 1000 branded goods to that of Tesco whilst having to retain its upmarket image (no mean feat). Then there’s quality and brand image. When it comes to brand image, each supermarket has to differentiate itself on price and then, if it chooses, quality. It’s hard therefore to be clear on what makes you different from your competitors. Waitrose cornered the organic, ‘local’ supplier route years ago – a well-timed and well-thought out positioning, and Morrison’s has the ‘local’ brand image – local fishmonger, butcher, fromagerie (we’re a nation happy to adopt continental traditions). Neither of these the other supermarkets have quite yet cornered.

Obviously, this is all my personal view but the reality is that often it’s accessibility that dictates your shopping habits. Controversially, I do think Morrison’s has good quality at lower prices than some of the market leaders, but I don’t have one that is on my well trodden commuter route and I’m obviously it’s too much of a faff to deviate. Particularly south of the Watford Gap, where Tesco (and to an extent, Sainsbury’s) has the advantage of being ubiquitous, Morrison’s is still working to stake a hold in this geographic region.

I‘ve a mind to create a supermarket quadrant, but I’m pretty sure some clever person will have already developed one and the fact that there are many more I know nothing about (see the every helpful Wikipedia list), it wouldn’t really be a fair exercise. Makro, for one, is unknown to me, and sounds like a tech hardware company. On that basis alone I’d have to banish it to the bottom left. Which shows just how difficult it is to market your supermarket brand.