Mark Borkowski
Author and founder of Borkowski PR
I think all images of 1966 should be banned from now on and anyone who played that year should not be given any airtime.
I would focus on our sense of fun and stop taking ourselves so seriously. We’re fantastic at making people laugh. We roll cheese down hills. Even if we’re up to our ears in mud we still have fun at Glastonbury.
Don’t worry about Tony Hayward. The Edinburgh Festival is about to start and thousands of people will be shedding tears of joy.
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We need to start laughing at footballers, too. That guy who went into the dressing rooms and told those jumped-up celebrities exactly what he thought of them — he’s the hero.
Alastair Campbell
Former director of communications for Tony Blair
First rule of PR management: things are rarely as bad as they seem. So look around: the sun is shining, England are undefeated in the World Cup (so far), the Olympics are coming down the track on budget and on schedule, the Brits had a great night at the Tonys, Piers Morgan is the new Larry King (OMG), Andy Murray can fly the flag for the whole of the UK, the economy is not nearly as bad as George Osborne says. And, if the Government is a bit of a joke, you shouldn’t have voted for it, should you? Meanwhile, if you want to remind yourselves of a time of hope, optimism and political excitement, Prelude to Power, volume one of my unexpurgated diaries, is out now.
Ian Monk
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PR consultant
If you want to sell England, you need to start off by defining what exactly England, and being English, is. So, yes, we have sex scandals, but let’s be honest, they are pretty good sex scandals, with cabinet ministers and Dr Martens. There’s still plenty to shout about. We still have our own currency, which is right now looking as if it is a pretty splendid achievement. We are the home of one of the world’s greatest languages. We still have great pubs, just. Yes the football matters — but it can still turn. And if not, Oh well, it’s just a group of men kicking a ball around the pitch. We’ll get over it.
Max Clifford
PR guru
We as a nation put far too much focus on the negative. I would suggest putting a “happy” media correspondent on every paper. We are still very much a newspaper nation and if you are reading bad news all the time, it doesn’t do much for the human spirit.
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We need to start thinking about the extraordinary things that ordinary people do. There are huge numbers of people volunteering and doing good things all over the country. The media should be covering some of it: that’s far more important than whether we win the football or not.
Olly Grender
Former director of communications for the Liberal Democrats
I would start a campaign called Fun4Free. I would run it on Twitter, on Facebook, and get the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister to get the ball rolling by suggesting their favourite free activities. A walk in the park, a chat with a best friend, or it might be spontaneously bursting into song in a station. What would be fun for an old person? For someone to pop in for a cup of tea and a chat. It’s about having a positive attitude in an age of austerity.
Stephen Bayley
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Author and design critic
We need to become more convincingly and ruthlessly dishonest. Telling the truth only gets you so far. After all, you are what you pretend to be.
So we should pretend — with absolute authority — that we have the best football team, an army of incubating new tennis talent and oil company chief executives blessed with saintly tact and second sight. But I’m afraid if we commit ourselves to a national programme of lying, we will turn out to be as bad at lying as we are at sport . . . and drilling.
Still, there are reasons for optimism. An old principle of PR is “don’t count the s**t, just count the inches”. We get plenty of inches. Our failings are not ignored, least of all by ourselves.
Peter Bazalgette
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Media expert and former chair of Endemol
England the brand needs to be clever and expensive. I would borrow that old ad campaign slogan: “We’re better by design.” An Englishman leads the design team at Apple and it’s the ENO who will export six of its productions to international opera houses. My campaign would spotlight creative individuals and organisations who are exporting brilliant cultural things.
Even the Budget needs to be attractive, to encourage people to take risks and invest in the next generation of visionary entrepreneurs.
Andy Sutherden
Head of sports at Hill & Knowlton PR
I would focus on our bid to host the 2018 World Cup so that our fans don’t have as far to go home when we’re knocked out of the group stages.I’d threaten the England team with community service if they don’t beat Slovenia, and send them to the Big Brother house. No one will watch them. No one will care. And the nation will enjoy Davina saying to Wayne Rooney: “You’re live on Channel 4, please do not swear.”