Interesting times with the PR guys

I spent yesterday at the CIPR talking about communications theory to some of the students doing their diploma course on-line.  They atttract students from as far afield as Russia and the UAE and, although the course is mainly delivered on-line, the participants come together at the start of the program to get to know each other a little.

One of them has blogged about it all.

One of the things they have been debating on their on-line forum is whether they admire Alasdair Campbell - he used to be press secretary to Tony Blair.

If you're not British you may not know how the issue of presentation over substance has defined political debate here for the last few years.

I for one, am looking forward to reading the book because I believe that although what you do is fundamentally important - how you communicate can bring about change for good in a society.  You only have to look at messages about smoking, diet and civic values to see the point.

What interests me though is how people take a blind dislike to whatever a politician says because of their mindset rather than the substance of what is being said.  Sounds like a familiar problem to internal communicators?

Liam