Reputation Management: has the internet turned mistakes into life sentences? – Stuart Thomson

Gareth King (00:34)

Stuart, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the show.

Dr Stuart Thomson (00:37)

Pleasure. Thanks for having me on, Gareth. It's a very kind of you to invite me along.

Gareth King (00:41)

I'm keen to see what we can uncover today, but before we get into it, can you tell us a bit about the work that you do and the journey that's led you to this point?

Dr Stuart Thomson (00:48)

Yeah it's been a bit of a different route into, I suppose, into communications as a whole, but particularly reputation management. I’d always been fascinated by current affairs and politics. Did a PhD in politics and then thought, well, what do I do now? I mean, I'd love to sort of work in around politics, but you how do you do that?

So I wrote around to all the political lobbying firms that I could find. There was a book called Dodds Parliamentary Companion that had all the sort pen portraits of politicians, sort of MPs from the Westminster Parliament in, and in the back of that all the lobbying firms, this seems really weird now, but anyway, all the lobbying firms used to advertise. So just wrote around to them and said, look, can I have a job? Unsurprisingly, most of them wrote back and went, no.

But one or two did right back and I came down to London, and I got an internship PR communications firm and that was the start of the journey. And then I worked for a couple of big global law firms, again doing public affairs, political engagement work and then increasingly more and more around reputation management. And then for the last sort of three years or so, I've been running it as myself as CWE Communications.

So I've got a couple of books out again about reputation management, public affairs as well. So that's how I've ended up covering all these, sorts of issues.

Gareth King (02:00)

What a varied repertoire you've got there. But we are here today to discuss the impact that the digital world has had on reputation management and communications, I guess, in a wider sense. As someone who's just outlined such an extensive experience in this area, what’s surprised you the most so far about how things have played out since the arrival of the internet and various forms of tech?

Dr Stuart Thomson (02:21)

I think it's, I suppose two things. One is, this is going to sound obvious on one level, but it's just the speed of change. So when I was doing political monitoring work, what was going on in and around parliament, I was literally getting the printouts from what was happening in parliament, cutting them out, pasting it, so proper cutting and pasting, and then faxing it off, through to now, literally nanoseconds later, rumours go around, you have to get a response out.

But I think the other challenge that comes with that, and I suppose this is a reflection is that, despite lots of us doing this sort of work and trying to warn organisations about the need for preparedness, still many aren't, they aren't quite ready for what happens if something goes wrong. And I think you see that particularly just in recent weeks and months with cyber attacks.

You know, I'm not suggesting for a minute these organisations weren't prepared, but the fact is that, whoever was doing the hacking and you can read the media as to whether it was hackers or state sponsored or whatever. I make no judgment at all about these things, but the fact that it happened, they got in, they caused massive damage and they struggle. They don't quite know how to communicate with their staff. They don't quite know how to communicate with their customers. And of course that then leads into government as well.

And what role does government have in this, and what do companies in particular want from the government in terms of help or support or wider communications as well. It still surprises me that many are still caught on the hop and frankly, pretty inexcusable and it's a risk that isn't being managed by any organisation.

Gareth King (03:52)

Right. You raised a couple of points there. One, firstly, obviously, around the speed that everything happens at, which is ironically, as you said, the preparedness. You’d think at speed when you need operate so fast, you invest more in there. I think the other interesting thing is that we know that this world is now 24-7. And the speed that it can be activated within that 24-7 is almost instantaneous.

Does that mean that this need for constant vigilance in the sense of preparedness or reaction, has that made reputation management now really like a 24-7, 365 job and you know, a potentially damaging crisis right around the clock? I can imagine once upon a time it would have been a lot easier to manage when you had a little bit of lag before stories might get out or you had time to respond. But it feels like now people just want instant action on everything and you need to be able to give them that.

But in that sense, what are some of the different approaches to handling that? You mentioned governments and organisations and even potentially down to people, like how, what are people doing to try and deal with this current situation?

Dr Stuart Thomson (05:09)

Yeah, you touch a number of relevant points, Gareth. I mean, I think in the first instance, that speed of response. And it's not that all organisations have to have all the information at their fingertips straight away. That's just simply not going to happen.

Instead, it's more about just making sure you know, that a vacuum isn't created that allows others Ill-informed pundits, tweeters, messengers, Xs, whatever, to fill that space, and that's what the media cover. So even if it's look, this is early doors, we don't really know what's going on, we're doing everything we can, as soon as we have more information, we'll absolutely be on it. And then you can provide that information as when it comes available. That’s a perfectly acceptable starting point. Nobody expects you to have everything straight away. But when you don't do that, when there is that silence, then others come in.

I suppose it’s even worse than 24-7, 365, again, whichever we want to say, because it's global as well. So again, another solid foundation has to be built on having access to that information, of knowing what is being said and done about you across the world. And that means that threat, that attack could be an attack, could be self-inflicted, could be an attack from outside, could be something you've done, could be something that individual member of the team has done, the bigger corporate structure may not be paying particular attention to, all of those things are risks that need to be, that need to be managed.

So speed is of the essence, but it doesn't have to be instant explanation, instant information all the time. You do have a period of time to get some information out there. But the other part of that is just making sure you got the channels. So that in advance, so you're not just relying on the traditional press release or media statement or whatever to get things out to rectify the situation. Actually, in advance of these things, you have the channels LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, whatever is right for your organisation, but you have those in place already so that you can then get that information out there and people can find out what the real position is.

Gareth King (07:14)

Right. That makes total sense in a contingency plan if, a certain situation to kind of happen. But what about when, the unexpected happens? Whether it's real, whether it's fake, that's kind of irrelevant. We know just how quickly something can spread online.

So, would you say in, the current landscape with, let's say billions of users that can potentially become those attackers to any person, organisation, government, company, whatever it is, who holds the real power in reputation management today? Is it the PR team with the reach and the right channels, or is it potentially an anonymous online user with grudge and the right audience. Who wins this battle?

Dr Stuart Thomson (07:58)

I mean, yeah, these are are huge challenges. There's no one answer. I don't think to any of these things. I suppose my challenge back to you would be that for most organisations, looking at the risks, most organisations will know where their risks are, or could be. I'm not going to say that, you can plan for absolutely everything, but for most organisations, you'll know where the problems may lie or could lie if X and Y and Z happens. So, I think that scenario planning again is pretty fundamental to that crisis situation scenario.

In terms of who holds the sort of the lever to that reputation, if you think about reputation as being a sort of a bank account, if you like. You pay into the bank account. So those, as you suggested, sort of well-honed PR teams, maybe an activist CEO, maybe the way that you do it, I mean I know this again in the current political climate, DEI issues, but the way they treat the environment, their employees, open up to those from various diverse backgrounds and the opportunities given to them and provided to them, all of that stuff if you like, really important, will vary between organisations, but pretty fundamentally important, you pay into that bank account.

If a problem arises, the challenge comes in, it's a withdrawal from that bank account, in essence. You can take a few hits. The challenge comes, is if you keep making those withdrawals, or if those withdrawals are happening, and that balance gets to zero, or goes into overdraft, then you're in real problems.

So, if you are most organisations, if you've done that reputation building, you can weather that storm a little bit more effectively, you've got some leeway to actually to deliver that. I mean, you might get interventions from regulators anyway, depending on what it is, but you'll get regulatory interventions, you'll get politicians saying outrageous things about you, you'll get governmental action, you'll get boycotts that are effective on your products and those sorts of things. That's where the real problem comes. And that's why you see some crisis are absolutely fundamental and some companies and organisations and individuals go, they disintegrate, company fails or whatever.

Others, such as likes of VW, for instance, where they're diesel gate. yeah, it sounded absolutely fundamental to that organisation. But the reality was that because people still think they make good cars and they're pretty reliable and they're worth the money, that actually that was a blip. They still had to rebuild trust and say that they were taking action, and again, we can come onto this as well, but you know, the what you do side of things if unravelling. But because they were seen to take action, worked with the regulatory authorities, paid the fines, but fundamentally their product was good and still had people still had trust and faith in it. They could recover.

Gareth King (10:41)

Mmm.

Yes, look, that makes total sense. I think we see that with there's lots of contemporary examples. There was something you said there around, unexpected things that can happen. And I guess for me makes me think as to how the internet itself operates. Now, a really good one that's come to my mind while you were speaking there. I think it was Dove, You know, Dove, the kind of deodorants and body wash and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. And so they, they had a very, very, very deep metaphorical bank account. You know, they had this, incredibly brilliant, successful campaign called Real Beauty, where they took away all the fake stuff and that gave them so much cred.

But I think it was a few years ago now they released this, advert and what it showed was this, do you know the one? It was a series of women and they were all taking their t-shirt off and they became a woman of a different race in the next scene and it had a sequence. So it wasn't anyone that was called out in particular. It was just, demonstrating this is a product for, for all women, you know, it works the same for everybody.

Now, the crisis as I think that you already know about was that somebody took the snippet of which was an African American woman, I believe took the T-shirt off and became a white woman. Now you look at that in isolation and you could see it looks awful. The optics of that are terrible. But in the context of the wider piece, it feels a little bit innocuous to me. Maybe the step change was a bit on the nose, but I think, I don't think there was really any ill intent done with that. But as we've said, this is the power of the users online. Someone can snippet that, turn it into an outrage piece of content. And that spread around the world almost instantly. That is just an insane crisis when no amount of apology is enough to get that off your plate at that point in time.

In situations like that, whether it's governments, organisations, individuals, how do they deal with things like that? We've seen whether it's a celebrity that might've done something and they do this apology and everyone's like, that's PR’d, no one buys it. You know what I mean? Everyone thinks it's fake. Like what, what are some of the approaches that they can do if they're really serious about getting back on track with, with people in the world?

Dr Stuart Thomson (13:00)

I think first of all, it's about having a good relationship with your, I say stakeholders, but people generally like Dove in that instance, they could put it down and that was a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes, but it's what you do afterwards. How do you rectify that error? And you see some organisations and some individuals, will have sort of, you know, zero empathy. Don't know what's going on here, I’m just going to plow on regardless, and I will just PR all my way out of it. You know, in that dropping the ad we'll look at how that process, how it was storyboard and developed in the first place and what the checks and balances are to make sure that doesn't happen again.

So people can go, well, on the basis of actually, we think they're quite a good brand anyway. They've taken a really swift action, therefore, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. So there will be a hit, of course, but it probably won't be that big.

Even sometimes a bit of bad publicity like that can actually be beneficial because it reminds people of all the good work you've done as well, which you may also do in those sort of statements, you may also say, look, we've done some brilliant work here. We've put lots of time and effort into whatever program it happens to be. But we got this one wrong. It just went wrong. We don't know why we're wrong. We'll find out why it went wrong. And actually, we'll have an investigation. It'll be independent and we’ll publish and will be really open and transparent so you can see exactly what went wrong and how we're dealing with it.

That's the sort of thing that people will want to see. Not everybody does that. At some point, it's just a case of look, just sort of make the thing go away. There's a particular retailer, online retailer, consistently sort of challenged about the sourcing of its products, ethical standards in procurement, the way it treats workers as part of that, how much they pay and all that sort of stuff. And that issue has come back several times. Again, they have to keep getting themselves out of this problem. It has cost people their jobs, so leadership teams have gone. So, there are consequences for this, and by keeping the feet to the flame, by keeping that pressure on them, I think it's activist groups more than anything, means that they have now had to take action and will change their methods. So it does have an effect.

Gareth King (15:07)

You said a few things in there, that got me thinking one was that you show a little bit of contrition, a bit of genuineness and it serves as a reminder of all the other good stuff. Now me, my brain there went to what a good strategy that is to purposely demonstrate some flaws to make all your good stuff look better. And I don't know if anyone is willing to kind of take on that risk but it feels like it could be viable in certain instances.

But I think it also got me thinking about, you said something there around whether people can try and avoid it, ignore it, hope it goes away. Now, think for of the crazy things about the way that the internet and technology and users affect this entire space, is that in the online space, once someone smells blood, it's a feeding frenzy and it's like, everyone wants to see that person crucified in the town square.

Now, whether they get the apology that they want, whether they want somebody fired, we don't know. think it's because it's so easy to get involved. All it takes for you to join in in something on that online is as little as a like or a repost, or a share. Now I have seen it said and I've read if that kind of mob is coming for you and you're I guess a normal person, never apologise because that's exactly what they're trying to effectively bully out of you. Now, of course, if you've done certain bad things, I'm sure an apology is in order. But if you've just made a human error and you've got a mob coming after you, all they want out of you is an apology. Is that a viable strategy just to ignore it? And they'll eventually move on to the next one in about five minutes.

Dr Stuart Thomson (16:42)

Instinctively no. mean, I'm just trying to, as you were saying, trying think of examples. mainly politicians, if I'm being brutally honest about this no apology thing. So you never admit. we've had lots of campaigns here in the UK, we've had lots of prime ministers recently, the idea being the Brexit vote, you put it on the side of a bus, you put an outrageous number that is about how much we contributed when we were in the European Union to the European Union. It's wrong. It's not the number. But it doesn't matter. Because you are now talking about that particular issue.

So instead of saying, look, I'm really sorry we got it wrong, because naturally now we've changed the terms of that conversation. And we're now talking about the number, which is actually lower, but it's what we want you to talk about. So I think that comes more from political things. In other words, you know, if you are seen to have got something wrong or not doing behaving in a particular way, you just try and simply explain it away and move on to the next thing. And you just fill the void with just stuff, it's just too much for anybody to take real attention to.

Gareth King (17:42)

One of the things that I do notice is that it seems like every single government announcement, whether it is through, I guess, your mainstream media, social media, anywhere online, no one's buying it? How do they get around this, do know what I mean? Do they ignore all the negativity coming their way or do they just plow through it, and it's just kind of like an A at B conversation?

Dr Stuart Thomson (18:08)

Again it’s really difficult because there is no doubt that a lack of trust in politics, politicians, business as well, journalists, just reading some stats this morning about the way that supporters of political parties here in the UK view the different media channels. And, you know, it's clear that, more that you go to the, I suppose, challenger parties, the less belief they have in the mainstream media, traditional brands, and they have their own particular favourites, So that lack of trust is absolutely there.

How do you overcome If you can start showing that you have been changing lives, that you are investing in, or cutting waiting lists on the National Health Service, or you are delivering opportunities for younger people, youth unemployment, those sorts of things. So you're making a concrete difference. That will start to rebuild trust. There's always cynicism about politics. So that's always there. But it is a problem because people just don't really don't like politicians at the moment.

Gareth King (19:08)

Yeah, look, I think that's universal. It's exactly the same here. And I've spoken to Americans. And obviously, we know what's going on there. But you also mentioned there around businesses. How is things SEO made reputation management easier, or maybe it's made it more difficult. Can you buy your way out of I guess out of anything bad by simply burying it?

Dr Stuart Thomson (19:31)

I think we all have to be aware of anybody that's involved in communications, marketing, etc, is the ethics side of things. Does that organisation behave in the way that it says it does? If you say that you behave in a certain way, offer a certain level of goods, treat the environment in a certain way, then that's what you live by. Where a gap emerges between the what you say and what you do, that’s when the problem comes.

You can take a little dip away because of course you have independent reports, again back to that how do we prove these things, etc. But if consistently that gap is there, maybe deliberately by some companies, that's a problem. That's problem for us as individual practitioners in our ethics, but that's a problem for the companies and the business. They will be found out eventually because of that nature of that online challenge, because of the very democratised, decentralised sort of way that these things work. You will be found out because there are a lot of people sitting in a lot of chairs, looking at a lot of screens. And some people are really motivated to absolutely look at everything that business does.

Gareth King (20:20)

No, absolutely, absolutely. I think that that kind of goes back to what we saying before, like once there's a little sniff of blood, like everyone wants to see someone fail. It seems to be much more entertaining than building somebody up. We also mentioned ethics there too, and I'm sure like everything there's going to be people that operate outside that.

Putting aside the kind of the ethical concerns of using AI in certain ways, one of the things that we've seen is the explosion recently of AI-generated content online. One of the, discussions we've, we've had here a little while ago was around it being used to make likenesses of politicians. We've seen the way it can just make stuff, and attribute it to whether it's a person, a brand, an organisation, what have you. Because this is getting so much better, faster, more sophisticated in what it can do, what kind of challenges is this going to present when you really don't know where it's come from and more importantly, if it is real or not? Like what thoughts are already happening around this?

Dr Stuart Thomson (21:40)

Yeah, I mean, again, AI deep fakes, videos, audio, that impacts on all of us every day. We are all under greater threat from somebody ringing my phone, saying it's my son, deep fake, I need money now. Can you transfer it to me? Companies have fallen for that sort of thing before, because it sounds genuine. Sexually explicit content as well, particularly for women. And then you add in that lack of trust in politicians and then this sort of undercover audio which claims to have somebody saying something outrageous, etc. etc that isn't true.

So what do do about that? If they've got some way to counter that, if they have some way that you can genuinely say quickly, that's not true. This isn't us. That's important. But the other thing is, is if it seems completely, if this seems something completely different from their usual way of doing things, or, you know, suddenly they have a view about an issue that they haven't talked about before. It just seems a bit weird. Therefore you question it when you see it. You think really? Is that something they would do?

Again, that's part of that back to where we started, Gareth, but you know, part of that constant vigilance piece, that if I see stuff that iss rubbish, I do something about it. I don't just let it fester, and grow and then people start sharing it and it sticks. No, you put it down. You get in contact with the channel and say, take this down, get rid of this. This isn't true. This is damaging. At least you can then say as part of your explanation, this isn't true, and I've taken action and I'm getting it taken down.

Gareth King (23:22)

Yes, I mean that makes total sense and there's a couple of things I'd love to explore on that. Firstly there, one, does that constant vigilance and the risk of something coming out or being exposed, is that having a tendency to make people actually more honest and legit? You know, because they don't have such an opaque, I guess, way to hide everything now it's kind of 24-7?

Importantly, again, you said something there around, getting stuff taken down. We know through the pandemic, there was all sorts of stuff, whether it was rumours, information, whatever, just spread in all different kinds of directions. And we know that, especially in the US, governments have pressured these platforms to take down narratives or or whatever it is that are in conflict with the government of the day. Do governments use this kind of like pressure campaigns to, I guess, shoo away anything that could damage them? I mean, I'm sure that there is, but is this a, is this a thing that goes on? Like every government would do this?

Dr Stuart Thomson (24:24)

That's your, well look, any technology can be used positively or negatively. So, you know, has the internet opened up opportunities for us to be more involved in keeping businesses to account and governments to account? Because there's more transparency, more emphasis on information. So I have more opportunity to get involved? Yeah, and that's fantastic. So we can all be much more activist, if you wanna use that word in the way that we deal with things.

Can that same technology also be used to close down dissent or misused which I think is also you were hedging towards there Gareth, which is the sort of the, you know, so I mean, you know, and the answer of course is yes, of course it can be. Look, some countries just simply turn off the internet, don't they? And then therefore people can't communicate anymore. But when politicians themselves don't use facts, when they are leaning into that slightly conspiratorial, vaccines, for instance, as a classic case in point at the moment, sadly,

Then you could say that's the misuse of the platform as well. I don't know. I mean, I, you know, maybe it's maybe it's a bit too broad, a bit too philosophical, but, but so I think the answer is yes, it can be used for good and it can be used for bad. That's a simplistic way. And then on top of that, there's all these nuances to those discussions, I think.

Gareth King (25:35)

No, absolutely. I think where I was going with this. And it was more around the influence that governments and companies, those very, very top echelons have to be able to kind of be doing that and controlling a narrative that is out there.

But, moving on, one thing I wanted to ask you was about the concept of reputation launderers. can you explain what they, are and what they do, and tools and the techniques they use?

Dr Stuart Thomson (26:14)

Well, I suppose, I mean, they come in all sorts of different shapes and forms. What we tend to think of them nowadays are these sort of influencer types, where a business will work with an influencer to try and say, this is the real story about this particular company or country.

You know, the argument has been made, that certainly for some countries in the Middle East, they have values or a way of working on lack of democracy that other countries may not feel particularly comfortable with. And therefore, how do you overcome that? You sort of work with, and I'll come back to launderers as well, because that sort of suggests there's something nefarious about that. But I'll come back to that in a second.

So but you would work with, you find ways effectively show a more positive view of that country to the outside world. So you sponsor sport events, you sponsor groups of comedians going across and doing these sorts of things. You will have some people that say that you are sort of laundering in some way the image or the sports washing, green washing, whatever it happens to be that particular reputation. Others will say, no, what we're doing is we're using this platform to show that actually, we’re very different to what we were 10, 20, 30 years ago, if even that was true.

But the sort of the laundering idea suggests that again, there's something that's not really changed. So the activist side of things, those that pay particular attention to maybe some of those countries will say, actually, you know what, it hasn't changed that much. So don't be fooled by this idea that, just because they've got a comedy, you know, session that suddenly free speech is there and you can, challenge the powers to be et cetera, et cetera, because that's not true type thing.

So they will try and keep that going. That laundering idea I think does suggest there's something slightly nefarious about it. And effectively they're just taking the cash to show that place or that company in a better light.

Gareth King (28:02)

No, that's the exact point like for me. I was curious because it does sound you know nefarious, but at the end of the day it just sounds like you're looking for good PR opportunities, you know, and that makes that makes total sense. So it sounds a lot cooler than the reality.

Dr Stuart Thomson (28:08)

Yeah. And those influencers, if you want to put it like that, will be, you know, they will talk to a particular community, or they will talk to a particular group of young people that they listen to. So, you know, a company coming along and working with you on something that that audience values, is no bad thing. That can be a really useful tool, really useful tool and not at all nefarious.

Now, but there are challenges. So sometimes, I mean, if we look at some of the regulators here in terms of, advertising, where a company will have to work with an influencer and they'll do something on Instagram or whatever and it doesn't get labelled as an advert. So, there is a financial transaction that's taking place between that business and that influencer, and they don't market it as an ad. The regulators have said they should do, but that still comes up every now and again.

Now to me, that's unethical and that does feel nefarious because effectively you're not communicating transparently with that audience. But that's easily overcome. You tag it, you show it properly. I've got a relationship with this business but I'm still prepared to talk to you, my audience about this particular thing. Transparency.

Gareth King (29:31)
Yeah, look, and again, total sense, too, simply because there is an inherent cynicism with people, whether they're looking at companies or brands or governments, like people just automatically seems feel like coming out of place from distrust. I mean, that's something that the internet and technology has enabled infinite fold. But one thing, again, I wanted to ask you around, just for anybody that might not be aware, what would you say are the telltale signs of a coordinated smear campaign or attack on whether it's a person or a business, government, whatever, in the digital space? What do they look like? The obvious tells.

Dr Stuart Thomson (29:54)

Yeah. Well, you know, names on social media aren’t names. Weird name with lots of numbers and letters and X's after the end of it, you know, that sort of thing. You know, pictures that are, I was going to use a particular example from the UK, but I won't do because it might get me into trouble. I'm not going to.

But, know, just, obviously made up fake pictures that play on particular themes of the time. That's when you know it's not real, or you've got a fair chance of it not being real. Now, again, does that stop the media following it? No, not necessarily. But it means that it's part of your argument. You can say, look, we've looked at these people and actually they aren’t people, they’re bots. This is some sort of organised campaign against us for whatever reason. But again doesn't get over the fundamentals. If you know your business, if you know your organisation, if you know your people, and you have the policies, the processes in place, even if that is the case you can still argue against it clearly and falsely.

Gareth King (30:49)

Right. That’s interesting to hear, especially about the way that I guess the digital space operates, where it is that slightly bizarre, surreal, kind of meme-driven culture, you know, like people leaning into these absurdities and rather than kind of running away from them.

So how do you things will play out now we know there's, there's bot farms and all sorts of ways of launching these digital attacks, whether they're cyber-attacks or smear campaigns, whatever it is. But how do you think things play out in the digital landscape as technology, whether it's AI or anything else, continues to get more autonomous and less human. Where is that gonna take us, do you reckon?

Dr Stuart Thomson (31:48)

That's a really tough question as well, Gareth. We talked about us individually as activists now. That becomes even more effective when I can stick an AI on to help me do that. I can be even more granular than I was before. So I can be less expert, but actually more effective.

When it comes back to the company, that means they absolutely have to be on top of everything in a way that the activist is as well or the challenger is. Maybe that helps everybody to know their business much better than they currently do? So again, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think that could be partly a consequence, of that as well.

But the more that, if it's just sort of AI generated content in that sense, then the more noise there is, the more that that human element, the more that the real challenge, the human story, which is already what drives most of us and media nowadays, becomes even more important, So in some way, I mean, maybe this is the positive way, but in some way, that is the really positive side of this, is that humanity part becomes more important and cuts through the AI noise. It's the human side.

Gareth King (33:03)

Yep, look, totally agree. I like to think of it in that optimist sense too, that eventually that humanity, that's what's going to shake out of all of this as the most important part of it. But on that note, if you could give everyone one piece of advice, they were potentially concerned about the way that their reputation could be affected in the digital space. What piece of advice would you offer them as the most important?

Dr Stuart Thomson (33:28)

Be honest with yourself. Whether you're of an individual or a business, take time to reflect. And if you aren't doing something right, and you can see you're not doing it right, do something about it before it becomes a problem. We often don't do that and I think that's for reputation side of things, massively helpful. And even if it's difficult, you still do something about it. Again, all of us as we do shy away from these things sometimes. And just because it's difficult…

Gareth King (33:51)

What's that saying? The only way out is through. So take it on. See what you can get done. Awesome. Look, thanks so much for that, Stuart. What have you got coming up and where can people follow what you're up to?

Dr Stuart Thomson (33:57)

I'm on as you would probably expect all good platforms. LinkedIn is probably a good one, but I'm on others as well, and my website for my business CWE Communications. But yeah, look I'm very happy to have follow-up discussion with people so if they want to connect, then just reach out we'll do that, and obviously if they want to buy a book, they’re more than happy to do that, available to all good retailers probably online.

Gareth King (34:23)

We'll drop the link in the show notes. Stuart, thank you so much.

Dr Stuart Thomson (34:27)

Pleasure. Thank you very much I've really enjoyed our time, so thank you very much.