Richard Craig & Associates

02/09/2026

A recent social media post showed Britain’s King Charles collecting eggs on a farm, no less, presumably on one of the royal estates.

A simple, homespun country look and, dare we say, a good PR look also.

The notion of “Farmer Charles”.

Like his 18th century forebear King George III, known as "Farmer George" because of his interest in agriculture and farming.

The post would have been orchestrated by the king’s communications and PR unit, always looking for opportunities to portray the king in a favourable light.

31/07/2026

Richard Craig & Associates’ history project, historywow.com, was launched in 2012. Now in hiatus, the project saw Richard Craig write several articles on history and business for The Australian Financial Review, The Australian and Acuity, the professional magazine of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and New Zealand.

These articles can be viewed at historywow.com in the section Historywow in the News.

Why ‘Wow’? Because history has a ‘Wow’ factor. History is rich in fascinating and inspirational incidents and events. Stories of heroism, self-sacrifice, humor, arrogance, foolishness, victory against the odds, the cruel hand of fate, irony and nobility.

01/07/2026

Richard Craig was fortunate enough to begin his public relations career working within the public relations section of Australia’s largest chemical company ICI and after this with Shell, before commencing his PR consulting career.

At Shell Australia, which had a public relations department since around 1905, there was a saying that “adverse public opinion is the antecedent of government intervention”.

This quotation came to mind on viewing the front page of today’s Australian Financial Review which reported ‘Labor flags reform to big four firms’. Referring of course to the four big accounting and advisory firms.

It wouldn’t take an Einstein to appreciate that the proposed reforms follow some very negative publicity for several of these big firms, all of which employ hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

If the reforms come to pass, this will no doubt create some interesting corporate communications and reputation management issues for these firms.

31/05/2026

For those in the public eye - companies, institutions, high profile individuals, etc - reputation and perception management is an ongoing poker game.

Sometimes you’re up. Sometimes you’re down.

This is particularly applicable to the British Royal Family.

Seemingly ever unfolding matters regarding the former Duke of York continues to create negative issues for this ancient family.

The Prince of Wales, Prince William, has lately received some good publicity when he said he was planning on subdividing the Duchy of Cornwall for public land. This was a positive.

An opposing perspective was that he speaks out on homelessness in Britain and yet owns reportedly scores of houses. A cynic might argue, if one is so concerned about homelessness, why not make available some of those homes for use by the homeless?

By all accounts, the hardworking Princess of Wales is a genuinely lovely person and a major PR boon for the Royal Family.

There was a fine example recently of ‘good optics’ for Prince William when he was shown arriving for an interview on an electric scooter.

The message was that His Royal Highness doesn’t arrive in a specially built luxury limousine but a very simple environmentally sound means of transport available to just about anyone.

The rebuttal of this negative publicity and orchestration of these positive episodes for the Royal Family provides ongoing work for the Buckingham Palace communications and public relations team, which no doubt is a substantial unit.

17/05/2026

Richard Craig has fond memories of the occasions when he had the privilege of lecturing at three Australian universities. The first was for a six months semester lecturing in marketing communications and public relations at Deakin University, to students in Australia and Malaysia. Later he lectured in business and financial communications at RMIT and in corporate communications at his old alma mater the University of Melbourne.

30/04/2026

The speechwriters and communications team of King Charles would be presumably riding high presently, after the very positive reception received by His Majesty’s several addresses in the United States this week.

Wit, camaraderie and historical knowledge were evident in these speeches.

A reminder that in PR and communications the opportunities for writing across a number of formats - media releases, briefing papers, annual reports and speeches, etc - are legion.

01/04/2026

It’s been said that every second advertising and marketing copywriter has a half finished novel in their desk bottom drawer.

Similarly, many public relations and communications people are in the job because they like to write.

PR and communications allows practitioners the opportunity to exercise their creative writing skills on behalf of their employing organisations or clients.

An excellent example was the response from Victorian premier Jacinta Allan recently when asked to comment about speculation that her leadership was likely to be challenged

She said, and we presume the words were written by one of her legion of communications people, that the speculation was from “scallywags who need a cuddle“.

The succinct response was clever, witty and dismissive.