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But I think he should distance himself from the running of Harrods

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But I think he should distance himself from the running of Harrods. The big problem is that we receive information about someone specifically in terms of how he handles his public affairs - and really, he has used his power to achieve some fairly negative publicity. But you're also dealing with a public figure who's grieving, in public, so you have to be extremely sensitive. The first thing he's got to do is just disappear from the scene for a while. No one makes any good judgements unless they have time to have a clear look at what they're going to do.

I would certainly look at avoiding the tabloid press; he's not going to achieve anything that way.What's perceived to be important to him is his idea of statehood - being enveloped into the upper echelons of our society Whether that can ever be achieved, I don't know. US Air, after their Pittsburgh crash in 1994, instead of running advertising saying what a wonderful airline it was, ran an open letter in the press from the chairman to members of the frequent flyer scheme talking honestly and openly about what they were doing about safety. That was far more effective, because it was true.Mark Borkowski,Mark Borkowski PRThe first thing to do with someone who's potentially in as much trouble as he is in the public eye is sit down with him and try to make him understand that But I would try to understand his point of view, too. But you'd have to be "under the radar" about it - you couldn't use traditional media. Instead of doing advertising trying to persuade people that: "Tthis is a really great guy - don't you just love him?", what you've got to be doing is an open, honest piece of communication in the broadsheet newspapers - papers because it needs the urgency of that environment.A great example of that would be an open letter from the "Fayed Foundation for Business", or whatever it would be called, to the participants in it and the people who are benefiting from it, talking about what it's doing, and setting up its charter. There's a great example of that kind of communication from the US. Unfortunately, though, he's allowed his image to become associated more with the old establishment, through the Dodi-Diana connection and the issue of his citizenship.So I think it's a matter of asking what his brand strengths are - and the answer to that is that he's part of a group of entrepreneurs who are defining the shape of the Britain that we are becoming.

I would advise Al Fayed to associate himself with the growth and renewal of Britain, and embrace this new multi-ethnic establishment of entrepreneurs. The way they conduct their business, and what they do with their money, is far more influential on the way everyone else behaves than what governments do. Al Fayed himself is Egyptian; there's the Asian Shami Ahmed, who runs the Joe Bloggs clothing label, and there are the people who run Pataks, the Indian spices company. So I think what he should do is adopt a Prince of Wales persona, maybe setting up an institution like the Prince's Youth Business Trust. That would be bang-on: it would make young people want to emulate him and he'd become accepted.The advertising would then grow out of these initiatives. By that I don't mean "Cool Britannia"; I mean the new establishment, which is essentially one of entrepreneurs And they're in fact a multi-ethnic group. British Steel is now one of the very few manufacturing industries in Britain whose levels of productivity and profit compare favourably to its Continental peers.Since commodity steel is priced in deutschmarks, there are few other industries quite as sensitive to the vagaries of the exchange rate as this one.However, even after pounds 500m of exchange rate losses, BS's chairman, Sir Brian Moffatt, has still managed to produce pre-tax profits of pounds 315m this year and keep the dividend fixed at 10p per share.He is able to do so because BS has taken steps to ensure it is competitive even at a very high exchange rate.Would that other manufacturers were productive enough that they didn't have to be supported by an artificially depressed currency.

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