'Memo to Mike Turner (CEO);
cc. to Sir Ronald Hampel, Michael Portillo, Lord Hesketh, Paolo Scaroni and other non-executive board members:

While I am delighted with the way the new advertising and public relations campaign is positively rebranding us as a peace-keeping company dedicated to 'innovating for a safer world', I am concerned that critics may use it as a rod for our own backs, in the same way as they did against BP when it relaunched with the green helios and 'Beyond Petroleum' tag.

I'm hearing rumours that many of our ads in London Underground train carriages are being defaced (with texts like 'Profiting from death') or even removed completely. Similarly, we are receiving negative emails and letters in response to our broadsheet newspaper ads. This is worrying. If the shareholders get wind of the cost of this campaign, and hear of the way it's being received by the public, then we're all in for a roasting. With all this palaver re. Iraq, feelings are running high at the moment - God forbid if we were to start seeing headlines like 'Taxpayers' money spent on feelgood ad campaign' in the bleeding heart press.

I want ideas about ways to minimise the fallout from this on my desk Monday am., or else we're all in for a roasting,

Yours,

Dick

PS. I hope to see as many of you as possible in our box at Twickenham over the season - let my PA know what dates suit and she'll take it from there...