It's Dolly Parton's 80th birthday so I thought I'd brighten up your Bluesky feed with this pic I took of her in the early 2000s when I was Editor on the BBC Country website. Amazing woman, not just for her music but supporting children's literacy through book gifting - 230m+ copies given to date 👏

The Lee Miller exhibition at Tate Britain is astonishingly good. I knew very little about her before, and now I'm in awe. Up there with Letizia Battaglia in admiration stakes. Popped into Turner/Constable too, and enjoyed Maggi Hambling and Barbara Hepworth along the way ✨

A rave in the nave! I didn't know what to expect from an evening of Radiohead at Ely Cathedral but it was really rather good

I thought that Trinity College, Cambridge, was my oldest client - founded 1546. But they're a mere whippersnapper compared to Ely Markets, established 1216. And they're not just a market, they're an 800-year-old business incubator that fuels the local economy & puts smiles on faces all year round 😊

Enjoyable mix coming up today: * talking to a chap about delivering sessions on comms for his MBA students * joining an interview panel to help a client hire their Marketing Manager * finetuning the outline for a series of workshops on creating a podcast * crisis comms plan for an education client

Just had a sales call with a supplements brand, which I thought was going to be about marketing strategy...turned out they wanted me to make introductions on a commission basis. Er, no 😂 Just picturing...trying to flog omegas to University of Cambridge clients, they'd think I'd lost my actual mind

Most enjoyable morning running LinkedIn training with a large, established property company. The perception is that people all moved to Bluesky from X, but in my experience (subjective, obvs) it's LinkedIn that's changed the most - way more lively than a year or so ago, with a shift in content/tone

Livening up January with some cultural nourishment... ✨ Lee Miller and Turner/Constable, Tate Britain ✨ Wes Anderson, Design Museum ✨ Marie Antoinette, V&A for March ✨ Local cinema, David Lynch, Wild At Heart & Blue Velvet ✨ RSA events ✨ Traitors! And my first daffs for 2026 are ready to bloom 💐

At its core, #marketing is like gardening: your plants need • the right environment • sun, water & nutrients • tender loving care If one of those falls short, they aren't happy. Same is true for your customers. #buildinpublic

Embroidery by the first UK hunger striking suffragette, Scottish artist Marion Wallace Dunlop (1864-1942) #womensart

A little Dublin trip to round off 2025. Happy New Year everyone, and I hope 2026 brings you good health and lots of happiness ✨

Merry Christmas! Beautiful carol service in Ely Cathedral as always 🌟

A LinkedIn workshop to build today so it's all ready for Jan, then a whole afternoon of setting up systems and processes for 2026 and trialling a switch to a new project management tool. Which to some sounds like a headache, but to me is delicious ✨

Very enjoyable day in sparkly and festive London seeing two screenings: * Goodbye June, followed by Q&A with Kate Winslet, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall and Fisayo Akinade * Hamnet, at Bafta, with Q&A on set, location, costumes Must say there's worse ways to spend a Saturday!

Been looking forward to hanging this little chap on the tree!

Hurrah, the @rspb.bsky.social advent calendar is back 🦉

Great to complete this course in Behavioural Economics over the weekend, complementing two others this year: 🎓Behavioural Science at Work, Durham University 🎓Behavioural Economics: Employee and Customer Behaviour, FutureLearn, with Professor Paul Dolan of the LSE

How do British Airways use the COM-B model of behaviour change - and lashings of British humour - to encourage bored passengers to watch their safety films? And how can you apply this model to your own communications, in your organisation & marketing to customers? www.sookio.com/blog/british...

Fulfilling a lifelong dream to follow in the footsteps of Isabel Allende and Mario Vargas Llosa and come to South America, with a trip to Perú, Chile, Argentina. Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Colombia on the list for another trip 🦜Saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time!

A pretty fun and special day yesterday, at Apple HQ in Battersea Power Station picking up podcasting tips from people who really do know what they're talking about. Then the Independent Podcast Awards; up for Culture and Business, didn't win but one of the best awards dos I've been to, bravo ✨

Communication Untangled is up for two awards tonight in the Independent Podcast Awards! Plus Apple are putting on a mixer at Battersea Power Station at lunchtime time for finalists. Not sure what a mixer is - except in production terms - but I'm about to find out 😊

Fun day ahead, supporting a client in a welcome event for international students, and overseeing the filming taking place in this lecture theatre, where scenes from the Theory of Everything were shot

Two weeks today I'll be on a plane to Peru. Which is very exciting - and also my to do list before then is down to my ankles. It's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine...

Yep. The best messaging and comms can't save a duff strategy, although it might mask it for a while. Also, as a comms pro, I find that if it's really hard to figure out how to talk clearly about a company or an idea, it's a dead giveaway that there's something strategically missing.

National Business Women's Awards time again! Loved going to Wembley but this view will do... I'm a judge, not a nominee, so I have all the fun with none of the stress 😊 #nbwa

Ah, L'Autobus de rail replacement, avec l'eau d'urine! 💖

Six years after our April Fools joke that downstairs from our old HQ a new Brexit-themed cat cafe called Rees-Moggy's was opening up, I was delighted to see there actually IS a cat cafe coming to Mill Road, Catte Latte 😹

Not only is Meta a tainted brand that people now deeply distrust, but from a physical perspective, do they ever consider the millions of people like me who wear glasses already - are we wearing two pairs at once?!

Busy old week! * 1 comms strategy sent off * 2 charity workshops delivered * 2 days at the excellent Cambridge Tech Week

Really pleased with the masterclass sessions I ran this week with rare disease charity Beacon, giving founders of very small charities confidence in writing for the web and creating content, with a focus on NHS Digital guidelines & accessibility. Really interesting peer-to-peer discussions too...

Curious to see if Labour's comms team can pull off a rare success tomorrow and get Sir Keir Starmer out there delivering a calm, measured statement that miraculously manages to keep everyone happy, reduce tensions, and tells Elon Musk to do one along the way

Delighted to say that Communication Untangled is up for not one but two gongs at the Independent Podcast Awards! Categories: 🎙️ Business & Money 🎙️ Culture See the shortlist: independentpodcastawards.com/IPA25/en/pag... Give it a listen! www.sookio.com/podcast

New on the blog (remember them?) AI is complex. Honest communication makes it clear www.sookio.com/blog/ai-is-c...

📝 Case study: Trinity College, Cambridge 📝 Project: Student engagement. Strengthening communications across email, Instagram & digital screens. Case study: sookio.com/case-studies... See our work with the University of Cambridge @cam.ac.uk sookio.com/case-studies...

If anyone wants to know how it's going on Twitter nowadays...posts typically get just 30 to 50 impressions. Unless you comment in support of a bloke you know who appeared in an article in the Metro that everyone was mocking...boom, 74 sneering comments, 5k impressions

Update on this. It turned out to be so complicated to pull out of the process I didn't bother in the end. And then we won the work!

New report: How can AI work for the public good? @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social et al. explored this question in a series of workshops with people from across disciplines looking at: ⚖️ Administrative justice 📍 Place 🩺 Public health 💸 Market failure Findings: www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/publications...

Another course under my belt! A certificate of achievement from the uofglasgow.bsky.social on AI Ethics, Inclusion and Society. It gives you an ethical framework to apply to real-world challenges, including AI in healthcare, education and the environment. www.futurelearn.com/courses/ai-e...

If anyone struggles with making a decision, I came across this in my notepad on Friday and cannot remember what it relates to but I bet if you just ran through these in order, things would probably just work out fine...

My friend Rania Kurdi is so cool. Brilliant performance in Nirvana at the Teatro Technis then hops on writer and cast member Kai's motorbike to make it in time for her one-woman stage play Superstar in Therapy at the Libra Theatre an hour later. Brava! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 #CamdenFringe

Also great this week to meet up with the Cohaesus crew in Covent Garden. I recently joined this growing group of agencies in a Fractional CMO role. Working closely with the Marketing Executive, I draw on extensive experience as an agency founder to offer strategic marketing guidance. cohaesus.co.uk

Really productive day compiling the first draft of a comms strategy, following 18 insights gathering calls and a ton of competitor research. Topped off with a classic bizdev moment; tasty request for a proposal at 4pm on a Friday afternoon. It's always been our lucky time of the week!

6 hours of back-to-back Zoom calls today in a room with no windows 😵‍💫

Ooh that's a useful one, hadn't thought about this - will add it to my stash of tips

Ignore the AI fails. This is how I'm using it in my business - how about you? Read the latest Letter from the Editor:  https://mailchi.mp/66bfb256d6c5/how-using-ai-in-business

Productive @thersaorg.bsky.social day cooking up a plan I'm looking forward to writing up tomorrow 🤔

This was such a great course, can't recommend it highly enough. I have a discount code if anyone wants one. Bravo @42courses.bsky.social @canneslions.bsky.social

Hugely enjoying this audiobook at the moment, my ears can't put it down. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dream Count ✨

One of my highlights this week was introducing a group of students from Long Road Sixth Form College to the wonderful world of marketing & communications. ⭐ Research task based on two real-life briefs ⭐ Agencies v in-house marketing roles ⭐ Shadowing a podcast debrief meeting ⭐ Photo challenge!

Lovely evening at the Cambridge Wireless summer barbecue yesterday, catching up with business friends and just enjoying the sunshine 😊