Get Real: How to Tell it Like it is in a World of Illusions

Oil companies advertise their green credentials. Billionaires orchestrate ‘grassroots’ political movements. Organic food is grown on vast industrial farms. Public spending cuts that target the poor are billed as progressive. To Eliane Glaser, these are all signs of the maddeningly surreal gap between appearance and reality in modern life. In her book Get Real: How to Tell it Like it Is in a World of Illusions, Eliane describes how PR and marketing have helped to create a looking-glass world in which reality is spun and vested interests appear in disguise. Only by spotting illusions and declaring agendas, she argues, can we improve our world for real. She is joined by Julia Hobsbawm, founder of the media networking business Editorial Intelligence, to debate whether PR is a modern scourge, a necessary evil or even a force for good. 

Eliane Glaser is a writer, radio producer and honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London.

Julia Hobsbawm is a businesswoman who is also a commentator, speaker and coach on communications, entrepreneurship and work life balance.