The Old Fashioned Deal: Trust and Influence in a Digital Age

David Olajide (00:00):
In the end, persuasion isn't about strategy decks or social feeds. It's about the quiet chemistry between people and the trust that can turn a simple drink into a lifelong alliance. This is the old-fashioned deal.

Farzana Baduel (00:19):
There's a scene in Mad Men that never quite leaves you. Don Draper, sleeves rolled up, sits across from a client in a smoky New York bar. The pitch isn't polished. There are no slides, no slogans, no data points, just two people talking—a clink of ice in a glass. A silence that says more than any presentation could. The client leans in. Don doesn't sell an ad campaign. He sells a feeling, nostalgia, trust, the kind that turns a handshake into a contract before the lawyers ever show up. The deal is done before the check arrives because connection happened first.

That world feels so distant now. We trade business cards for QR codes, lunch meetings for LinkedIn messages. Influence has gone digital, but something about that bar scene still resonates. It reminds us that persuasion isn't really about platforms; it's about people. In public affairs, the same truth applies.

(01:28):
 You can study the policy perfect, the procedure, follow every rule in the book, but at the end of the day, the people you influence must believe you. They have to feel that you mean what you say. That's the quiet transaction at the heart of communication. And yet, in our fast-scrolling, post-pandemic, polarized world, trust feels harder to build but easier to lose. Relationships once forged over long conversations and longer lunches now flicker in and out of focus through screens.

Today on Stories and Strategies, we explore what happens when trust meets technology, when connection meets politics, and when the human side of influence meets the digital age. Because as Don Draper might say, if you don't like what's being said, change the conversation.

(02:39):
 My name is Farzana Baduel.

Doug Downs (02:41):
And my name is Doug Downs. Our guest this week is Lionel Zetter, joining today from London. Lionel, what part of London? Now that I'm so well versed in Bayswater and Knightsbridge… I don't know if Knightsbridge is an actual area; I just made that up… whereabouts are you in London?

Lionel Zetter (03:00):
Knightsbridge is very much an actual area, Doug, but very few people can afford to live there. I live in Winmore Hill in North London, which used to be a village before it got swallowed up by London, but it still looks like a village. It's got a green and three pubs, and it's really nice.

Doug Downs (03:17):
Well, that sounds nice. Next time I'm there, you and me at the pub.

Lionel Zetter (03:20):
Absolutely.

Doug Downs (03:20):
Lionel, you are one of Britain’s most respected figures in public affairs, a man whose career has spanned Westminster corridors, boardrooms, and bookshops alike. You're a connector, a confidant, and a storyteller who has spent decades shaping policy and guiding politicians through triumph and trouble. You're also an author whose latest novel reminds us that in politics, as in life, influence begins, and sometimes ends, with trust.

Farzana Baduel (03:49):
So Lionel, I have followed your career for years, and for so many, including myself, you are considered the godfather of public relations. You have written the book on public relations, which, when I first came into the industry, I read. Also, your Lobbyist book is a scream, and I’ve been reading it as well. I haven’t finished it yet, but I absolutely love it. And I wanted to ask you, Lionel, people often say that you are one of the most well-connected professionals in Westminster. Is it all about what you know, or is it about who you know, or is it a blend of both?

Lionel Zetter (04:29):
Well, I’ve been around a very long time, Farzana, as you know, and that’s why my black book is as bulging as it is. When I first started in the 1980s, lobbying was the Wild West, anything went. There were no rules, no regulations. You did what you liked and generally got away with it. But in those days, it was all about who. Nowadays, we’re supposed to say it’s about what. The truth is, it’s always been about the two.

Old-school people like myself still use our contacts to an enormous degree, but there’s a whole new generation of public affairs professionals coming through now who are much better trained, much better schooled than we were back in the day. They do undergraduate degrees, post-grad degrees, they read the books, they go on the courses. So they understand the mechanics probably better than we did.

If they have a shortfall, and I’m full of admiration for my younger colleagues, it’s that they probably don’t spend as much time networking and establishing relationships as we did. The best relationships, from my point of view, were forged either over a very lengthy lunch in Westminster, usually on a Friday, or at party conference at two or three o’clock in the morning, when most people had gone to bed and a few diehards were propping up the bar, shooting the breeze, getting to know each other.

Doug Downs (06:18):
My personal philosophy is that in-person will always be better, especially if we’re sharing a drink or breaking bread together, because the physiology of the body and brain changes and we feel closer to one another. So I’ve sort of answered the question as I ask it—but how do you feel about that? Can relationships still be built successfully in a virtual world?

Lionel Zetter (06:42):
Simple answer is no, Doug. COVID taught us that Zoom and Teams are really valuable tools, especially when you’re in different time zones, as we are here. And I think you can maintain relationships on email or via calls, etc., but I don’t think you can establish those relationships that way. You need to put in the groundwork, build up that relationship, and then you can keep it ticking over by all means. But face-to-face, as you say, over a lunch or dinner table, breaking bread, that’s how it works.

Farzana Baduel (07:20):
I totally get that.

Doug Downs (07:21):
Same in the political sphere. When you’re meeting with politicians or those who actually get the work done just beneath them at the chief administrative level, it’s about breaking bread.

Lionel Zetter (07:33):
Sure, absolutely. Politicians, special advisers, journalists. Now, civil servants are very different. You have to be careful. Entertainment has to be declared; there mustn’t be any hint of undue influence. But you can meet them over a cup of coffee, maybe even a beer, but the entertainment cannot be too extravagant.

Farzana Baduel (07:56):
Do you know, Lionel, I wanted to talk about polarization. Back in the day, about twenty-odd years ago, I was working with the Conservative Party. As I did back then, and as I do today, I have friends across the whole political spectrum. But that seems increasingly rare. People are becoming more polarized. They don’t want to date people across the political spectrum, they don’t want to do business with them, and there’s even discrimination where people don’t want to be in the same room with those who see things differently.

How have you navigated polarization in the political realm? Because you’ve experienced multiple different governments. Has tribalism changed the way influence works? And does fear play a larger role in political strategy today than it used to?

Lionel Zetter (09:13):
Yeah, I mean, public affairs has always been about threat and opportunity. Whether you’re playing either side of the street, those are the two realities. Social media has made things worse, everyone’s in their little echo chamber talking to like-minded people.

When you go to a Labour conference, you’ll see people wearing T-shirts, polite version: “Never kiss a Tory.” The impolite version is stronger. They’re proud of not associating with the other side.

Under the Blair government, it was easy for Tories to lobby Blair and Mandelson, who we sent over to you, Doug; you sent him back, you’re welcome.

(10:08):
 Under the Blair government, they were intensely relaxed about people being rich. They understood business. They knew that if you want first-class services, health, social security, etc. it has to be paid for. Sadly, I don’t detect the same feeling from the current UK administration.

Fortunately, I work in an agency, like yours, Farzana, that’s big enough to have people from all political parties. But it’s getting to the point where you’d send a Labour person to talk to a Labour minister and a Tory to talk to a shadow cabinet member. It shouldn’t be that way, but that’s how things are developing.

Doug Downs (11:01):
Gosh, trust, does it just come down to trust?

Lionel Zetter (11:05):
Everything pretty well comes down to trust, Doug, and that trust is absent now. It doesn’t help, and I’ll be a bit partisan here, that this government, despite its enormous majority, doesn’t feel secure. The cliché is the majority is a mile wide but an inch deep. They lose votes despite having a majority well over a hundred. They don’t have anybody in the cabinet with experience of government, and that means when they talk to business, they can be insecure.

So maybe the job of a good lobbyist is to relax them, put them at ease, and help them navigate that chasm. But so far, myself and a lot of my Tory colleagues say it’s pretty hard work.

Doug Downs (12:07):
I know over here you have different GR agencies, basically council groups, that if one party is elected, you hire this council group because they have all the relationships. And if the other party’s elected, you hire that other group. That’s what it’s morphed into. In your book, your newest one, The Lobbyist, there’s a powerful line where the villain toasts “the age of the autocrat.” So what message are you hoping readers, and maybe political professionals, take from that? Are we really at risk of losing faith in democracy and the power of dialogue, or perhaps rhetoric?

Lionel Zetter (12:52):
Yeah, I mean, the book is primarily entertaining. It’s supposed to be a page-turner; it’s supposed to grip the reader. But there is a message there, and the message is that we in the collective West are under attack. I think our governments pretty well realize that, but they’re not being particularly honest with our publics.

My father worked in the Foreign Office. Having fought through the war, he joined the Foreign Office and spent the rest of his career fighting the Soviet Union. And he always said when the Wall came down, that didn’t make things better; it just made them murkier.

What we’ve got nowadays is a loose consortium, or maybe not so loose, of states that absolutely want to see the end of our way of life. I dubbed them the “CRINK” states: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. They are attacking us on a daily basis, not with shells or missiles, but with cyber, with assassination, with social media.

(13:59):
 We are under attack, and I think our politicians need to level with the public. So far, they haven’t. They want to have it both ways, and you can’t. We’ve cut off most of our ties with Russia here in the UK, but we still buy their oil and gas. And with China, we know what’s happening with the Uyghurs. We know they have the most advanced surveillance state anywhere in the world. We know they walked into Tibet. We know they want to walk into Taiwan, and yet we continue to take their money and their investment. The time has to come pretty quickly when we cease to do so, in my opinion.

Farzana Baduel (14:45):
Lionel, now, a lot of people who aren’t familiar with public affairs don’t quite understand what it entails. How would you describe public affairs, and how does it differ, if it does, from stakeholder engagement?

Lionel Zetter (15:00):
It does differ, but only in terms of the stakeholder. As I said earlier, a lot of it’s about threat and opportunity. But when I do talks on public affairs, I say it’s about the three Ps. The first P is the really boring one: procedure. How does a bit of legislation work its way through both Houses of Parliament or both Houses of Congress? What are the stages of a bill? You have to understand that inside out.

Slightly more interesting is policy. Governments and opposition parties are always on the lookout for policies that are eye-catching, popular, and hopefully workable. But the third P is, of course, people, personalities. That’s the real fun bit. That’s what I enjoy. But if you can tick all of those boxes, you’ll be a good lobbyist.

Doug Downs (15:59):
Awesome.

Farzana Baduel (15:59):
Brilliant. Thank you so much, Lionel.

Doug Downs (16:01):
Appreciate your time. Yeah, Lionel, in our last episode, our guest Nick Usborne left a question for you.

Nick Usborne (16:09):
So imagine tomorrow a family member, a friend, or a neighbour walks into your home wearing a pair of Meta glasses, or indeed any other brand that’s AI-enabled and has video and audio. What do you do? Do you say, “Cool, come on in”? Or do you say, “Ah, leave that at the door”?

Lionel Zetter (16:32):
Would I let them in? Simple answer to that is no. I think anyone wearing Meta glasses, and I’m sorry to Google or whoever dreamt them up, they’re going to be either a voyeur or a narcissist. And I wouldn’t want either of them in my house.

Doug Downs (16:50):
So

Lionel Zetter (16:50):
No.

Doug Downs (16:51):
Yeah, that would scare me. Farzana, would you let them in?

Farzana Baduel (16:56):
Yes, I would.

Doug Downs (16:57):
You would?

Farzana Baduel (16:58):
Yeah, I would, just so I could try them. I haven’t tried them, and I’m a curious creature. So I think more of opportunity than threat, perhaps.

Lionel Zetter (17:12):
Good on you. So you do the opportunity, I’ll do the threat. We’ll cover all the bases.

Farzana Baduel (17:17):
We’d make a good team. Your turn, Lionel. Now, what question would you like to leave for our next guest?

Lionel Zetter (17:25):
So I don’t know who this person is, right? This is just an open question. My question would probably be in two parts: What was the biggest mistake you made in your professional career, and what did you learn from it?

Farzana Baduel (17:53):
That is a good one. Lionel, can you answer that first?

Lionel Zetter (18:01):
I think the biggest mistake I made in my public affairs career was writing a novel called The Lobbyist.

Farzana Baduel (18:08):
Not at all. I’ve read the reviews, Lionel.

Lionel Zetter (18:10):
It’s given away too many secrets. And of course, it will be read by lobbyists, politicians, special advisers, civil servants, and journalists. And at least two or three of those groups will probably not appreciate the storyline.

Doug Downs (18:36):
Good on you. I’ll volunteer mine, it was a long time ago, so that makes me feel safe. I worked for a company that was changing something that provided more spotlight for me in the public realm, but it required twenty percent more work from me, and there was no incremental pay. I regret that I was very lukewarm. I didn’t respond positively, and I should have realized that the additional profile I was gaining in my broadcast career was a positive in and of itself.

Lionel Zetter (19:15):
I like that. The laborer is worthy of their hire, Doug, so maybe you were right.

Doug Downs (19:20):
Took me years to figure it out though.

Farzana Baduel (19:23):
Gosh. I think my biggest mistake, just young and foolish—I set up a PR agency sixteen years ago without any experience in PR other than watching Absolutely Fabulous. I know, it’s like the blind leading the blind. I just cringe when I think back.

What really helped is that after a few years in the wilderness, I discovered the CIPR and the PRCA, two industry bodies. All of a sudden, I got to know other PR people. I got access to skill guides, CPD, which built my knowledge, which in turn built my confidence.

I think that’s my biggest mistake: if you go gung-ho into an industry, do your research, get to know people in your industry, build a community around you. That becomes your learning environment and culture. Industry bodies have a huge part to play in professional development. That was my biggest mistake.

Doug Downs (20:32):
The mentor field, part of a network. There are people there who genuinely want to help.

Farzana Baduel (20:39):
And that’s how I came across Lionel. I read his books on public affairs. I have it somewhere here behind me.

Lionel Zetter (20:46):
And I was president of the CIPR back in 2007 or something like that. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, in every sense of the word, sorry, every commercial sense of the word, every business sense of the word. And of course, Farzana, you’re taking over in January as...

Farzana Baduel (21:06):
President. Yes, yes, yes. Very excited.

Lionel Zetter (21:08):
Wow. So you went from knowing nothing about PR to running the biggest PR professional body in the country.

Doug Downs (21:19):
To thinking she knows everything.

Farzana Baduel (21:22):
Not at all. I think PR keeps you humble because you always know that you just don’t know it all.

Lionel Zetter (21:28):
You all do great. You really do.

Farzana Baduel (21:30):
Thank you, Lionel.

Doug Downs (21:31):
Thanks, Lionel.

Lionel Zetter (21:32):
Thank you. See you, Doug. Bye, Farzana.

Doug Downs (21:36):
Here are the top three things we got today from Lionel Zetter. Number one, the two pillars of influence, relationships and expertise, work best together. Knowing people opens doors; knowing your craft keeps them open. Number two, trust is the real currency. Whether in politics or business, influence collapses without trust, and rebuilding it takes more than rhetoric. Number three, the human element still matters. Technology helps sustain connections, but genuine influence is built face-to-face, often over food, laughter, and shared time.

And Farzana, you and I had known each other six months in a virtual world this year. We met for the first time in September, face-to-face, broke bread, drank wine, blah blah blah. It definitely built more dimensions to the friendship.

Farzana Baduel (22:21):
Absolutely. I mean, we were working so well together, but actually when we met in person, all of a sudden, that creativity and brainstorming took a different level. It just hits differently when you’re in person. We’re humans; we weren’t designed to be behind screens.

Doug Downs (22:39):
Amen.

Farzana Baduel (22:41):
Now, if you’d like to send a message to our guest, Lionel Zetter, we’ve got his contact information in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of Curzon Public Relations, JGR Communications, and Stories and Strategies podcasts. If you liked this episode, please leave a rating and possibly a review.

A huge thank you to our producers, Emily Page and David Olajide. And lastly, do us a favour, forward this episode to one friend. And thank you so much for listening.