When trouble rears its ugly head, you need to confront it head on.

You could try to ignore the phone or get away with "no comment" - but that won't make the story, or the trouble, go away.

Where a crisis is likely to impact on your organisation and its reputation by creating negative media coverage Mercury can provide you with "poachers turned gamekeepers" - people who as ex-journalists know just what fires up newshounds and what it is that draws their teeth.

They can educate in the sort of response and reaction that works best when damaging publicity threatens.

It could be a product recall, a factory closure, redundancies, or allegations of sexism, racism or ageism - these days there so many "isms" and other pitfalls out there for businesses it's a miracle so many get by unscathed.

As well as helping to prepare statements that can often turn the negative into the positive, our in house newshounds can also be at your shoulder when it comes to fielding flak, and show how to survive press conference grillings.

What clients who may find themselves in the firing line need is the confidence that they are well equipped to deal with it, and that they have on tap the inside knowledge that will help them negotiate the hazards.

At Mercury, we believe a trouble shared is more than a trouble halved - it is a trouble that can be made to vanish.