HIGHLAND Spring CEO Les Montgomery caused a stooshie when he said businesses were “fed up” and suggested the Scottish Government should be focusing on matters other than independence. He launched the company into the firing line when he said: “Independence isn’t the job the Scottish Government is supposed to be doing.

The backlash was immediate and significant. Social media went into a frenzy with calls to boycott Highland Spring’s bottled water. The company quickly tried to defuse the outcry, but without doubt experienced damage to the brand.

The independence and Brexit referenda both saw businesses threatening to leave if the vote didn’t go the way they wanted. Politicians used these mostly empty threats to stoke up their arguments to alarm voters.

Mixing business with politics is definitely becoming more popular, but it doesn’t always have a negative effect. Think Starbucks, which came out and said it would hire 10,000 refugees in response to Donald Trump’s racist policies. The public response to their vocal criticism and proposed positive action was incredible.

Understanding how to mix the two properly requires expert advice and support, and a specific reason to jump into action. Devin Scobie is public affairs director for award-winning PR agency Perceptive Communicators. He believes politics is a healthier place if people with a business background choose to get involved, citing Jim Mather, who he says was an excellent business minister at Holyrood.

But it’s a separate issue when businesses get involved in party politics, and not something Scobie would encourage beyond engagement across the parties as legitimate part of day-to-day awareness raising.

So what are the dos and don’t of involving your business in politics? Scobie says avoid becoming too aligned to a particular party.

“Council administrations and national governments come and go so I’d say it is wrong when a business becomes too aligned to a particular party,” he said. “That is the surest way to be at the back of the queue when ‘the new lot’ come in, as they surely will.”

The potential opportunities for businesses to engage politically are, according to Scobie, virtually unlimited. He said: “I would say this, of course, but a professional public affairs consultant can often speed up the process of who to meet and how to make it happen, as well as guiding businesses through relevant business at local and national levels.”

Scobie has been politically active all his adult life and has been a City of Edinburgh Councillor and a Westminster candidate.

“If anything, that has given me a deeper understanding of what is involved across all the parties,” he said. “So I know that clients who start early to build up their network of contacts invariably have a better chance of getting their message across.”

Michelle Rodger is a communications consultant