Mervin Straughan is a management consultant specialising in PR and corporate social responsibility

On the face of it, being able to send an email to our future self might seem like an amusing diversion but it could be an invaluable tool for helping us manage our personal and corporate PR.

A number of email services provide this type of facility including http://futureme.org/ which, at the time of writing this post, reported that almost 790,000 letters had been written to the future – and counting.

If we were to receive a message from our past self, how would our reputation measure up to what we had aspired? Would our past self be proud of the family member, employee, practitioner, business leader, politician or celebrity we had become?

There are plenty people in the media spotlight whose PR has been built on shaky foundations and now lamenting the reputation they have earned.

It’s important to remember that PR, whether personal or corporate, is built gradually over a long time and has authenticity is at its core.

This “authenticity” resonates with one of Quest PR’s clients, the international leadership and change management consultancy, Primeast.

On the subject of personal and corporate branding, Primeast’s deputy chairman Clive Wilson, says: “Who or what we associate with and how we look, act and communicate is all part of our brand. Being authentic is recognised as key to delivering great results especially where collaboration with others is imperative.”

This means that MPs wanting to avoid “sloppy accounting practices” or banking chiefs wanting to enjoy their pension benefits free of criticism might do well to log on to their email now and go back to the future.