I once organised a corporate photo shoot in the City that nearly went horribly wrong when the staff turned up not in suits, but in tee-shirts and jeans. By chance we'd ended up choosing the one day in the calendar when anarchists target financial workers, May Day. Only our skill with Photoshop saved the day (so don't believe everything you see in print, not even the pictures!).

Now it seems dressing-down is the official advice to all City workers this week, as rioters at the G20 summit are expected to hang effigies of bankers from lampposts (let's hope they are just effigies, Professor Chris Knight, of the University of East London, was suspended for predicting last week that they would do it for real).

The suit is the uniform of the City worker, or his or her branding, it appears. Underneath, they are still bankers, of course. What the rioters are demanding is that they change not their branding, but their brands. Changing clothes is easy, just as rebranding is relatively easy, if all it means is a new shade, a new logo, a new name. The hard bit is the fundamental change to the underlying values the branding should reflect. Brand is everything, and nobody can hide from that.

Nigel Penn-Simkins 0118 951 9450