“Businessas usual is over,” is the tired beginning to the press release announcing the new book of PR men Michael Hayman and Nick Giles. “To succeed in this crowded and sometimes cynical market, you need to follow the new rules.”

Actually, their tome Mission: How the best in business break throughis somewhat better than the missive that accompanies it. Maybe the self-styled Mad Menof the PR industry – they are pictured clad in black suits clutching old-fashioned press cameras – need a better publicist.

The idea is that today’s winners in the business world have “shifted their focus from profits to purpose” and are now “defined by a mission that provides the clarity necessary to lead markets and define them.” And there’s the dilemma and business challenge.

“Mission alone isn’t enough,” declares the publicity material. “To thrive, you must turn your mission into a market reality that changes peoples’s lives. You must become a business campaigner.”

The duo have certainly enlisted some tireless champions to make their point. Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, Whole Foods’ creator John Mackey and Sherry Coutu, a successful British entrepreneur, are signed up with quotes in the front cover slip. Britain’s Prince Andrew and Paul Lindley, founder of British baby food start-up success Ella’s Kitchen, add their praise on the back cover.

The 227 pages in between are similarly scattered with pearls of wisdom from respected names from business and a few other walks of life.

Winston Churchill is the first person quoted (“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind”). From thence on, there are (in order) the mission statements of Google, Uber, Airbnb and advertising business Saatchi amp; Saatchi.

We are, the book claims, witnessing the rise of the “activist business.” Gebbia’s fellow Airbnb’er Brian Chesky is cited here, alongside the quotation of Amazon.com chief executive Jeff Bezos that “missionaries make better products”.

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