PR Conversations

This morning’s edition of the New York Times carries on it’s front page an enligthening article by Alissa Rubin on the Taliban’s public relations campaign in Afhganistan, casting a well informed and brilliantly reported portrait of how the Taliban’s are increasing in their effort to gain the support of the people.
In reading the description of the policy paper (code of conduct) and particularly in the sentence ‘Creating a code of behavior is one thing, enforcing it another’, I was instantly reminded by how many times we public relators involved with professional associations around the world have echoed a similar thought.
Very interesting and excellent food for thought.

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I have just concluded my course on global relations and intercultural communication at NYU in New York.

The intense interaction with 10 highly committed graduate students -two Russian, three American, one Brazilian, one Colombian, one British, one Singaporean- allowed me the opportunity to review some of my less resilient stereotypes and learn much more from them than each of them individually from me.
That is the beauty of communication -even in the non symmetric environment of a classroom.
The added value mostly derives from the interaction of ideas, opinions and discussions.

Allow me to share with you two truly meaningful and enlightening final papers.
By reading them, you may well understand what goes on in the seven-in-a-row-six-hour Saturday classes and, more importantly, in between those Saturdays when students –after initially having read three basic course books
a) Redefining the Corporation (Post, Preston and Sachs);
b) the latest edition of the Gobal Public Relations Handbook (Vercic and Sriramesh);
and
c) the recent edition of Online Public Relations (Phillips and Young) –

feverishly discuss amongst themselves in virtual forums three issues proposed at the end of the preceding Saturday, as well as browse through an average of eight advanced reading materials papers related to the following Saturday.

The two papers I submit to your perusal are by Catalina Hernandez, Colombian and by Elizabeth Ghormley, American.

I am of course well aware of my bias, but I trust the other eight students will appreciate that these two papers are outstanding, mostly in the sense that, from radically different perspectives, they intelligently and critically capture the essentials and navigate through the course, making sense of the journey as well as adding value.

Catalina takes a systemic and organizational view of global public relations to argue its strategic role as well as shed new light on its relationships with the development of capitalism and democracy.

Elizabeth instead challenges the professional community by affirming and rationalizing the value of public relations to social development and arguing the case for a postmodernist approach by corporations to create new markets by alleviating poverty and introducing me (at least) to the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ concept..

I am confident readers will notice the wide spectrum of citations from all over the world, which normally do not flock our more established academic name dropping.
And this is another of the beauties of the course as many of those names come directly from student curiosity and were unknown to their instructor!

Enjoy, criticise, discuss and I wish you all a happy and serene holiday period.

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Innovation in public relations thinking and practice continues to come from all over the world.

Interestingly, in most cases the contributions are not from a single local source but from either regional or global perspectives.
Here are two very recent cases (more…)

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….And it’s true, my friend, we can even do miracles,
create a legend; turn a fairy-tale into reality,
transform a fly into an elephant, a donkey – into a camel,
and throw the negative into the dust of a street… (more…)

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I’m pointing you to the Message from the President, which recently went online on the Canadian Public Relations Society’s website. In his message, Dr. Terrence (Terry) Flynn, APR, FCPRS, outlines an organizational need for public relations:

“My new presentation, which was launched this month in Regina and Edmonton, speaks purposely to our value challenge: we not only need to demonstrate that public relations is valuable but we need to prove it can be valued.”

Next, he outlines the five components that provide true organizational VALUE in the public relations discipline:

V – Voice and Visibility
A – Alignment and Accountability
L – Leverage and Linkage
U – Ubiquity and Utility
E – Evaluation and Edification

This is my recommendation to give Terry Flynn’s message a full read. As the website Message doesn’t appear to allow comments, feel free to use this PR Conversations platform to express your own thoughts.

Although it isn’t indicated in his messaage, the CPRS webinar (or gold-standard Canadian/international case study) with Maple Leaf Foods, “Leadership in Difficult Times: The Listeriosis Outbreak,” remains available or “on-demand” for purchase, until May 2010. Here is a link to my earlier blog post, which was partially about the CPRS webinar with Maple Leaf Foods.

And a reminder that if you belong to a national PR association that is a full member of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, you qualify for the CPRS member rate. But even the non-member rate is very reasonable. Note that the purchase price includes the opportunity for multiple listens by the registrant and/or his or her organization, plus the abilitiy to download the two sets of slides (the presentation and the research).

* * *

Interestingly, I’ve been working on an upcoming post for PR Conversations (working title: Valuing an association move towards public relations professionalism), which I may yet modify a bit, based on Terry Flynn’s new post.

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Last night, at New York’s Yale Club, I participated in the Institute for Public Relations’ Annual Distinguished Lecture and Awards event.

The lecture was by Jon Iwata, IBM’s Senior Vice President, who heads the marketing, communication and citizenship organization departments of that company.

A full house, jammed with many of America’s most senior and reputed public relators.

On my side, a lot of curiosity for Iwata. (more…)

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Only a few days ago in Rome Kevin Roberts, the global Ceo of Saatchi, addressing a professionally mature corporate audience, said something like ‘ the most dramatic change which is disrupting the advertising markets is that we are now required to develop relationships with customers’.

Sir Martin Sorrell , Ceo of WPP, said more or less the same about one year ago in New York. (more…)

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In replying to a comment by Don Bates to a recent post on this blog, I invited him to write a guest post to better illustrate the reasons why he believes that a specific, existing and comprehensive software program (comPro Executive) can significantly support public relations professionals in adopting and adapting a new global stakeholder relationship governance operating platform which, together with many other scholars and professionals all over the world (although we might call it differently..), I believe is needed to grow and consolidate the role of public relations in today’s society.

Basically, he says, as many old and new professions have changed their conceptual and operative perspectives through the adoption of technology, so can public relations.

Thank you, Don, and here goes (more…)

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The King Report on Governance for South Africa 2009 and the King Code of Governance Principles (King III) plus the Practice Notes that support it, were released at the beginning of September. According to Toni Muzi Falconi, “it constitutes a dramatic acceleration of the growth of our profession. Can we now prove to be up to the challenge?” 

In March this year, just after the draft King III Report was published for comment, I invited Estelle de Beer from the University of Pretoria to give PRC readers a ‘behind the scenes’ view of the process of how Stakeholder Relationships came to be a separate chapter in King III.

In a recent comment on PRC to that initial post, the question was posed by Gerhard Dreyer on how the King II and King III Reports differ. I have invited Estelle back to PRC to answer Gerhard’s question. Here is her answer:   (more…)

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At the Canadian Public Relations Society’s Annual General Meeting, held on June 7, 2009, in Vancouver, British Columbia, CPRS member in attendance were introduced to new, official definitions (in English and French) of public relations. Both versions were adopted by the CPRS National board in February 2009, in Fredericton, New Brunswick. They are as follows:

Public relations is the strategic management of relationships between an organization and its diverse publics, through the use of communication, to achieve mutual understanding, realize organizational goals, and serve the public interest. (Flynn, Gregory & Valin, 2008)

Par relations publiques, on entend la gestion stratégique des relations qui existent entre une organisation et ses divers publics, en ayant recours à la communication afin de parvenir à une entente mutuelle, d’atteindre les objectifs organisationnels et de servir l’intérêt du public. (Flynn, Gregory & Valin, 2008)

(more…)

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