1.
Please discourage my colleagues from offering, arguing, pushing individual as well as organizational visibility as a ‘strategic’ and desirable objective.
Peeing in the pot is more strategic and less polluting.
If it makes sense to expect a substantial reduction in organizational advertising investments, it also makes sense to anticipate a reduction of editorial pages which, in turn, reduces media relations activities.
Subsequently many of my colleagues will find time to think about many other and more useful values they can create for their employer/clients, such as–for example–helping them to develop more effective relationships with their key publics.
If so, it might be useful for them–for ideas, approaches and processes–to peruse any of the 277 posts and 1,345 comments, contained within 49 categories and 73 tags in this-here blog.
2.
Please encourage my colleagues to adopt the habit of asking themselves–at least once a month–what they are doing, how they doing what they are doing, and what sense it all makes.
If they are believe to be part of the global public relations professional community, then they are probably, at least once in a while, consulting this here blog.
Please con-vince them to share these visits with their own colleagues.
If, instead, they are not con-vinced of being part of that community–Santa please!–insist that they carefully rationalise and conceptualise their day-to-day activities….and if this boils down, for at least 50% of their professional time, to assisting client/employers in developing more effective relationships with key publics, then suggest they visit this blog for some inspiration.
3.
Also, whether they are aware of doing public relations or not, please Santa (please!), con-vince them that if they do not belong and participate to their national public relations association and/or their specific practice-related association, our profession will continue to be badly damaged by the severe lack of representativeness of those associations, and this hurts you colleague!, as much as it hurts others.
4.
Having said this, and on behalf of all the other co-bloggers who actively participate to this pr conversations adventure, may I ask you, dear Santa, to pose your friendly and con-vincing arm on the shoulders of those visitors, readers, commenters who are either professionals, scholars or post-graduate students residing and/or operating in:
°latin america
°central and northern africa
°the enlarged middle east
°eastern europe
°west, east and far east asia
to the point that they will wish consider joining us as co-bloggers.
To do this, my friends (may I say this now that some months have passed since McCain..?), please send me (tonimuzi@tin.it) an initial post with a short cv, and I will circulate both to my partners for a quick review.
If accepted, we will send you all the instructions to enable you to post directly.
Come on…help us enlarge the perspective for all our readers from the rest of the world…
As for contents, sure…. keep in mind what we have been posting about so far…. but out-of-the-box ideas are much more than welcome.
Of course I am well aware that Santa is not a recognized figure nor a politically correct mode to address colleagues from other areas of the world…. but I also, aside from being a non believer, have an identity…… 🙂
Toni,
I am reminded of advice that it is best to invest when times are tough. Or as the Billy Ocean song had it: when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
Those who invest in the future of PR now – personally and professionally, will undoubtedly benefit when we come out of the “dark ages” (as we inevitably will).
When life is difficult, you gain far more by giving back than thinking just of yourself. So I totally support your call for new contributors for PRC and active participation in professional bodies.
For all the advice and help that I’ve ever provided to colleagues or students over the years, I’ve gained so much more back.
Even when your budgets are cut, you can look for opportunities to learn and find the support of friends. PRC is one of the great free resources online for PR practitioners – whether you simply read the posts, contribute to discussions or take up Toni’s challenge to be a new contributor.
Please let me add a point: Dear Santa, please convince my colleagues that a press release should be written for the journalists and not just to please the company. Dear Santa, please bring us a new mail filter to spam bad press releases.