Public Diplomacy/Public Relations in action. Will Italian and Romanian migrants be successfull? An update.

On the 4th of November this post opened a fruitful dialogue between professionals from two European countries (Italy and Romania) and sparked an interesting debate with the participation of visitors and commentators from many other countries ranging from New Zealand, Austria, Canada, the Uk, the USA, Portugal, Latin America and South Africa.

Public, private, community, individual

I received a friendship request today on a social networking platform for communicators.  I have no idea who this person is, and I suspect that he is a consultant randomly inviting other people to be his friend in order to expand his prospect list. His message basically just says hello and provides no info on [...]

Reinventing diplomacy

I sometimes think that we get a little obsessed with what PR is and isn’t, and I am not always sure that these conversations do anything more than keep us busy navel gazing. What I’d like to think about is what PR is becoming…and that’s everything. My personal belief is that formalized communications evolved because [...]

Is marketing to blame for PR’s poor reputation?

Is it fair to state that unethical PR practice results primarily from a marketing focus on publicity?  Aren’t spam press releases, pseudo-events, poorly conducted surveys and spin all about gaining attention regardless of the truth?
Can we blame PR’s poor reputation on an increased focus on promotional communications for competitive differentiation (the reductionist view of PR as [...]

Larry Foster: back to real relationships, not only virtual

Please do take a good and quick look at Larry Foster’s very recent acceptance speech of the Alexander Hamilton Medal at IPR’s annual event at the Yale Club in New York.
For those of us who are (or believe they are) ‘geeks’ so-to-say it amounts to a back-to-basics wake up call!
For the others, many of whom [...]

According to Bill Sledzik, social media measurements remain elusive; let’s fix that

PR Conversations welcomes a guest post by Bill Sledzik, associate professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication, Kent State University, Ohio, U.S.A. Collectively, we quite like his regular blog posts (i.e., thought process, rigour and sense of humour), and felt that our international readership would enjoy a taste of some Tough Sledding, too.

Xenofobia catches up with Italy against Romanians. How could public relations help?

Something awful is happening in my country (Italy) these days, with many implications on public relations (specifically in the sense of public diplomacy) which I feel we should all be aware of. …