Suddenly, it’s Trust Barometer time again…

As regular as the first snowdrops, the Edelman Trust Barometer pokes over the top of the New Year towards Spring. This week, the executive summary was unveiled and, having waded through the clips, notes and pictures, I don’t think it has really come up with anything new, startling or provocative. And, as usual, I was [...]

European studies on communication: two reflections

The European Communication Monitor study has put it clearly: for public relations professionals in Europe, Internal Communication and change management is the fastest growing area in terms of importance. It will grow to become the third most important discipline by 2011, according to the same study .

Reputation lost, reputation won: Lessons from Aristotle and Barack Obama. Ronel Rensburg on Rhetoric and Public Relations. A South African Perspective.

by
Ronel Rensburg
While watching the acceptance speech (“This is your victory”) by Barack Obama upon winning the presidential race in Chicago, I experienced a long-forgotten feeling of excitement towards political rhetoric as well as a stirring of new-found hope for the USA and the rest of the world.
In the presence of hundreds of thousands of [...]

Retaining Professionals Who Thrive on Challenge

This post appeared original on the Institute for Public Relations blog, written by Pamela Blum and Vanessa Tremaro. In any service based industry, client retention and employee retention are inextricably linked. In public relations consultancies, a firm’s success hinges on its employees and the level of service they provide. Their creativity, diligence and intelligence are [...]

Live at the Inauguration with 3000 “Friends” per Minute

I had a new experience yesterday that helped me understand the “social” in social media a little better. I use Facebook to maintain with far-distant friends and to get back in touch. So, contrary  to today’s teens who chat with each other online, I am more likely to talk to my current, nearby friends on the [...]

How cognitive dissonance is impacting this growing universal habit of blaming the media for the worsening of the crisis.

Some 77% of american public opinion (if such an animal ever existed) is reported to consider media reports largely responsible for the worsening of the global economic crisis.
What is however even more relevant and scary, is that many governmental and corporate leaders vociferously adopt the same argument, to the point were repetition inevitably ends [...]

Starving for Context and Translation: Lessons from the 2008 Food Crisis

The first half of 2008 was a blur for me. When the global food crisis hit, the fertilizer industry went from obscurity to centre stage in the blink of an eye. There was little or no time to build up resources, so all of the communicators I know in the sector went into overdrive. While [...]

New Thinking to Drive the Science of Public Relations

With the announcement of the Institute for Public Relations Research Fellows to guide this organization’s overall research program, Bulldog’s Daily Dog gave me the opportunity to write an op-ed.

The Business of Business is… Responsible Business: where public relations becomes relevant, in the form of stakeholder relationship management

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The perspective of this new-year note on ‘the business of business is responsible business’ is that the current economic crisis is only one of the consequences of a historic discontinuity (see here) in which we all find ourselves immersed since the end of the twentieth century.
A discontinuity originated by the radical subversion of the [...]