The serious business of public relations

It is interesting that the word ‘consultant’ derives from the Latin, consultare, meaning to debate or discuss.  That implies its function is to assist in two-way communications – yet, the role of management consultancy is positioned as assisting organizations to improve performance, through logical analysis and development of plans.  The focus is more on management [...]

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How to cut 50% spend on public relations

To paraphrase that old saying about advertising, is it possible that organizations are wasting half their PR spend? In the face of plans by many governments – such as the UK and Italy – to cut their communications budget, how should the public relations industry respond? Here I share some of my thoughts – and a suggestion from Toni Muzi-Falconi.

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Public Relations before, during, after acquisitions and mergers. Fascinating lessons from Poznan, Poland!

Ok… it took me more than 20 hours by van to return to Italy, while an Icelandic dust closed all of Europe’s airports… courtesy of two young polish drivers (found via the Internet the evening before by one of my benefactors Monika Bogdal from Poznan’s University of Economics… the power of social media…)… yet I [...]

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Reaching stakeholders, publics & audiences in a journalism 2.0 world where Free Costs Too Much

Although primarily focused on changes to newspaper readership and engagement models, an underlying quest is answers to the challenges impacting public relations practitioners regarding audiences who are only prepared to read (and opine about) newspaper content found online and at no charge.

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And now, let’s work for the Stockholm Accords and the future of our profession!

The communicative organization acts on the insights that relationships have real value, that reputation is shaped through relationships, and that the organization’s own values must be lived in constant dialogue within as well as with its customers, partners and other stakeholders.

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Pink Gloves, Hashtags and Lost Opportunities

A few weeks ago on the Hobson and Holtz Report (For Immediate Release 493), Shel Holtz mentioned that participants at this year’s Blog World Expo had been requested to use the Twitter hashtag #fightcancer during the day in order to raise awareness for the fight against the disease. At the time, I remember thinking, “So [...]

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+10%! those increasingly muddy waters between evaluation/measurement and return on investment

A few days ago, I accompanied a few colleagues to an important pitch for a global public relations program on behalf of a prominent market leader on which we had been feverishly working for the three preceding weeks..
We went through the whole proposal and, at the very end, the Ceo asked:
‘ok, this is all very [...]

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Show me the money? A challenge for PR

For the last 50 or so years, advertising money has made the world go round.  Despite the fact that Viscount Leverhulme (or was it John Wanamaker – either way, both were early pioneers of advertising for their companies) is quoted as having said:
I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I’m not [...]

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‘Enough is Enough’ – an economic model for Net-Work and Net-Worth?

With its roots in 1546, the wisdom underlying the John Heywood proverb ‘enough is enough‘ has been recognised by many. But when is enough truly enough? The churning over the recessionary pressures – real or otherwise – have, more so in recent months, led many to question the economic models we have used for so [...]

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Fresh ideas for internal communication in the current economic scenario

I’ve been wanting to write a post about the importance of internal stakeholder management or internal communication in the current scenario of economic recession for a while. Now, after having participated at the 4th Internal Branding and Employee Engagement Conference, here are some fresh ideas.

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