Relationship advice for PR practitioners

Relationships are in the DNA of PR – in fact, the name itself indicates the function manages relations with publics.  But the priority in PR practice is largely on writing skills rather than interpersonal ones; whilst although academic definitions and literature highlight two-way communications, they largely omit what is required to build and maintain mutually [...]

Public relations remains focused on media relations

From a PR perspective, there’s a problem with all the discussion regarding the merits or otherwise of paywalls to access online content, the impact of social media or the role of PR versus marketing in this brave new world.  It’s all about the media – with little consideration of what we should really be interested [...]

Stockholm Accords: an update. If you are not in Stockholm my friends, tough luck…

Before this blog changes format, look and prime authors (I will now continue to post occasionally, but only as a contributor and no longer as coordinator), I would like to report on the very intense and (so far) highly rewarding experience of the Stockholm Accords process that has involved me directly in these last few [...]

Stockholm Accords first draft up for comments. Please contribute, suggest, criticise and help shape the future of our profession

Have you ever heard of any profession uniting more than 70 national professional associations to implement a global yet highly flexible and local advocacy program to enhance its own perception in society by arguing issues where it believes to contribute more value to social, private and public sector organizations?
This blog has already discussed the Stockholm [...]

To listen, to engage: empty buzzwords?

“Over the past years, we’ve seen very smart people make mistakes because they didn’t understand the context in which they were operating” – this sentence is extracted from an interesting op-ed column of last Friday’s NYT under the title ‘the power elite’

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.

Talibans implementing an apparently effective public relations campaign in Afghanistan, reports the New York Times.

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.

Have More Walls Come Tumbling Down?

 Co-authored with Mike Klein
In the later part of the year that ends today, much attention has been paid to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But another wall seems to have been definitively torn down this year with much less brouhaha: the distinctions between social, political, commercial and employee communication. The [...]

Til Death Do Us Part? Models of Engagement

Last week I had the pleasure of discovering the Champagne Bar at St Pancras station in London in the company of Michael Klein, an excellent internal comms professional currently based in Brussels. The subject of engagement came up, and Mike got pretty passionate. He thinks that the term “engagement” is bandied about too lightly and [...]

Jon Iwata at the Yale Club last night. Are corporate ideology and cultural integralism back in town?

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 [...]

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