Posted on Seasoned Posts

Dear Santa, a four-pronged wish list for public relators in 2009 from a non believer. Be sure to check out the fourth, as it relates directly to YOU, visitor/reader/commenter of this blog!

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...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Public relations “On The Edge”; offline in June ‘09, online right now

The Canadian Public Relations Society is holding its next annual conference, On The Edge, in Vancouver, British Columbia, from June 7 to 9, 2009. Its website is already up and running. It’s good to see that CPRS is making use of some interactive (i.e., social media) tools for this conference iteration, including a twitter account and online poll. (The current question is: Which professional development workshop stream is most useful to you?) Promised in January...

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“I Haven’t Got Time” or How to Doom a PR Career

I should warn readers in advance that this column is going to be a bit of a rant because I am very frustrated by many of my peers. If you ask people why they join a communications/PR association, many of the top answers include networking (usually number 1), career development and following best practice. Yet the majority of people do not attend events, never proactively contact another member and don’t even tap into the online...

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Architects and Public Relators: we both create SPACES where publics interact….

A lively discussion came up last Thursday evening in Rome, at the second of the six sessions scheduled for the production of the video book on ‘What is Public Relations’, which my friend Joao so acutely and courteously described here, following up on the first session. The general topic has to do with many issues my co-bloggers have touched upon in this blog as well as with the content of a recent (the plum of...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations

“Social Media and the Future of PR” is the theme of Euroblog2008, currently underway in Brussels (presented by EUPRERA, Edelman, IHECS and Département de communication, Université catholique du Louvain). I participated on a panel on chaired by Toni Muzi Falconi (who leads the Institute’s Commission on Global Public Relations Research). This gave me the opportunity to talk about two important research projects connected to the Institute. • “New Media, New Influencers and Implications for the...

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Entertaining the “R” word. Will you embrace, spin or hide from that elephant in the room?

“Entertaining the ‘R’ word” is rather poetic, isn’t it? Would it surprise you to know that it was economist Derek Holt (assistant chief economist, RBC Economics Research) who came up with that phrase? Derek is providing the (opening keynote) Economic Update 2008 at my organization’s annual Controllers’ Congress, which begins on Thursday, February 21st. For a third year, we’re also offering the Economic Update as a free webcast to the general public. Derek and I...

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Public Relations and Social Media: impact sofar and what next? Look at this program for the Euprera-Edelman EuroAtlantic summit in Bruxelles from 13 to 15 of March and make sure you don’t miss it!

An EuroAtlantic summit of senior social media and public relations academics and practitioners will take place, as already indicated in this and other blogs (www.euroblog2008.org) , in Bruxelles from March 13 to 15. The still preliminary, but almost definite, (I am a member of the organizing committee) seems to me rather juicy, as it combines the theoretical thinking of academics and scholars with the practice-oriented approach of senior practitioners from both sides of the Atlantic.

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Johnny Depp and the History of Social Media

I’ve just spent a very pleasant half an hour messing around with Johnny Depp. To be precise, I’ve been playing with the mash-up on the Sweeney Todd site which allows me to cut my own trailer for the film. If I got bored, I could trawl the blog, throw a Facebook party or – had I been in time – join one of the many Sweeney communities clustered around the ‘mother site’. As an example...