Posted on PR Axis

Marriage of European and North American PR thought leadership

By Fraser Likely Even for those in the public relations and communication management field who paid the slightest bit of attention to international developments over this past summer, the Stockholm Accords and the Barcelona Principles came as a surprise. Certainly, for those of us based in North America, the surprise may have had an element of shock to it. I am not talking about the content of each of these documents. There is considerable comment already...

Posted on PR Axis

Public relations should embrace not deny its marketing links

Many people think that PR is a subset of marketing – they are wrong [See this classic: ToughSledding post/comments if you don’t agree].  But so are those working in PR who seek to put great distance between what they do and marketing.  The denial of the close relationship with marketing which is necessary in most organisations (including the not for profit and public sectors) fails to recognise the reality of the majority of PR practice. ...

Posted on Classic PR Conversations PR Mediums Seasoned Posts

The big question: What is PR?

In May 2008, Catherine Arrow produced a useful edited publication: What is PR? which brought together a range of posts from PR Conversation touching on the “big question” that seems to be of eternal interest to practitioners, academics and of course, students.  Toni Muzi Falconi commenting on two recent events recommends re-reading this document.  He writes: The Bled Symposium this year was not up to the excellent standards that I am accustomed to expect from its organizers.  But this...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

A year end invitation to discuss the global public relations attack against Google

I have no personal gripe with Google If anything, as an intense yet only partial user of its many and increasing services, I am a satisfied consumer of Google. This however does not necessarily imply that I am an ally. You have surely realized over these recent weeks and months that Google is under an intense public relations attack globally driven by an explicit and implicit coalition of mainstream media and book publishers , of...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Public Relations, Capitalism and Democracy – Public Relations and Development: two provoKations from my excellent students

I have just concluded my course on global relations and intercultural communication at NYU in New York. The intense interaction with 10 highly committed graduate students –two Russian, three American, one Brazilian, one Colombian, one British, one Singaporean– allowed me the opportunity to review some of my less resilient stereotypes and learn much more from them than each of them individually from me. That is the beauty of communication -even in the non symmetric environment...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

#PRC2010 Trends impacting Public Relations world

This is the time of year when many of us are reflecting about the future, trying to figure out how our profession, our companies, our clients, our societies will be influenced by tendencies and trends. Often this happens because we’re preparing our plans for next year and want to seek opportunities generated by external context; but also because we want to anticipate what is going to impact on our profession. PR Conversations readers are invited...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

+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 fine and dandy, but how would you estimate the impact of all this on our bottom line?’.

Posted on PR Sense

Message pointer: Demonstrating value

I'm pointing you to the Message from the President, which recently went online on the Canadian Public Relations Society’s website. In his message, Dr. Terrence (Terry) Flynn, APR, FCPRS, outlines an organizational need for public relation