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

CCO’s from major global corporations discuss the path from sustainability to durability. A blind report from a secret summit…

Last week I participated to an exclusive and ‘secret’ summit of CCO’s from 15 major global corporations during which they discussed some of the major challenges facing their increasingly relevant organizational function assisted by a handful of ‘sparring partners’ from academia, ngo’s and consultants. I will mention no names nor location as per agreement, but will instead relate a few of the primary issues and how they were discussed. No intention here to ‘scoop’ anyone,...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

The leadership role of Public Relations according to Mo.Ve’s 2008 report on Car Dependancy and Sustainable Mobility in Metropolitan Areas

“….Notwithstanding these examples there is growing recognition of increasing differences between opinion and behaviour in society today. If we are to be really successful in the use of social marketing in changing individual behaviour, we need to rethink traditional theories about how we use communications and marketing to achieve social objectives. We need to refocus on society. This need is emphasised by an increasingly fluid, mobile, society; an increasingly divergent set of public opinions on...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Facing this historic discontinuity. Two recently developed certainties for our profession: generic principles and specific applications and stakeholder relationship management

I submit that the paradigm of generic principles and specific applications and the practice of stakeholder relationship management constitute an effective integrated framework of reference for our professional community, capable of allowing our practice to fully benefit (or at the very least, suffer less) from this economic crisis, which will be with us for some years to come. Allow me to dwell on this statement, and explain the why and the how.

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Twelve hours of videobook on ‘In what sense: what is public relations?’. A narrative which summarizes some 400 years of professional experience. A dream, or a nightmare?

Bear with me and please visit www.lucasossellaeditore.it . Mind you, the sound is in Italian so it might be better to move quickly along the few minutes to get a grasp of what the contents, but more importantly the format, are like. Basically these few minutes are an excerpt of a good twelve hours (!) of videobook (3 dvd’s of four hours each) to which Joao Duarte referred to in his post here a few...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

My major takeaways from the Milano Euprera Congress. How our professional community can help bridge the gap between what is really happening in the global market place and what we think is happening.

While there were few remaining doubts in Milano for me that the institutionalization process of the public relations function is ‘a fact of organizational life’, especially after the presentation of the three research reports in the final plenary session, and the rooted impression that in other parts of the world besides Italy, Europe and the United States the process is even more pronounced, even if no figures were presented at the Euprera Congress…the substantial impression...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Eric Koper: avoiding the sliding path from from narcisism to onanism.- Fraser Likely: how stakeholders change organizations – Benita Steyn: on Ed Freeman and disintermediation.

I am grateful to the many scholars, professionals and students who have generously contributed to the ongoing debate on institutionalizing public relations, at the wake of the upcoming Euprera Congress (final program is first class and on the way to publication…), and would like to encourage further thoughts and elaboration on a conceptualization which, at this point, appears to me even more necessary than before we began our debate. I open here a new post...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Reconsidering our terms of engagement following the institutionalization debate: a draft statement…

From the very beginning, and well before the debate on institutionalization began on this blog, I recall that David Rossi -director of public relations at MPS (Monte dei Paschi di Siena), a leading Italian banking institution- while deciding if his organization would sponsor the Euprera Congress in partnership with his peers Gianluca Comin from Enel, Europe’s second electricity company and Carlo Fornaro from Telecom Italia– said to me