Is it communication for development or is it public relations? Does it really matter what it is, as long as it is what it is? A fascinating, somewhat irritating, but truly rich chronicle of a passionate exchange on (what I would call..) stakeholder relationship practices.. Peter and Paul have a go..and..Ursula helps shed some light..

Next Friday, October 27, in Rome (Italy) the Global Alliance is holding a ‘special event session’ at the World Congress on Communication for Development (see earlier posts) whose official title is: The role of public relations in the new development paradigm. In preparation for this event -and in view of the final recommendations of the three day debate with some 600 participants from all over the world- a first, rough and explicitly ‘all-encompassing-and-to-be-very-much-slimmed-in-its-final-version’ draft of the final document, was...

Lou Capozzi- PR people are too siloed, should take a broader view and need to get better at managing advertising!

At the ICCO Global Conference in Delhi of a few days ago, Lou Capozzi, chairman of the Publicis PR Group, and Paul Taffe, chairman of Hill&Knowlton, challenged pr firms to step up to the opportunities created by what Lou called “The New Conversation Age.” The panelists documented the changes and outlined the skills needed in this emerging new environment — skills possessed by PR practitioners more than any other discipline.

Again on licensing. The Puerto Ricans will have a go at it….

Two previous posts in this blog were dedicated, directly on indirectly, to the issue of regulation and /or licensing of public relations professionals. Following three recent important events (Richard Edelman’s call for licensing and his subsequent withdrawal from the Council of Pr Firms; PRSA’s decision, after twenty years of silence and resistance to public discussion, to make public on its website and in a recent issue of its monthly Tactics, some of the contents of...

P&G: 1 dollar in mktg pr leads to 2.8 dollars in sales versus 1.1 in advertising and 85 cents in promotions! 27% of the capitalization value of United Technologies may be attributed to external communication. How’s that for evidence???

What a grand Summit! One hundred highly privileged senior representatives of major corporations, public relations agencies, universities and research companies met in Portsmouth (New Hampshire) this week for the Institute for Public Relations’ Summit on Measurement, which IPR’s Ceo Frank Ovaitt proudly described as ‘the annual meeting of the best and brightest minds in public relations measurement, evaluation and research’! Don’t really know how true this is….but the Summit certainly exceed, at least, my expectations!…

Harold Burson speaks out….times are-a-changing…

The September issue of Italian monthly media and journalism monthly Prima Comunicazione , which has just hit the newstands, has a four page interview I did with Harold Burson in view of his forthcoming visit to Italy scheduled for October 12 and 13. Some may recall that I had already posted the interview with harold burson on this post some days ago only to remove it when I realised that I was not doing the monthly magazine a...

A crucial appointment for concerned public relators will be next month in Rome at the first ever World Congress of Communication for Development

The principle that public relations in any organization (private, public or social) needs to be involved in the decision making process before decisions are taken…and this…. assuming that the truly strategic role of our profession is of a ‘reflexive’ nature, which implies a careful listening, understanding and interpreting of stakeholder groups in order to improve the quality of that process and to accelerate the implementation of its decisions, will be featured as the core content...

Catherine Arrow on… building relationships is our purpose

Old models of public relations practice were framed around the hierarchical organisational structures created in the 19th and 20th Century. Business and organisational models have changed dramatically in the last five years, with new-born organisations/businesses increasingly adopting community-based, value-driven principles upon which to found their commercial or altruistic relationships….