Posted on Seasoned Posts

Freshly squeezed takeaways from the Edelman new media academic summit in DC…

Leaving aside a fastidious reiteration of usual buzzwords such as twitter and facebook, closely followed by obama and engagement, and the conceptual thinness of some of the cases which were presented, more focussed on numbers in relative context, rather than on the why..s of selected operational tools, this event (may I call it a space, also picking up from Richard’s presentation?) was truly an intensive, delightful, warm and fire cracking learning experience. Frankly more so...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

A peep through the Vatican’s public relations efforts. A major speech by Father Lombardi on social media

The relationship between the Vatican and Public Relations is, at the very least, as old as the Propaganda Fide (1622)… More recently…the first Masters program in Public Relations ever held in Italy was in 1960/61, organized for the Vatican by the Dominican Father Felix Morlion, head of the then Pro Deo University of Rome. (Today it is LUISS, a reputed Business School owned by the National Confederation of Industry.) Joaquim Navarro Vals, the Spanish lay...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

‘Enough is Enough’ – an economic model for Net-Work and Net-Worth?

With its roots in 1546, the wisdom underlying the John Heywood proverb ‘enough is enough‘ has been recognised by many. But when is enough truly enough? The churning over the recessionary pressures – real or otherwise – have, more so in recent months, led many to question the economic models we have used for so long. Unsurprising really, as they are models which, as I have mentioned here before, were created for another space and...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Opinion Fatigue or Productive Serendipity? Where do you sit in the Babel Web?

If, like me, your head is spinning with the constant conversation, your ears vibrating with the latest buzz and your hands weary from punching keys on the latest digital toys, then perhaps you would do me the kindness of joining me – perhaps under the shade of a virtual tree – for a bit of thinking about where we’ve got to. I’ve been pondering quite a bit these last few weeks, particularly as Twitter has...

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Public Diplomacy with Teheran and direct involvement with the American taxpayer.

Are we finally seeing, moment by moment, a public relations approach unfold…or is it only a disastrous and desperate exercise in spin? You will remember that years ago (not as many as we would hope…) the skies of Baghdad poured tons and tons of bombs. Later on, when the fighting went house to house, those same skies poured leaflets encouraging Iraquis to support allied forces. Subsequently, local newspapers were flooded by articles, expensively prepared by...

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Report from Lugano (IABC) and Frascati (Cittadinanzattiva): the underwear and the genericity of public relations…

Rem Koolhaas, the reputed Dutch architect and professor at Harvard has recently launched a new ‘buzz word’: that of generic architecture. Just as generic pharma simply deliver the functionality of the base-molecule, generic architecture rediscovers its basic function and common sense, overwhelmed in recent years by the many extravaganzas and by the pressures of competition. Two association of ideas here: a) you will possibly remember the many posts in this blog dedicated to the ‘generic...

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Luxottica, world leader in premium and luxury prescription frames and sunglasses, stuns all with daring stakeholder relationship program

Quanno ce vò, ce vò (pronounced: cannocievò, cievò). So goes an old roman expression indicating that when something is so, it is so… no matter what, no buts or ifs… In a particular period in which my Country (Italy) and its private, public and social elites are undergoing a sustained (and increasingly intolerable) intellectual deterioration with dire consequences on the well being of its citizens, if and when something positive does come up, it is...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

This post is personal; a relative goal to travel from Me to We (updated)

“A goal is a dream with a deadline” Update (March 4, 2009): Thanks to community support from a number of areas, Sarah’s Dream received enough votes (more than 100) to qualify. This means her project has a financial base on Give Meaning. I’m sure my niece will take as much delight in the note accompanying the donation from James McNally (whom neither of us know personally): “Happy to kick things off, hopefully you’ll reach and...