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...

Sixteen Edelbytes from Richard

His early goal was to make Edelman’s New York office profitable and even larger than its Chicago headquarters. Over the years he determined to carve out a distinct, professional identity, which included: playing a role in the professional community, further developing the company internationally (particularly in Asian markets), taking many risks (and assuming full accountability for them) while exploring new ideas, concepts and tools.

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...

How cognitive dissonance is impacting this growing universal habit of blaming the media for the worsening of the crisis.

Some 77% of american public opinion (if such an animal ever existed) is reported to consider media reports largely responsible for the worsening of the global economic crisis. What is however even more relevant and scary, is that many governmental and corporate leaders vociferously adopt the same argument, to the point were repetition inevitably ends up digging into collective opinions. For example in my country (Italy) Prime Minister Berlusconi has repeatedly abused the media (his...

The Business of Business is… Responsible Business: where public relations becomes relevant, in the form of stakeholder relationship management

1. The perspective of this new-year note on ‘the business of business is responsible business’ is that the current economic crisis is only one of the consequences of a historic discontinuity (see here) in which we all find ourselves immersed since the end of the twentieth century. A discontinuity originated by the radical subversion of the way we think of space and time induced by communication technologies and their impact on the acceleration of the...

Growing professionalism in Portugal, still to be accomplished the shift for the social media / relationship management paradigm

I asked a couple of friends to share their thoughts about the year 2008 for Portuguese PR. The sector is growing firmly despite of the economic context. Important steps towards professionalism have been given with new courses being offered at the post graduate level, and the recent publication of the Code of Professional Conduct by the Portuguese Association of Business Communication is a landmark.

Ethics and Images

I recently had the pleasure of attending the IABC Eurocomm Conference. This is one of my favourite events because it gathers a variety of communicators from across Europe and the Middle East (and beyond) to share expertise, views and cocktails. It reflects cultural, geographical and functional diversity, so it appeals to the Jack-of-many-trades in me. One of the things I loved about this year’s edition was its emphasis on innovation, and the sessions that talked...

Ethics, Culture and Public Relations

I’ve been perplexed for a long time about the interface between public relations and ethics. Most PR associations espouse codes of ethics, although they seem devillishly hard to police, leading some people to ask what the point is. After long reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is almost impossible for an international PR association to adopt a code that goes beyond vague platitudes. Applying ethics within an international context is extremely difficult because...