International research team asks CCO's to Be Heard™ (and contribute)

While there is some anecdotal evidence, little formal research has been published on public relations/communication department organizational structure--particularly on: the models in use; the strengths and weaknesses of each of those models; the factors that drive the chief communication officer (CCO) to choose a specific organizational design. These questions will be addressed by this research: Global Study on Communication Department Structure.

Stockholm Accords first draft up for comments. Please contribute, suggest, criticise and help shape the future of our profession

Have you ever heard of any profession uniting more than 70 national professional associations to implement a global yet highly flexible and local advocacy program to enhance its own perception in society by arguing issues where it believes to contribute more value to social, private and public sector organizations? This blog has already discussed the Stockholm Accords process here and now the first draft of the Accords accompanied by references, glossary and other explanations is...

"Intel inside&"? Reinventing our profession … before extinction?

In a nutshell: the world gets more complicated, communication as a dialogue function is increasingly demanding, all stakeholders claim a legitimate interest in a corporate and “pull” what they need, while the communication professional reminds me of the young Dutch boy trying to halt the water bursting through the dam by putting his little fingers in the cracks.

To listen, to engage: empty buzzwords?

"Over the past years, we’ve seen very smart people make mistakes because they didn’t understand the context in which they were operating" - this sentence is extracted from an interesting op-ed column of last Friday’s NYT under the title 'the power elite'

2010: Battle begins for "real-time" relationships

Read the paper? Nah - that's old news. Watched the broadcast? No need, we were there when it happened. Tracked Twitter trends to spot what's unfolding? Didn't bother, we saw it coming because we know and work directly with the community. How did you tell people? We operated a Living Story.

+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?’.

Jon Iwata at the Yale Club last night. Are corporate ideology and cultural integralism back in town?

Last night, at New York’s Yale Club, I participated in the Institute for Public Relations’ Annual Distinguished Lecture and Awards event. The lecture was by Jon Iwata, IBM’s Senior Vice President, who heads the marketing, communication and citizenship organization departments of that company. A full house, jammed with many of America’s most senior and reputed public relators. On my side, a lot of curiosity for Iwata. I have always admired IBM and, as he’s been...

A stakeholder relationships approach to global climate change

Business as UnUsual as the reset for organizational thinking and Changing Mindsets by focussing on the consequences and not the concept of climate change for the public debate. These are my major takeaways from last Friday’s closed door sherpa meeting of global experts, leaders and thinkers of sustainability convened in Rome by Enel. Basically this amounts to what I would call, mostly a stakeholder rleationships agenda. Period. On one hand, the Business as UnUsual concept...