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.

Public Relations, Capitalism and Democracy – Public Relations and Development: two provoKations from my excellent students

I have just concluded my course on global relations and intercultural communication at NYU in New York. The intense interaction with 10 highly committed graduate students –two Russian, three American, one Brazilian, one Colombian, one British, one Singaporean– allowed me the opportunity to review some of my less resilient stereotypes and learn much more from them than each of them individually from me. That is the beauty of communication -even in the non symmetric environment...

Storytelling, Public Relations and The Drum Beat… a wealth of suggestive cases from the world

As our global public relations community intensifies its discussion and analysis of the storytelling approach to organizational communication, may I strongly suggest you make good use of this link to the just distributed issue of Warren Feek’s The Drum Beat newsletter, entirely dedicated to storytelling? As editor Kier Olsen DeVries writes in his introduction: This issue of The Drum Beat focuses on stories, asking: what do we mean by the use of oral history, or...

‘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...

Suddenly, it’s Trust Barometer time again…

As regular as the first snowdrops, the Edelman Trust Barometer pokes over the top of the New Year towards Spring. This week, the executive summary was unveiled and, having waded through the clips, notes and pictures, I don’t think it has really come up with anything new, startling or provocative. And, as usual, I was particularly disappointed with the sample sizes and inclusions for something that purports to be a global survey.

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...

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...

Communications chief, Barry Patterson, describes the CFC’s 20th year, including how stakeholders spontaneously serve as brand ambassadors (updated)

The Canadian Film Centre (CFC) launches Canada's most creative ideas and voices in film, television and new media to the world. From April 2008 to March 2009 the CFC—Canada’s largest advanced-training institution for media professionals—celebrates 20 years of bringing inspiring storytellers to the world.