Posted on Seasoned Posts

Don Bates: turning theory into practice. An integrated software platform.

In replying to a comment by Don Bates to a recent post on this blog, I invited him to write a guest post to better illustrate the reasons why he believes that a specific, existing and comprehensive software program (comPro Executive) can significantly support public relations professionals in adopting and adapting a new global stakeholder relationship governance operating platform which, together with many other scholars and professionals all over the world (although we might call...

Posted on Classic PR Conversations Seasoned Posts

What comes after Grunig? Take a look at these two documents before you reply…

Most visitors of this blog are well aware of Jim Grunig, if not for other reasons, because they remember an extensive interview he gave us almost a year ago. Since then, while visiting colleagues, speaking with students or professional associations around the world, I often am asked a question which seems to be looming about out professional body of knowledge. What comes after Grunig? Now, for the exclusive curiosity of cherished visitors, take a look...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

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...

Posted on Classic PR Conversations Seasoned Posts

Two ditsy thoughts and one good answer to the question: what now after Grunig? Online Public Relations by David Phillips and Philip Young

In these recent weeks, and in various encounters with professionals and scholars from around the world, I have stumbled more than once on to the question: ‘what now after Grunig?’… as if the Excellence Project happened to be the most recent development for our body of knowledge. I very much disagree with this interpretation, as much as I disagree with those late adopters who (on the other side?) tend to believe that nothing had happened...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Culture and Public Relations: a letter from Bled, Slovenia

As many of our visitors know, Bled is a small and lovely Slovenian town on the shores of a charming lake where, for 16 consecutive years, a trio of committed and intelligent public relations scholars: Dejan Vercic, Danny Moss and Jon White, successfully convene, every first weekend of July, la ‘crème de la crème’ of global public relations thinking to listen to and discuss papers presented by young, old and middle aged students, scholars and...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Four Things That Only Took Me Five Years to Learn

As most of you are aware, in barely two weeks I will retire after five great years as President and CEO of the Institute for Public Relations. In several recent speaking engagements, I have taken the opportunity to reflect on the important ideas encountered and adopted. Thus the title, “Four Things That Only Took Me Five Years to Learn.” First, there is no reason to assume public relations is inferior to marketing, advertising (or many...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

What are best practices in public relations research, really?

There’s a discussion getting underway on the Institute for Public Relations website and among members of our Commission on PR Measurement & Evaluation. I’d invite your contributions as well. Dr. David Michaelson chairs the Institute for Public Relations Research Fellows, a body established by the Board of Trustees to provide overall guidance for our research program. Michaelson, President of Echo Research, also keynoted the 2009 International Public Relations Research Conference with the topic, “Setting Best...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Should you avoid ’sinking the boat’ or ‘missing the boat’? The New Yorker on advertising spent. Does it also apply to public relations?

Some of you, I am sure, have read The Wisdom of Crowds, a 2004 book by James Surowiecki, financial editor of The New Yorker. It is a very inspiring book and, although hardly citing public relations, it is for us what one might call a ‘professional book’, in the sense that it clearly illustrates how by listening carefully to a specific public, an organizational decision whose consequences relate to that public and/or vice versa will...