global discussion. local perspectives.
As community consultation and stakeholder engagement practices continue to grow… I believe negotiating, conflict and dispute resolution skills are going to be as important… if not more important… than media relations and crisis communications skills.
Two previous posts in this blog were dedicated, directly on indirectly, to the issue of regulation and /or licensing of public relations professionals. Following three recent important events (Richard Edelman’s call for licensing and his subsequent withdrawal from the Council of Pr Firms; PRSA’s decision, after twenty years of silence and resistance to public discussion, to make public on its website and in a recent issue of its monthly Tactics, some of the contents of...
In his keynote speech today 1005burson_speech_text.htm at New Delhi’s ICCO annual conference (Icco is the international association of national associations of public relations consultancies), Harold Burson surprised everyone by taking a strong stance on an issue which until only a few weeks ago was considered blasphemy in the US public relations community.
Is it enough for us to simply ‘accept’ that practitioners do not get involved in formative and evaluative research (a sort of ‘research-phobia’) because of lack of time and its prohibitive costs? For researches and academics, these are only outright excuses as low and even no-cost evaluation methods are widely available. Instead they cite practitioner lack of interest, commitment and knowledge, as the real underlying reason….
I imagine that of the many tools we currently adopt to ‘listen’ to stakeholders (focus groups, participatory observation, network analysis, quali/quantitative research, opinion polls, meetings….) the one which, in many countries, appears more widely used today, is telephone eavesdropping.
Toni’s recent post on CSR brought to my mind the campaign of Sacom (http://www.sacom.org.uk) against Disney. Sacom stands for ‘students against corporate mishbehaviour’ and claims that, like many other american corporations, Disney exploits chinese workers…..
The September issue of Italian monthly media and journalism monthly Prima Comunicazione , which has just hit the newstands, has a four page interview I did with Harold Burson in view of his forthcoming visit to Italy scheduled for October 12 and 13. Some may recall that I had already posted the interview with harold burson on this post some days ago only to remove it when I realised that I was not doing the monthly magazine a...
At WPP, we have never seen responsible corporate behaviour as a coat of public relations varnish… From Sir Martin Sorrell’s opening letter of the 2005 WPP Corporate Social Responsibility Report So, the CEO of world’s largest communication conglomerate, which incorporates ‘la crème de la crème’ of public relations consultancies around the world, describes his opinion of our profession: varnish. No words…. Maybe it would be useful if the CEO’s of the many H&K’s and B-M’s...
A few friends send me messages inviting me to be more provocative. This blog is too serious…some write. Others say I should be more daring…They are definitley correct and I will do my best..here is a nice one….for you to comment…
The principle that public relations in any organization (private, public or social) needs to be involved in the decision making process before decisions are taken…and this…. assuming that the truly strategic role of our profession is of a ‘reflexive’ nature, which implies a careful listening, understanding and interpreting of stakeholder groups in order to improve the quality of that process and to accelerate the implementation of its decisions, will be featured as the core content...