How to organise and operate a public relations department

This topic remains as relevant today as when the following insight into the public relations department of 1948 was written by Conger Reynolds, public relations director at the Standard Oil Company (Indiana), in the book, Your Public Relations. This is chapter five – to read other chapters in our series of posts, use this link to the book’s contents list. In 1948, according to the University of Iowa, Conger Reynolds received the Award of the...

Fifty shades of PR

What shade of PR do you practice? I believe that “PR is what PR does” which offers a broad perspective encompassing many shades. In a recent PR Conversations post, Fraser Likely, said he didn’t “do” PR. Rather he advises on the management of PR functions. This is a shade of PR. Similarly, the Melbourne Mandate indicates a shade: “The mandate of public relations is to build and sustain strong relationships between an organisation and its...

The PR impact of rejection and denial

Modern media is making it ever easier for people to reject things that they don’t want to hear. We can scan and filter out sentiments or information that we find objectionable or which doesn’t fit with our existing world view. But rather than actively assess information before accepting or rejecting it (as proposed by Social Judgement Theory) people seem increasingly to avoid, filter or deny something that they reject out of hand. The phenomenon of...

Public Relations before, during, after acquisitions and mergers. Fascinating lessons from Poznan, Poland!

Ok… it took me more than 20 hours by van to return to Italy, while an Icelandic dust closed all of Europe’s airports… courtesy of two young polish drivers (found via the Internet the evening before by one of my benefactors Monika Bogdal from Poznan’s University of Economics… the power of social media…)… yet I was thrilled, honoured and inspired to have been granted the privilege by Prof. Ryszard Ławniczak to participate to the EconPr...

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...

A year end invitation to discuss the global public relations attack against Google

I have no personal gripe with Google If anything, as an intense yet only partial user of its many and increasing services, I am a satisfied consumer of Google. This however does not necessarily imply that I am an ally. You have surely realized over these recent weeks and months that Google is under an intense public relations attack globally driven by an explicit and implicit coalition of mainstream media and book publishers , of...