global discussion. local perspectives.
There is a recent tendency to divide public relations practitioners around their engagement with social media or digital communications – creating different tribes. I think this is fallacious – here are my reasons why. When I wrote my answers to the PR Conversations Proust Questionnaire five years ago this very week, I mentioned Orwell’s 1984 as a work of fiction that had influenced me. I stand by that decision, and most of my...
A basic calculation of what you are worth as a PR practitioner comes by dividing your annual income by the number of hours that you work. Not the number that you are employed for, but how many hours you work. Often in PR we ‘over-service’ – not only if we work as a consultant but within in-house roles too. It has become ingrained in practice that clocking up hours, and getting the job done is...
Exploring the core elements needed and depth of analytical knowledge required to lead public relations-oriented research projects By Natalie Bovair, APR Recognizing that research is essential to strategic public relations planning, not to mention program evaluation, conventional wisdom would have it that public relations professionals—at least those of the strategic management variety—were taught or developed strong research skills. Herein lies the problem: The majority of PR practitioners lack the depth of investigative experience or the...
The chair of the Global Alliance introduces the Madrid Momentum (Learning to Lead) and details four Ps that constitute the cornerstones of PR leadership By Anne Gregory, PhD, FCIPR It was not that long ago (September 2014) that the World Public Relations Forum was held in Madrid where the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, together with DIRCOM, the Spanish Association of Communication Directors, hosted more than 800 professionals from 65 countries to...
It seems surprising to me that the final chapter in Part II of the 1948 book, Your Public Relations, looks at practice within an industry body as this seems rather a specialist rather than strategic focus. However, its author Holcombe Parkes, Vice President of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) believes PR at the association level differs significantly from the organisational one. In the book’s About the Authors section, Parkes is said to have “been...
Things ain’t what they used to be; the end of the beginning around wearable technologies and the device jumps PR practitioners are about to encounter Op-Ed by Catherine Arrow In kicking off this post, I was sorely tempted to indulge in a Buzzfeed-style headline, complete with obligatory quirky picture—probably JIBO, the world’s first family robot. I toyed with “61 ways to know if you’re ready for wearables,” tip-toed around “True Life: Why PR was disconnected...
Public relations is frequently presented in a dim light; “entering the dark side” is how journalists refer to working in/with PR. And a theme of presentation, representation and re-presentation of some shadowy corners was evident at the 5th annual International History of Public Relations Conference (#IHRPC) held at Bournemouth University A dominant trend in the papers I heard seemed to be the representation of activism as public relations, alongside presentations examining social movements through a...
A practitioner’s musing about balancing the visible and invisible work in 21st-century PR By Bob Geller I read a review in the Wall Street Journal of what looks to be an interesting book, The Invisibles: The Power of Anonymous Work in an Age of Relentless Self-Promotion, by David Zweig. His book chronicles the work of those who toil quietly in the trenches. The results of their work are all that matters, and while we might...
N.W Ayer & Son, Inc. claimed to be the first US advertising agency (having bought a firm established in 1841 by Volney Palmer). As a leader and innovator in advertising, it is not surprising that Glenn and Denny Griswold asked the firm’s vice president, Marvin Murphy, to author chapter VII in their 1948 US book, Your Public Relations (being serialised here with monthly posts – to read other chapters in our series of posts, use this...
Flourishing PR Conversations about peaks and valleys, truths and opinions plus the plateau in between One of my goals for the last few years was to travel west to Toronto’s High Park in time for the “peak” of the city’s blossoming Sakura cherry trees. Not only is the window of this optimum viewing time always small, but for most of this year’s April and May blooming days the weather was unseasonably cool and often overcast...