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Putting the Public Back in Public Relations

“Social Media and the Future of PR” is the theme of Euroblog2008, currently underway in Brussels (presented by EUPRERA, Edelman, IHECS and Département de communication, Université catholique du Louvain). I participated on a panel on chaired by Toni Muzi Falconi (who leads the Institute’s Commission on Global Public Relations Research). This gave me the opportunity to talk about two important research projects connected to the Institute. • “New Media, New Influencers and Implications for the...

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Weighing in on the value of connectivity and communications

Billed as one of the “highlights” of the University of Toronto’s inaugural Festival of the Arts was the lecture by “renowned Canadian filmmaker, Atom Egoyan, delivering his second public presentation as the Dean’s Distinguished Visitor in Theatre, Film, Music, and Visual Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Science.” Egoyan, whom I’ve always found to be an articulate and original thinker (in addition to a true auteur as a filmmaker) tackled an ambitious lecture called...

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The CIPR (UK) moves forward with the Government towards a new licensing approach

As honoray fellow of the CIPR (the UK professional association), I received this cipr news highly interesting piece of news the other day, which implies that -in agreement with the UK Government, and moving forward from the 2006 already very innovative official recognition of the Institute- procedures have been set for individual members of the CIPR to receive a chartered status…

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Shut Doors and Improve PR

Humans are bad at eliminating options, and it costs us dearly in job performance, relationships and effectiveness, says an article in today’s International Herald Tribune that reviews a book by Dan Ariely called Predictably Irrational. According to experiments carried out by Ariely, a professor of bahavioural economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), people will go to great lengths to avoid narrowing their choices, and will pay dearly to do so. The theory is that eliminating...

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Entertaining the “R” word. Will you embrace, spin or hide from that elephant in the room?

“Entertaining the ‘R’ word” is rather poetic, isn’t it? Would it surprise you to know that it was economist Derek Holt (assistant chief economist, RBC Economics Research) who came up with that phrase? Derek is providing the (opening keynote) Economic Update 2008 at my organization’s annual Controllers’ Congress, which begins on Thursday, February 21st. For a third year, we’re also offering the Economic Update as a free webcast to the general public. Derek and I...

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Public Relations and Social Media: impact sofar and what next? Look at this program for the Euprera-Edelman EuroAtlantic summit in Bruxelles from 13 to 15 of March and make sure you don’t miss it!

An EuroAtlantic summit of senior social media and public relations academics and practitioners will take place, as already indicated in this and other blogs (www.euroblog2008.org) , in Bruxelles from March 13 to 15. The still preliminary, but almost definite, (I am a member of the organizing committee) seems to me rather juicy, as it combines the theoretical thinking of academics and scholars with the practice-oriented approach of senior practitioners from both sides of the Atlantic.