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A peep through the Vatican’s public relations efforts. A major speech by Father Lombardi on social media

The relationship between the Vatican and Public Relations is, at the very least, as old as the Propaganda Fide (1622)… More recently…the first Masters program in Public Relations ever held in Italy was in 1960/61, organized for the Vatican by the Dominican Father Felix Morlion, head of the then Pro Deo University of Rome. (Today it is LUISS, a reputed Business School owned by the National Confederation of Industry.) Joaquim Navarro Vals, the Spanish lay...

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A RESET of our profession? Takeaways from Global PR directors of General Electric, Pfizer, Mastercard, Kodak, Bausch and Lomb, Swiss RE, Viacom

The day after Pfizer announced it would ensure free medicines to laid-off and non insured workers for one year, Ray Kerins, head of global pr for the big pharma company (‘we are 50 bl. dollar start up company’ he says…) told an attentive audience of colleagues representing agencies from all over the world, that the idea had not come from top management nor from him, but directly from employees who gathered around internal social networks.

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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...

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The Crisis. What else? Jean Pierre Beaudoin: social networks rather than storing oil and sugar.

Is public opinion, like the mythic Penelope, undoing in the night of the crisis what it reluctantly had accepted to weave in the light of growth? Has public opinion thus unmasked the cupidity of the princes who were waiting for the woven fabric to become the new masters? Where is Ulysses? And will he return in time to restore order on the public arena? One of the merits of great texts is their ability to...

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Integrating Public Relations and Public Diplomacy: a workshop in Rome for 25 diplomats by FERPI, the Italian professional association

In agreement with the Diplomatic Institute of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, FERPI -the Italian Federation of Public Relations- is holding in the English language, on March 3,4,5,and 6 in Rome a four session workshop on Public Diplomacy for 25 mid career Italian diplomats according to this program. Tutors of the course will be Toni Muzi Falconi and Fabio Ventoruzzo, both representing Ferpi. Four guest lecturers have agreed to participate: Dejan Vercic, Mindi Kasiga,...

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Report from Lugano (IABC) and Frascati (Cittadinanzattiva): the underwear and the genericity of public relations…

Rem Koolhaas, the reputed Dutch architect and professor at Harvard has recently launched a new ‘buzz word’: that of generic architecture. Just as generic pharma simply deliver the functionality of the base-molecule, generic architecture rediscovers its basic function and common sense, overwhelmed in recent years by the many extravaganzas and by the pressures of competition. Two association of ideas here: a) you will possibly remember the many posts in this blog dedicated to the ‘generic...

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Luxottica, world leader in premium and luxury prescription frames and sunglasses, stuns all with daring stakeholder relationship program

Quanno ce vò, ce vò (pronounced: cannocievò, cievò). So goes an old roman expression indicating that when something is so, it is so… no matter what, no buts or ifs… In a particular period in which my Country (Italy) and its private, public and social elites are undergoing a sustained (and increasingly intolerable) intellectual deterioration with dire consequences on the well being of its citizens, if and when something positive does come up, it is...

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Reputation lost, reputation won: Lessons from Aristotle and Barack Obama. Ronel Rensburg on Rhetoric and Public Relations. A South African Perspective.

by Ronel Rensburg While watching the acceptance speech (“This is your victory”) by Barack Obama upon winning the presidential race in Chicago, I experienced a long-forgotten feeling of excitement towards political rhetoric as well as a stirring of new-found hope for the USA and the rest of the world. In the presence of hundreds of thousands of people in awe, history was made and lessons were learnt of how communication and public speaking ought to...