What is PR?

If you’ve ever heard the fable of the five blind men and the elephant you will appreciate the challenge of answering the simple question – what is PR – which I’ve selected for my first post at PR Conversations. This ancient story relates how each man provides a different description of an elephant based on the personal experience of feeling one part of the animal.  Their conflicting perspectives – is it rough or smooth, solid or flexible, thin...

Fires in Greece, Crisis Communication and a serious example from Portugal on synergistic communication and the power of networks

In recent debates on PRConversations about the level of strategic practice of PR, the value of licensing, the role of active professional associations or even the misguided conceptions about lobby, I must confess I couldn’t bring much positive experience from Portugal unless that great advantage that lies in the fact that we can still do things from scratch and try to learn from the best examples all over the world. So now I want to...

What Can Today’s CEOs do for Tomorrow’s Leaders?

This post on the Institute for Public Relations website is from guest author Ken Makovsky. Think about all the issues that face CEOs at major companies: everything from ethics, safety and diversity in the workplace to environmental sustainability and regulatory compliance … all on a global scale. Failure to successfully manage such issues can cost a company its profitability or even its ability to survive. The challenge is compounded by the fact that the world...

Lobby in Portugal: When the PR industry doesn’t succeed in producing social change

Portugal has a 33 years old democracy achieved after a peaceful military revolution that ended a dictatorship that had lasted for several decades. Propaganda was one of the major strengths of our dictatorship (as with all the other similar regimes) and people-to-people grass roots communication was the major weapon of the revolutionary. But Public Relations in Portugal is still to accomplish some important revolutions. Here’s why…