PR Mediums – PR Conversations

September 7, 2018June 28, 2020 Current PR Conversations PR Mediums PR Motion

Keeping silent – PR lessons for evaluating purpose and influence

There probably couldn’t be two more contrasting campaigns being talked about in one week than the 30th anniversary Nike’s Dream Crazy commercial fronted by Colin Kaepernick and the single Listerine sponsored post by Instagram ‘influencer’ Scarlett Dixon. What they have in common is controversy. This is not uncommon as a marketing strategy – for instance, it has been used deliberately by the likes of Ryanair and Protein World in recent years. Controversy as a marketing strategy...

May 17, 2018June 28, 2020 Current PR Conversations PR Mediums

A mindful approach to using social media as professional communicators

Over the past decade or so, public relations has been in a rollercoaster relationship with social media. Nervous initially to jump onboard, since then we’ve been up the hype cycle with several peaks of inflated expectations followed by swoops down into the trough of disillusionment. Are we currently in a valley of despair following all the shenanigans of ‘fake news’ and ‘data scandals’? Or on an upwards slope of hope driven by artificial intelligence (AI)...

June 25, 2015June 28, 2020 Current PR Conversations PR Mediums

Public relations tribes in the global village

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...

April 16, 2015June 28, 2020 Current PR Conversations PR Mediums

Deconstructing the Century of the Selfie for PR purposes

One big question is whether we as public relations practitioners can afford to migrate (professionally) from “we, the intelligent few” to “we, the people,” primarily by helping our clients to listen to and interpret the “wisdom of the crowds” A post-event reflection on Stuart Ewen’s Museum of Public Relations-sponsored lecture on “Edward Bernays and the Century of the Selfie” By Toni Muzi Falconi As George Bernard Shaw wrote in his 1902 play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession:...

March 19, 2015June 28, 2020 PR Mediums

Contemplating selfie disruptions in historical and modern-day PR

“If I were Bernays, as a sign of self expression, I would dedicate my creative genius to adapt (or adopt) the ‘selfie’ idea for a public relations program dedicated to individual emancipation.” Stuart Ewen By Toni Muzi Falconi The Museum of Public Relations scheduled an event for late March 2015, at Manhattan’s Baruch College / CUNY Newman Library (where the books and artifacts of the museum are currently situated), anticipated to be a critical and topical...

February 15, 2015June 28, 2020 PR Mediums

Popping candy politics prioritises publicity over policies

With the date of the UK general election set as 7 May 2015 – and dissolution of Parliament therefore already determined as 30 March, we’re in a period of what I’m calling ‘popping candy politics’ that prioritises publicity over policies. As an example, last week brought us hashtag #pinkbus as the Labour party chose a pink minibus for a tour of the country that was intended to connect with female voters. The result was a focus...

October 20, 2014June 28, 2020 PR Mediums

Sharing Toni Muzi Falconi's biased memoirs

We have always been proud to have the support of Toni Muzi Falconi whose original blog became PR Conversations, and he then passed the editorship to Judy Gombita, Markus Pirchner and myself. Toni has now published his ‘biased memoirs’ entitled glow worms – which can be downloaded free as an ebook from the Biased Memoirs site, with a request to donate to the Cordoba Initiative – or as a paperback via Lulu. Toni decided to...

February 20, 2014June 28, 2020 PR Mediums

An accidental ebook: exploring the future of business blogging

Ketchum Europe director and CIPR president shares insights from a co-creation project exploring the benefits of professional blogging By Stephen Waddington Blogging is 20 years old this year. By now it was predicted blogging would threaten mainstream media and become the dominant form of media in its own right. It clearly hasn’t but it hasn’t gone away, either. During the early weeks in February 2014, I sought out the opinion of respected and long-time bloggers...

February 7, 2014June 28, 2020 PR Mediums

Director Roundtable: Stakeholder Expectations and the 21st Century Board

PR Conversations founder, Toni Muzi Falconi is taking part in a fascinating ‘Director Roundtable‘ event being held in collaboration with the NYU school of continuing and professional studies on 28 February. The other speakers are: Richard Edelman, president and CEO, Edelman James Grunig, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland Emilio Galli Zugaro, Head of Group Communications, Allianz This event looking at Stakeholder Expectations and the 21st Century Board builds on the book: Global Stakeholder Relationships Governance:...

October 31, 2013June 28, 2020 PR Mediums

Pondering public relations as project management

Update: Embedding public relations with clarity, candour and no-pants humour has now published in the Journal of Professional Communication, Volume 3, Issue 1 (2013). Later in November 2013, my submission for The Journal of Professional Communication (JPC) publishes, which is an “ideas” review of Scott Berkun’s fifth book, The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work. Scott Berkun describes his 21 months of working at Automattic as “participatory journalism.” My JPC take is...