EUPRERA STEPS UP ITS PROFILE

Euprera, the European Association of Public Relations Research and Education steps up its profile, launches mid march Euroblog 2008 summit in Bruxelles in partnership with Edelman while extending to end January the deadline for papers to be delivered at its October 2008 Milano Congress on the Institutionalization of Public Relations and Communication Management, including a special grant from the Institute for Public Relations.

Public, private, community, individual

I received a friendship request today on a social networking platform for communicators.  I have no idea who this person is, and I suspect that he is a consultant randomly inviting other people to be his friend in order to expand his prospect list. His message basically just says hello and provides no info on why he wants to be my friend (and after looking at his profile, I still have no idea).  In the...

Reinventing diplomacy

I sometimes think that we get a little obsessed with what PR is and isn’t, and I am not always sure that these conversations do anything more than keep us busy navel gazing. What I’d like to think about is what PR is becoming…and that’s everything. My personal belief is that formalized communications evolved because it was the only way to manage as organizations grew in size. What is happening today, in my opinion, is...

Is marketing to blame for PR’s poor reputation?

Is it fair to state that unethical PR practice results primarily from a marketing focus on publicity?  Aren’t spam press releases, pseudo-events, poorly conducted surveys and spin all about gaining attention regardless of the truth? Can we blame PR’s poor reputation on an increased focus on promotional communications for competitive differentiation (the reductionist view of PR as solely a subset of marketing)?

Larry Foster: back to real relationships, not only virtual

Please do take a good and quick look at Larry Foster’s very recent acceptance speech of the Alexander Hamilton Medal at IPR’s annual event at the Yale Club in New York. For those of us who are (or believe they are) ‘geeks’ so-to-say it amounts to a back-to-basics wake up call! For the others, many of whom remain luddists or, in any case, thorough sceptics on the application of new technologies to public relations (the...

Thinking inside the box about technology and PR

Kirk Hallahan, professor at Colorado State University, is the 2007 recipient of the Institute for Public Relations Pathfinder Award for outstanding scholarly contributions. Hallahan has focused his recent research on the application of online technologies to PR practice. In a column available on the Institute website, he summarizes much of what he has learned in four observations.