Many interesting and exciting things are happening in the global pr community…… Amongst these… °the sudden and lively revival of the debate on licensing of the profession (see preceding posts);°the substantial increase of investments in public relations in practically every country ;
°Poland has just announced year over year increase of 20%! Italy is more than 6%!
°the big agencies are making substantial increases in income and profits!
°universities in all countries are constantly increasing and expanding the quality of their offer, and a very important review of the 2000 Port of Entry report on education is due to be presented at Prsa’s international conference in Las Vegas in a few days;
°the World Bank, Fao and the Communication Initiative, also in partnership with the Global Alliance, are holding their first ever summit on Communication for Development next week in Rome and there will be more than 600 participants;
°the EU Commission is holding a major summit on listening to publics in Madrid next week;
°again in Madrid Dircom, the national association, is holding in the same days its International Forum;
°in early November in New York the IPR is celebrating James Grunig, while assigning the Pathfinder Award to Paul Argenti;
°Wole Adamolekun has just been elected Secretary General of Fapra (federation of African pr associations);
°Canada and Italy are taking on their public sector in order to ensure more transparency in tenders;
°the XPRL project has re-emerged and appears to be accelerating with an important conference in London scheduled for December 4….
and many many other events which I am sure to have forgotten, or that I am simply ignorant of.
No doubt that the Public Relations community has never been so active .
However, as Harold Burson said in Delhi a few days ago, all this is haphazard…which does of course imply that there is a new awareness on our part, but it also indicates that there is little, if any, coordination.
Is it too much to ask that the Global Alliance and ICCO to urgently sit down around the table (after all they are both ‘based’ in London…) and take up Burson’s challenge to investigate the licensing issue, and even before that to coordinate a pr for pr campaign??
And while they are at it…why don’t they also invite Iabc, Ipra and Euprera to join them?
Why not an informal summit of these groups?
Toni… there is a really big ethics issue. Unless we get it right soo there will be no licence to opperate.
It is the biggest PR issue.
The Internet is casting its glare into our business and its findings are uncomfortable to say the least. Harold Burson is right and we do not have a lot of time.
Something happened to my UPDATE ONE above.
I think that this suggestion from Toni is too important because he has described a snapshot of the pr development.
It’s clear that it’s always very difficult to put together different organizations around a table but it’s clear too that, in this case, there’s a common aim… or not? I see, as aim, the development and the recognition of the Public Relations.
The licensing of public relations, I think, is the first point or aim that pr community has to reach above all after increases and developments that we can read in Toni’s post.
Is it so impossible to think about a world license to operate as pr practioner? An unique protocol to define who can operate and who not.
It’s very difficult for me, I have to be honest, to understand why some countries don’t want this recognition of the professionalism, recognition that, I think, would be a warranty for the future of public relations.
UPDATE ONE regarding >To the best of my knowledge, IABC has not announced this committee to its members.
In regard to PR for PR: IABC has a new advocacy committee that finally met for the first time via telephone this week — the committee was established in early September. Whether it will be yet another IABC foot-dragger is yet to be seen.
It’s made up of one European (broadly defined) and several Americans and three Canadians. It’s got experience; some are former IABC world-wide chairs. To the best of my knowledge, IABC has not announced this committee to its members.
An ad-hoc group of, so far, four PR practitioners in Toronto, is so annoyed with the non-performance of the Canadian Public Relatiosn Society and the Intarnational Association of Busienss Communicators that it is planning to take action if the IBC formal group non-performs.
To me, IABC’s the natural — there’s an “elected” chair who represents 13,500 members in 60 countries. That makes her (this year, probably him next year) “The most important communicator in the world” according to my my should-be-copyright phrase. Whether Glenda Holmes can live up to this responsibility… who knows? So far, no attempt to the best of my knowledge for her to say anything to anyone outside of internal IABC audiences, but she’s only one third of the way through her year.
BIG PROBLEMS — first is defining PR, if it is PR that is going to be promoted. Lots of IABC members, for instance, apparently devote themselves to writing memos for the personnel department, or something similar, and are “not in PR, they are in organizational communications,” according to one of my critics.
My solution is to skip worrying about them, and define PR early on in any speech, presentation, op-ed article, lecture, etc., about PR for PR. Nike is right about “just do it.”
Second problem, of course, is coming up with even a minimum budget. You’d think that in a profession full of PR people, the PR indusry would have someone capable of writing the speeches, and presenting them, for free. (Fat chance for free. — I’ll write the first speech, for half my normal speech writing fee, if Glenda will deliver it to a good external audience.) But the leaders should nnot have to reach into their own pockets for travel expenses, and if they are agency owners, they should not have to give up too much income during their term of office.
Enough for now — real work awaits (for about the same rates I would have chaged a decade ago; PR has not kept pace with law or accounting or general management consulting)
BAK