Posted on Seasoned Posts

The story of X, the differences between on and off-line reputation and the Villejuif leaflet of the mid eighties. Plus ca change…plus c’est la meme chose??

Way back in the mid eighties the name of the Parisian hospital Villejuif coupled its widespread fame as the world hub for the more advanced medical research against cancer (at the time), with a particularly unexpected awareness amongst part of the european professional public relations comnunity: an anonymous leaflet began to circulate originated from within that hospital with a false signature, in which a list of well known consumer brands were indicated as being cancerous,...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

The Essential Knowledge Project

There is a tremendous amount of research conducted over the years on all aspects of creating and sustaining public opinion, attitudes and relationships. All too many practitioners don’t have a clue where to find it. So the Institute for Public Relations has introduced the Essential Knowledge Project, an online guide to the best research into how organizations build and manage mutually beneficial relationships with customers, communities, employees and other stakeholders.

Posted on Seasoned Posts

What-were-they-thinking Moments

All of us have run across examples of communications that are so inept or so risky that we are tempted to quote Tony Blair in the movie The Queen, when he exclaims “Someone save these people from themselves”! This week I ran across two examples so blatant, that I had to share…

Posted on Seasoned Posts

How Philip Morris uses public relations to change the regulatory environment of the tobacco industry… Ann Landman exposes an apparently effective plan

Recently, an articulate and highly informative article by Ann Landman appeared on pr watch. Although quite critical and explicitly biased, it details Philip Morris’s current public relations activities to modify existing regulation of the tobacco industry in the United States, and (I believe) provides a most interesting backstage analysis of our profession—very stimulating food for thought for all of us.