Posted on PR Nexus

Stockholm Accords: an update. If you are not in Stockholm my friends, tough luck…

Before this blog changes format, look and prime authors (I will now continue to post occasionally, but only as a contributor and no longer as coordinator), I would like to report on the very intense and (so far) highly rewarding experience of the Stockholm Accords process that has involved me directly in these last few months, and which will presumably occupy more of my time when the Accords will begin to be implemented, following their...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Jon Iwata at the Yale Club last night. Are corporate ideology and cultural integralism back in town?

Last night, at New York’s Yale Club, I participated in the Institute for Public Relations’ Annual Distinguished Lecture and Awards event. The lecture was by Jon Iwata, IBM’s Senior Vice President, who heads the marketing, communication and citizenship organization departments of that company. A full house, jammed with many of America’s most senior and reputed public relators. On my side, a lot of curiosity for Iwata. I have always admired IBM and, as he’s been...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Invent what you like, but at the end, you communicate-with to develop relationships. Even Roberts and Sorrell now say this of advertising!!

Only a few days ago in Rome Kevin Roberts, the global Ceo of Saatchi, addressing a professionally mature corporate audience, said something like ‘ the most dramatic change which is disrupting the advertising markets is that we are now required to develop relationships with customers’. Sir Martin Sorrell , Ceo of WPP, said more or less the same about one year ago in New York.

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Don Bates: turning theory into practice. An integrated software platform.

In replying to a comment by Don Bates to a recent post on this blog, I invited him to write a guest post to better illustrate the reasons why he believes that a specific, existing and comprehensive software program (comPro Executive) can significantly support public relations professionals in adopting and adapting a new global stakeholder relationship governance operating platform which, together with many other scholars and professionals all over the world (although we might call...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

The Business of Business is… Responsible Business: where public relations becomes relevant, in the form of stakeholder relationship management

1. The perspective of this new-year note on ‘the business of business is responsible business’ is that the current economic crisis is only one of the consequences of a historic discontinuity (see here) in which we all find ourselves immersed since the end of the twentieth century. A discontinuity originated by the radical subversion of the way we think of space and time induced by communication technologies and their impact on the acceleration of the...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

CCO’s from major global corporations discuss the path from sustainability to durability. A blind report from a secret summit…

Last week I participated to an exclusive and ‘secret’ summit of CCO’s from 15 major global corporations during which they discussed some of the major challenges facing their increasingly relevant organizational function assisted by a handful of ‘sparring partners’ from academia, ngo’s and consultants. I will mention no names nor location as per agreement, but will instead relate a few of the primary issues and how they were discussed. No intention here to ‘scoop’ anyone,...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Facing this historic discontinuity. Two recently developed certainties for our profession: generic principles and specific applications and stakeholder relationship management

I submit that the paradigm of generic principles and specific applications and the practice of stakeholder relationship management constitute an effective integrated framework of reference for our professional community, capable of allowing our practice to fully benefit (or at the very least, suffer less) from this economic crisis, which will be with us for some years to come. Allow me to dwell on this statement, and explain the why and the how.

Posted on Seasoned Posts

election polls are only the tip of an iceberg for an essential review of understanding reality as it unfolds ever so fuzzily…

Once again most polls conducted for the recent Italian elections were wrong. Giuseppe De Rita, a highly intelligent and reputed analyst, sentenced: Italians are born liars. So what else is new? Helas! This is but the tip of an iceberg which calls into question, and not only in Italy, a number of ‘truths’ in many traditional activities such as market, political and social research, analysis, public relations, procurement, journalism…..