Posted on Classic PR Conversations PR Nexus

The four Ps of public relations leadership

The chair of the Global Alliance introduces the Madrid Momentum (Learning to Lead) and details four Ps that constitute the cornerstones of PR leadership By Anne Gregory, PhD, FCIPR It was not that long ago (September 2014) that the World Public Relations Forum was held in Madrid where the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, together with DIRCOM, the Spanish Association of Communication Directors, hosted more than 800 professionals from 65 countries to...

Posted on Classic PR Conversations PR Nexus

The Melbourne Mandate: A professional beacon for PR

By Jean Valin, APR, FCPRS and Daniel Tisch, APR, FCPRS The last few years have witnessed a variety of successful global efforts to build consensus amongst public relations professionals and academics on the profession’s role and value to organizations, as well as to society. The most recent process, the Melbourne Mandate, was co-created by some 1,000 people from 30 countries over the course of a year, and then unanimously adopted in November 2012 by more...

Posted on PR Mediums

Closing the door on the gatekeeper role in PR

At a Sustainable Conversations event earlier this week (organised by Kantar Media), I started to think about the impact on both public relations and journalism of ongoing communications changes. In particular, it is clear neither occupation can maintain their traditionally exclusive roles as ‘gatekeepers’ in filtering and controlling the flow of information that is communicated to publics. With anyone and everyone potentially able to express an opinion and be listened to, many of the taken-for-granted...

Posted on PR Motion

Relationship advice for PR practitioners

Relationships are in the DNA of PR – in fact, the name itself indicates the function manages relations with publics.  But the priority in PR practice is largely on writing skills rather than interpersonal ones; whilst although academic definitions and literature highlight two-way communications, they largely omit what is required to build and maintain mutually beneficial relationships. Most of the focus on communications skills is still primarily on an ability to write.  Even here, the...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Public Relations, Capitalism and Democracy – Public Relations and Development: two provoKations from my excellent students

I have just concluded my course on global relations and intercultural communication at NYU in New York. The intense interaction with 10 highly committed graduate students –two Russian, three American, one Brazilian, one Colombian, one British, one Singaporean– allowed me the opportunity to review some of my less resilient stereotypes and learn much more from them than each of them individually from me. That is the beauty of communication -even in the non symmetric environment...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

A stakeholder relationships approach to global climate change

Business as UnUsual as the reset for organizational thinking and Changing Mindsets by focussing on the consequences and not the concept of climate change for the public debate. These are my major takeaways from last Friday’s closed door sherpa meeting of global experts, leaders and thinkers of sustainability convened in Rome by Enel. Basically this amounts to what I would call, mostly a stakeholder rleationships agenda. Period. On one hand, the Business as UnUsual concept...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

The two-faced god and our cusp catastrophe

News that celebutante Kim Kardashian is to produce a ‘reality’ show on public relations sent shivers of dread down my spine this week. More than anything else, it highlighted (for me) the fact that as a profession, we are in the midst of a cusp catastrophe that requires attention from us all. For several months now I have been pondering this phenomenon, evidenced by the multiplicity of practice ‘realities’ that surround us – of which...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

On Berlusconi again: when advertising and information find a synthesis and fiction becomes the only reality

Some of my international friends and colleagues have been probing me in these weeks to try and rationalise, from a communicational perspective, what is going on in my country. A country which sees a priapist Premier, I wouldn’t say merrily… but certainly successfully, thrive through a national as well as global, ongoing now for months day-in-day-out reputational storm which has -yes!- turned him into the laughing stock of most global and national elites (including his...