Last month I had the pleasure of attending the World Public Relations Forum in Madrid, which brought together hundreds of communication professionals from around the world.
Fledgling start-up or corporate monolith, changing your brand is a big deal. As an organisation grows, a brand can be left hanging long past its best before date – usually because it's beloved as a powerful emblem of hard work and success. It can be hard to admit that your brand is fraying at the edges and doesn't quite fit anymore.
What do a $300,000-Maserati and a job centre in Essex have in common? More than you might think. Both have been exquisitely analysed by a growing sector of people watchers applying principles of behaviour economics to the theatre of human transaction, and both were subjects in a riveting conference I attended in Sydney hosted by The Marketing Science Ideas Xchange.
In 2011, Washington Post reporter Brian Vastag asked us to “imagine a stack of CDs, each holding an album’s worth of digital music, shooting from the top of [our desks] to 50,000 miles beyond the moon.” Apparently that’s how many CDs it would take to store the digital data the world produces in just two months.
I always loved storms when I was a kid, half the fun was in watching the clouds gather, hearing the first far off rumbles and anticipating the first bright flash of lightning. It’s a bit the same with brainstorming.
I have a real soft spot for good speakers. There is something invigorating about listening to informative, entertaining people who really know how to engage an audience.
Over the last few weeks I have spoken to people at different stages in their career about what PR consulting is really about and how the profession has changed.
Corporate social responsibility: still an oxymoron?
Well, yes and no. According to Andrew MacLeod, former humanitarian official, CEO of the Committee of Melbourne and former General Manager Communities, Communications and External Relations at Rio Tinto, the private sector can play a key role in improving the effectiveness of international aid and reducing global poverty.
We recently had the pleasure of working with a national client to develop a strategy for communicating with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) communities about a serious health issue.
Our life as communicators revolves around story telling. At the very heart of our work we help people say what they want to say, simply and clearly and give them opportunities to be heard.
