Whenever the world of PR stumbles upon new tools of communication, corporate professionals need to answer one fundamental question: should they seize the day and be early adopters, or bide their time in the wings, waiting to see how the new techniques evolve once the dust of hype has settled? For the past couple of years, this conundrum could be applied to a multitude of social media novelties. Should your company run its own Twitter account? Should it take the plunge and engage with Facebook? Should it create its own internal social network for employees to speak openly? There are sound reasons for corporations to exercise caution. Jumping on the bandwagon without prior reflection is, without a doubt, a slippery slope to failure, for involvement with social media is not without its risks.
Could employees misinterpret freedom of speech and abuse the internal forum? Could there be an increase in leaks to unscrupulous journalists? Communications specialists could also get it wrong, and swamping social networks with aimless self-promotion will hardly endear you to your stakeholders. On the plus side, social media offers a unique opportunity to engage with stakeholders on a more spontaneous and intimate level than has ever been possible, building an organisation´s image and discovering trends and potential sources of crisis long before they materialise in more traditional channels. In this issue Story Teller section, a diverse range of experts from the academic and corporate worlds guide us through the distracting white noise of hyperbole and explore the ramifications of social media on PR and corporate communications. We hope you find some food for thought in this first issue of 2010.
Communicating cross-culturally is a must in a globalised world, and communications professionals must convince their companies of the value of bringing people together to share a diversity of business thinking.
The new issue of Communication Director takes look at the complexity of cross-cultural communications. Gerd Götz explains how Royal Philips combines a clear, unified vision with room for local differences; Virginia Drummond Abdala writes on what and how we can learn from the life experiences of global managers; and Lisbeth Clausen tells us how, if used intelligently, stereotypes can actually help in communication encounters.
Furthermore in the magazine:
Getting to grips with the iceberg of differences: Looking below the surface can improve our cultural literacy
Finding common ground in a divided world: Dialogue brings together people pushed apart by their differences
Straddling the divide between east and west: How one bank engages clients from Jordan to Germany
[ Review of the European Communication Summit 2009 ]
Post date: July 06th, 2009
State of the Art: 3rd European Communication Summit
Between July 2nd and 3rd, over three hundred communications professionals gathered in Brussels to attend the European Communication Summit, which is the highlight of the European Association of Communication Directors’ calendar. Hosted jointly by the EACD and Communication Director magazine, the event featured over sixty speakers, who made gave presentations, workshops and took part in panel discussions for the benefit of the participants.
The event focused on six major strands of communications: Strategy and Planning, Execution and Measurement, Next Media and Innovation, Internal and Change Communication, Crisis Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility. The Summit included keynote speeches from Alan Kelly (the founder and CEO of ‘the Playmaker’s Standard’), Björn Edlund (Global Head of Communications for Shell), Professor Soumitra Dutta (Roland Berger Chaired Professor of Business and Technology and Dean of External Relations at Insead), Mike Wing (Vice President of Strategic and Executive Communications at IBM) and Professor Craig Carroll (from the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication).
The EACD Working Groups also held meetings and Panel Discussions to focus attention on specific topics, and these were well attended during the Summit. All of the keynote speeches, as well several of the best case presentations are available now, by clicking the link below.
Within the next few days, presentations from all of the speakers will be available online for download, and the link will be posted on here, as well as being emailed to all of the participants from the event.
