Category Events

March 7, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle, Public Relations practice  No comments

How times have changed. As PR professionals, are we in charge of how the world sees and perceives us?

Are we masters of our universe and able to manage the flow of information like we used to in order to protect and enhance the reputation of those organisations we work for and represent?

Back in 1948, US social historian Eric Goldman in his book Two-Way Street predicted that communication between an organisation and its audiences would develop in three distinct ways.

Initially, organisations and companies would have the upper hand and be able to control the amount of spin on any given subject and the unsuspecting audience wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

The secon...

March 5, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle  No comments

In a packed schedule over three days (Monday 10-Wednesday 12 March), over 250 delegates from around the world will descend on the ski resort of Davos, Switzerland to debate the key issues that are impacting both the public relations industry and its clients and strategies for leveraging the value of forthcoming opportunities across global markets at the World Communication Forum.

The full agenda for the Forum is available here.

A particular area of interest on the Davos agenda this year is how global events – such as the FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014 and the forthcoming FIA Formula-e Championships 2014/15 – help to create sustainable economic impact for host cities around the w...

February 21, 2014,  Essential Law for Marketers, Events, Guru in a Bottle, Legal update, Marketing practice, News, Sponsorship News  No comments

So the question on most marketers’ lips at the half-way stage of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games 2014 is who’s winning brand gold and who’s coming last in the multi-million dollar sponsorship stakes?

Well, this picture sums up the problem, doesn’t it?

An Olympic Official at Sochi with duct tape sticking it over the Apple logo of the laptop belonging to Associated Press director of international video Mark Davies. As if this pretty innocuous indirect view of an Apple logo on this laptop justifies this type of treatment?

Well, it’s bonkers really but then you need to understand the reasoning behind this extreme form Olympic brand protection.

Non-Olympic partners such as ...

January 27, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, Events  No comments

January 15, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle, Marketing practice, Public Relations practice, Social marketing practice  No comments

This week, our friends at Vocus hosted a fascinating webinar that looked at how to build better relationships with bloggers and the media with a bunch of experts in the field.

Sharing their thoughts on this and other topics were Ben Davis, content and community producer at eConsultancy, Chris Dawson, co-founder and publisher of Tamebay, San Sharma, digital manager at small-business community Enterprise Nation and John Hayes, an expert in email marketing and social media at Vocus.

We covered the following areas in the webinar which you can listen to here by registering your details.

These are some of my own thoughts to the questions that were asked in the webinar which I ho...

December 30, 2013,  Events, Guru in a Bottle  No comments

As we all struggle to get back into the swing of work, we might want to think about becoming more efficient with the use of our time, especially given the mountain of emails that appears to have accumulated whilst we’ve been ‘Out of Office’!

The problem with email is that we tend to read messages indiscriminately rather than sorting out the high priority from the low priority ones. In fact, many of us are guilty of giving all emails irrespective of their importance or urgency equal weight in terms of our attention and we tend to want to get through them as fast as possible.

Why?  Well, we’ve got into bad habits, haven’t we.

That’s why.

Former US President Dwight...

December 27, 2013,  Events  One comment

“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star in the East and have come to worship him.’ ” Matthew 2:1-2.

The Three Wise Men have been written into history for following a star are as much a mystery as is exactly what it was they saw over 2,000 years ago: A mystery upon which modern day scholars and astronomers are working to shed light.

In all likelihood, these Magi were Zoroastrian priests following the star from the eastern Babylonian settlement.

Many cultures looked to the stars for direction—not just horoscope type of stuff—...

December 19, 2013,  Events, Guru in a Bottle, High Impact Marketing that Gets Results, Marketing practice, News, Social marketing practice  2 comments

Wherever you happen to live and work in the world, one thing is clear.

The outlook for 2014 is uncertain. But that shouldn’t dampen any attempt to see what the future holds for most of us next year, which is now only a few weeks’ away.

It’s easy to spot the negatives for our working future: technology has led to a world of ever-growing fragmentation where billions of people connected across the world are continuously bombarded with requests; a future where the virtual nature of nascent technology will leave many deeply isolated and craving physical relationships; a future where globalisation has created a dividing line between winners and losers; a world where the undercl...

November 28, 2013,  Events, Guru in a Bottle  No comments

The coincidence this year of Thanksgiving and the start of Hanukkah is very unusual – it last happened in 1888.

But in a way it’s fitting, as American Jews have been embracing Thanksgiving for more than two centuries.

By the time the first of eight candles in Jewish menorah were lit on Wednesday evening for the start of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, the country was largely closed down for Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday.

According to the most commonly cited calculation, not only has this not happened for 125 years, but it won’t happen again for more than 70,000 years!

That’s because the Jewish calendar is shifting in relation to the Gregorian calendar very, very slowly… at...

November 18, 2013,  Events, Guru in a Bottle  No comments

It’s easy to think everything is doom and gloom when the British economy is staggering to get itself back on its feet and the appearance of cold, overcast skies adds to our general sense of foreboding as the evenings start to draw in and it’s dark by 4.30pm!

But instead of worrying about sales and marketing and whether we’re going to make our end of year figures before it’s time to pack up for the Christmas break, there’s a bunch of entrepreneurs out there that are constantly looking for success in the face of adversity.

I was struck by how successful this thinking is when listening to the presentation of my friend and colleague Professor Jaideep Prabhu of Judge B...