http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/ en desk@wieck.com Copyright 2010 2010-02-19T17:22:40-06:00 http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/comments/how_big_is_a_trillion/ Harold Burson Burson-Marsteller Some of us can still remember when a billion was a big number. (I recall President Lyndon Johnson’s reluctance to present a $100 billion budget to the Congress in the mid-60s.) Nowadays a billion dollars doesn’t seem like a great deal of money. As the memorable Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen reportedly* said. “A billion dollars here and a billion dollars there and it soon adds up to real money.” But that time has passed us by. A lot of money today is measured in the trillions -- our gross domestic product (good), our national debt (bad), our budget deficit (worse). But do any of us really comprehend a trillion – a trillion of anything? This may help put it… 2010-02-19T17:22:40-06:00 http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/comments/audacious_authenticity_redux/ Roger Bolton Senior Counselor APCO Just over a year ago, and just a few days into the Obama presidency, I posted an entry on Page Turner lauding the new president’s efforts to reach across the aisle in genuine dialogue, comparing his early “post-partisan” efforts to the recommendations in The Authentic Enterprise. Although I was wise enough to issue a note of caution about the success of this approach in highly partisan Washington, I’ve been embarrassed at how quickly the spirit of dialogue and compromise disappeared. I had been hopeful, during the election, that whoever won the presidency – Obama or McCain – a new era of cooperation and compromise might be on offer. This emphatically is not what has occurred. If anything, the partisan bickering inside… 2010-02-03T02:13:04-06:00 http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/comments/schools_out_what_did_the_teacher_learn/ Frank Ovaitt CEO Emeritus, Institute for Public Relations I turned professor in the fall semester of 2009. As an adjunct faculty member of The George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management, I taught applied public relations research on campus and online. The students were mostly working practitioners, believing that a master’s degree in strategic public relations will lead to further advancement. Thus, I did not set out to teach them to be professional or academic researchers, but to be better practitioners. Since this was my first time teaching the course, I gave it a few weeks and then created a learning opportunity for myself. I asked my students how to improve the course. The reaction was interesting: “We never expected it to be enjoyable.” But I think they meant that in a positive way. They were discovering… 2010-01-04T16:27:32-06:00 http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/comments/social_media_an_unexpected_but_welcome_gift_to_communicators/ Sandra Macleod CEO Echo Research Ltd. It seems that hardly a conference or conversation about PR or reputation goes by without social media taking centre stage. Case in point being a recent Echo Chamber we hosted in New York this month, where Ketchum's Rob Flaherty argued that "The digital revolution and the intersection with the economy provides huge opportunities for PR professionals. If the most influential source is another person, not earned or paid media, relationships become key. It is up to PR to develop content that grab audiences in the right way." The eponymous editor and publisher Paul Holmes remarked that "in terms of social media, the marketing folk jump up and down and shout 'look at me'; the PR folk are at the other end of the spectrum, worrying about risk and wanting to listen. Both approaches are flawed - but the… 2009-11-25T22:35:30-06:00 http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/comments/the_thumbs_behind_the_twitter_posts/ Jeff R. Hunt Principal PulsePoint Group President Obama's revelation earlier this week that he is not the "thumbs" behind the twitter posts that have become a hallmark of the new social media world order no doubt sent shock waves through social networks the world over. Or not. My University of Texas class of juniors and seniors were certainly disappointed. While most observers would have to assume the President of the United States is far too busy to be thumbing his own tweets, I'm sure there are many idealists who would have liked to believe he was indeed the authentic author behind those gracious invitations to follow and those near constant updates. Now we know for certain, he was not. The magical bubble has been burst. Some will write this off as ho hum. But is it really any different than some… 2009-11-21T00:51:29-06:00 http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/comments/what_we_should_learn_from_nurses/ Tom Nicholson Executive Director, Arthur W. Page Society “Why do we continue to put our CEOs in front of audiences when surveys show they have at best limited credibility?” This question came from Michael Morley, chair of Echo Research and one of the more insightful communicators in our profession. He asked it during an Echo Chamber panel discussion in New York in early November. The basis is a survey showing CEOs ranking near the bottom of credible spokespersons. People are especially skeptical of CEOs these days, though they have never been near the top of the “most credible” lists. Despite this piece of research, corporate communicators almost invariably include CEO speaking opportunities in every corporate public relations plan. I started to wonder if we undervalue and underutilize good research which is readily available.… 2009-11-18T22:35:29-06:00 http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/comments/use_of_anonymous_sources_should_slink_off_anonymously/ David Senay President and CEO Fleishman-Hillard We’re in a world where news and opinion and fact and conjecture and rumors and hyperbole all seem to have lost their boundaries and are mashed together. That makes the search for credibility more challenging today than ever. The last 35 years or so, certainly since the so-called “deep throat” days of the Watergate era, has seen the gradual acceptance of the use of anonymous sources. But unlike the Watergate days, when the anonymous source was used largely to guide a more informed line of questioning, news organizations are quoting anonymous sources directly, often promising anonymity in exchange for information that journalists deem central to their story. But there’s a big problem with this twist in the age-old art of sourcing: by not identifying a source that is quoted directly, the journalist… 2009-10-30T15:46:30-06:00 http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/comments/silos_belong_on_farms_not_in_corporations/ Arthur E.F. Wiese, Jr. Vice President, Corporate Communications Entergy Corporation When I first became head of communications for a Fortune 500 corporation and got acquainted with my peers at other major companies, I was in for a shock. Most of them, I discovered, held government relations at arm’s length, trying to stay as far removed as they could from the work of their lobbyists. The two functions – public relations and government relations – not only operated separately in most companies, they rarely even conferred with each other. I, on the other hand, have always believed that silos belong on the farm, not in corporations. Perhaps it’s just that I’ve been a creature of Washington for most of my professional life. To me, government relations and public relations should be as tightly knit together as… 2009-10-23T15:17:31-06:00 http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/comments/new_book_by_paul_argenti_and_courtney_barnes_provides_a_digital_compass_for/ Paul Argenti and Courtney Barnes' new book, Digital Strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications, is an insightful and practical compass for communicators and brand stewards, navigating the new ocean of globally distributed information, expertise and relationships. In fact, their book is a how-to for one of the major recommendations of the Arthur W. Page Society's Authentic Enterprise paper – that the Chief Communications Officer must "enable the enterprise with ‘new media’ skills and tools.” As the Page Society paper argues – and as Argenti and Barnes explore in depth – this is not just about playing defense in a Web 2.0 world. It’s about playing offense. That way, when a digital crisis emerges, you will be in a much better… 2009-10-16T15:46:27-06:00 http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/comments/what_can_business_learn_from_the_dalai_lama/ I found some reinforcement from an unexpected source recently for my long-held belief that trust, actually the lack thereof, is one of the primary reasons why business must embrace social issues. It was a remark by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, who happened to precede me as a speaker at a conference in Calgary, Alberta. Of course, this is not an everyday occurrence for me; in fact, it was a total shock and the experience of a lifetime that I was asked to share the stage with perhaps the most humble and serene individual in the world. (For more on this transformative experience, see my post on the "What do you stand for?" blog.) Just before I followed him onstage, the Dalai Lama said, “Trust is the basis of harmony.” I was thankful for that, because trust… 2009-10-12T16:18:55-06:00