PR Voice

Can a PR Institute help in the war against corruption?

I’ve spent much of the weekend preparing for the Timex Global Communications Summit taking place in Abuja, Nigeria next week.

The conference theme is ‘Building a Corruption Free Society: The Challenges for Public Relations’.

When I started to think about this I realised that in the UK, rightly or wrongly, we start with the assumption that we live in a corruption free society. This means that the efforts deemed necessary by professional bodies and regulators are designed to work on an exception basis rather than the norm.

Getting out and about

On Monday I went to Brussels for a reception hosted by the Parliament magazine to commemorate the accession to the EU of Bulgaria and Romania. Both foreign ministers and both ambassadors attended the event - along with 45 MEPs and over 200 staffers and civil servants.

It was very noticeable - at this event and at the Commission press conference the following day - that English is more firmly established than ever as the working language of the EU. Eurostar both ways was pretty empty - but there was still a fair sprinkling of CIPR and GAG members. It felt a bit like the conference special to Blackpool - but without the pall of gloom hanging over every head........

This is work honest...

One of the perks of this job is the interesting people you get to meet - and share views on public relations and life in general. Harold Burson was fascinating, but it's one of his fellow Americans, Les Potter, who I've enjoyed conversations with over the last day or so.

I'm in Dubrovnik at the 7th annual conference of the Croatian Public Relations Association having been invited to speak by their President Dubravka Jusic when she was in London earlier this year for a meeting of CERP. It's a small association with only about 600 members and one full time member of staff, but I was immediately struck by their professionalism and the incredibly high standard of speakers they have attracted - yours truly notwithstanding!

Les Potter, a consultant and part-time university lecturer from just outside Washington DC, opened the event last night with a great talk on Strategic Public Relations Planning and Management. And in a country with a lot of young, ambitious and eager to learn practitioners, his two hour session went down a storm.

Drumming up support

Today's opening ceremony of the World Public Relations Festival in Brazil contained a unique mix of pomp, ceremony and... drumming, which could only have happened in South America.

The futuristic glass and steel-clad Ulysses Guimaraes Convention Centre in the centre of Brasilia was in stark contrast to the lengthy opening speeches by Government Ministers and academics which recalled an older more formal type of event.

Two and a half hours of fine words with no visual aids are expected at a conference of this stature in this part of the world. But to those of us from Europe - still suffering from a touch of jet lag - it was something of a culture shock.

But not half as shocking as the musical entertainment which burst into the auditorium at the end of the opening ceremony. Thirty or forty beautiful young Brazilian women banging the hell out of huge drums as they leapt around the stage was a visual as well as aural feast which I know gave Colin Farrington an idea or two for the CIPR annual conference in November.

Bom Dia from Brazil!

As previously mentioned, I'm representing the CIPR at the World Public Relations Festival in Brazil and after a 32 hour journey I finally made it here.

No problems with the flight from Heathrow - thanks to British Airways and its ever-efficient staff. But fog in Sao Paulo, Brazil meant an unscheduled diversion to a small military airport in the middle of nowhere and a five hour wait for the weather to improve.

A cancelled internal flight due to Brazilian carrier Varig's ongoing financial problems meant a cab ride across busy Sao Paulo to another airport and another five hour wait.

My travelling companion - CIPR director general Colin Farrington - and I decided we'd had enough of airports and after dumping our bags at check-in decided to explore.

Although we ended up in a part of town the guidebooks would probably recommend tourists should avoid, we had our first taste of Brazil in what would probably pass for an up-market greasy spoon back home.