Increasingly GlobalCom is specialising itself in City PR. This was evident during a press trip which took journalists from the UK, France and Belgium to the famous Dutch port of Rotterdam. The second largest town of the country is famous for its architecture and design and this year her slogan was ‘Architectuur & Design 2007’ with a whole array of exhibitions and visits to buildings that are designed in a special way and are very modern. 

This trip elicited lots of interest with the media specialized in architecture and design. A delegation of 8 people visited the inner city of Rotterdam for two days and went to the surrounding industrial areas with special architectural character.

Rotterdam Marketing choose GlobalCom because of her excellent references within the area of Tourisme & Travel and her strong presence in those countries that are of great importance to Rotterdam. This trip was a first introduction to GlobalCom as external partner for press activities and we have had unanimous positive reactions afterwards. The cooperation with the town will be further expanded during the coming months when GlobalCom will offer support at fairs e.g. World Travel Market (London) and ITB (Berlin) next to the organising of new press trips for journalists from Germany, Spain, Italy and Scandinavia. 

For more details about the lay out of the press trip or who is interested in City PR, please contact the GlobalCom-coordinator for Tourism & Travel directly: Nico Tempelaere, nico@gcpr.net

Together with Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Ralf Hartmann, Shareholder and Board Director of the Brussels-based GlobalCom PR-Network NV, attended the festivities of the 2007 Bavarian award for entrepreneurs in Munich.

This award honours managers who rendered outstanding services to the creation and retention of jobs. The jury set a high value on companies that are both local and site-specific, social, family-friendly, fit for the future and economically successful.

The award went to the South Germany-based company Baufritz. They finance an ideally equipped day nursery with a large outside area close to nature, enabling employees to combine job and family.

The special award went to the internationally operating TV manufacturer Loewe AG (Kronach). The company managed to master serious business problems and to become “Turnarounder of the year 2006” in Germany. Especially remarkable: the Loewe management paid back the wage renunciations by the employees with a 25 percent return.

“We appreciate the award for entrepreneurs who are aware of their social responsibility, who fulfil their
role-model function and manage their company accordingly,” said Ralf Hartmann. "Exemplary companies operate honestly and sustainably beyond the legal requirements."

From Xavier Prabhu, Founder of PR HUB India.

How would you characterize the PR business in your country/region? Have there been any significant changes in the past few years?

I would characterize the PR business in India as being in between the second or third stage of evolution if we were to take the US as at the fourth stage.

The key trends that we see are:

- outbound work out of India is likely to leap as Indian companies go global with a vengeance

acquiring and establishing presence in markets overseas; infact this will change the contours

since it then positions India not as a market for local PR services but a market where global PR itself originates

- more and more maturing of the local industry with the processes and systems getting more aligned to the global ones

- increased footprint of the large global players in India and most large and medium firms getting aligned to some global network or the other over a period of time

- the large global players unless they grow inorganically cannot dominate the marketplace in India for some time to come due to variety of reasons

- there will be some attempts at vertical focus though it has not been a successful model in India

- the fee levels will raise in India to global levels or atleast closer to it.

Are there specific challenges that are exclusive to your country/region in terms of PR and communications work?

Talent:

The first and the biggest will be the scale of the people issue that the industry faces. The industry at some level is going to see 300-400% growth which is placing enormous pressure on the HR side of the firms.

- There is acute shortage at the entry level despite new institutions springing up and despite salary levels increasing significantly which is going to worsen over the near future; this is going to drive many firms to sheer desperation and see quality of hiring being the worst impacted

- In the middle level too there is going to be pressure as people arrive there through quick and often hasty promotions probably ill-equipped to do the best at that level; this has two implications -they are not going to be able to provide the right kind of leadership and training to the new joinees who inturn will be disappointed and leave in droves complicating already a big challenge

Business:

- The immense growth in business is going to result in mushrooming of new PR firms which will further commoditize the lower end/media relations part of work done by PR firms. They will also bring significant price pressure onto the bigger firms.

- The growth in business will not allow the firms to make investment in business or processes as much as they would love to leading to some kind of drop in delivery and quality of services; the clients will start doing a roulette on the PR firms

What sectors provide the most opportunity for business and growth in your country/region?

- Retail

- FMCG

- Telecom

- HR

- Professional Services

- Banking & financial services

- Healthcare

- Pharmaceuticals

- Engineering

- Manufacturing

- Aviation

- IT

- BPO

- Automotive

If the list looks large and almost like every sector possible, well, at the rate Indian economy is growing it would be a surprise if no sector is part of this growth story.

How much of the business out of your office is truly global in scope?

20-30%

How would you describe the local media scene? How has it changed? What media outlets are especially important to you, from both a local and global perspective?

Chaotic, unpredictable and in some patches increasingly commercial.

There is explosion of media vehicles and options and while that is good news for a company or a PR firm it is not so as there is lack of direction or differential editorial focus between many of them leading to clutter.

In some groups, there is also increasing attempts to link business news and related information to some sort of commercial consideration which is a new challenge which may or may not be unique to this region.

The media most important varies from client to client, market to market but for most corporate clients the media of priority in the order are:

- Business and mainline English dailies

- Business and mainline magazines

- Electronic media

– TV channels

Leading trade magazines

- Vernacular dailies

- Vernacular magazines

via The Global Account by PR Week

Thanks to our Russian Partners we have some pictures of our world-wide partner meeting in Brussels, Belgium in May 2007.

From the left to the right: Robert Nyström from InformationsCampagniet in Sweden, Hinata from Kyodo PR in Japan, Xavier Prabhu from PR HUB in India, Tadahisa Kimura from Kyodo PR in Korea and Stanislav Grafski from Terra Nova in Russia.

Tadahisa Kimura from Kyodo PR Korea and Stanislav Grafski from Terra Nova Russia.

Sitting from the left to the right: Sakae Ohashi from Kyodo PR Japan, Paruyr Davtyan and Stanislav Grafski from Terra Nova Russia.
Standing from the left to the right: Alexandre Cordeiro from  C&C - Consultores de Comunicação Portugal, Xavier Prabhu from PR HUB India, Tadahisa Kimura from Kyodo PR Korea, Ben Huybrechts from Kyodo PR Belgium, Wangli from Kyodo PR China.

Nicholas Karides, director of ampersand communications in Cyprus, writes regurlarly for the Cyprus Sunday Mail. This week he has written an article about branding a country with the help of a successful young Cypriotic tennis player:

Branding Cyprus: from the Cyprus problem to Marcos Baghdatis

By Nicholas Karides
(archive article - Sunday, July 1, 2007)

At the end of Marcos Baghdatis’ defeat at the Gerry Weber Open final in Germany earlier this month, the organisers brought out a small unappetising cake to celebrate the Cypriot’s tennis star’s 22nd birthday. A polite and genuine gesture for a colourful sportsman whose temperament and talent by admission of the International Tennis Federation have animated an otherwise dull (bar Nadal) circuit.

The cake was marked with the Cyprus flag. In the world of fast information and images and faster impressions, the Baghdatis-Cyprus connection at that moment generated more positive recognition for Cyprus than any Cyprus Tourism Organisation campaign featuring computer tampered squeaky clean images of beaches and mountain tops.

We all have ‘brand’ perceptions of countries, cities and companies which tend to determine our behaviour towards them. In Cyprus we’ve always been conscious of what foreigners think of us both as a tourist destination but above all in terms of how they understand our position on the political problem.

Every year, Global Market Insite Inc ranks many of the world’s ‘nation brands’ by surveying over 25,000 consumers in 35 nations. The brand of a nation is produced by analyzing perceptions of the cultural, political and commercial assets, the investment potential and tourist appeal of each nation. This in turn is interpreted into a measurement of ‘national brand power’. A good result indicating a positive nation brand provides a competitive advantage in today’s global marketplace. Like multinationals, countries compete with each other for the attention, respect and trust of investors, tourists, consumers and the media.

We’ve all read about how the World Cup in Germany – by far the biggest media event of 2006 – elevated the German brand, crushed deeply held negative perceptions about Germany and improved the country’s image (even, it is said, among Germans themselves). We saw it happening after the successful organisation of the Olympics in Athens which, combined with Greece’s victory in the UEFA Football Championship in Portugal that year, elevated a whole nation and altered its own outlook and particularly the way others saw it. 

Cyprus and Greece are not included in the GMI survey (Sweden tops the list, Germany is ranked sixth and Turkey last after Russia, China and India).

It is not difficult to identify the key elements that form the basis of the global brand recognition of Cyprus: souvenir shops on the islands of Milos and Ios would disagree but it is safe to assume that Aphrodite holds a Cypriot (and EU) passport and is a popular reference vehicle for the Cyprus brand. Richard the Lionheart’s connection to Cyprus was too dreamy to feature permanently. True the oft asked “isn’t there a problem there with the Turks?” element and the much advertised ‘last divided capital of Europe’ are popular perceptions. Throw in some halloumi if food is your portal to the world and that is where roughly it all ends. Our accession to the EU gave the country some brand credibility but missed opportunities such as Cyprus’ huge ship register making the EU the biggest ship register in the world were left unexploited when in fact they could have boosted our global brand.

Enter Marcos Baghdatis. Born 11 years after 1974, talented, charming, laid-back but also

temperamental; tri-lingual and very European. If he wins any grand slam down the line he’ll be elevated to Cyprus’ global ambassador. He will personify the way the world identifies and appreciates Cyprus. Of course, like him, Cyprus counts hundreds of agile, hard working and focused professionals both here and abroad who are capable of carrying the Cyprus brand. At the end of the day, we know we will never host a World Cup or the Olympic Games. So all we can do is to encourage more like Baghdatis to excel in what they do and hope that the state will prove clever enough to help and embrace them. It appears our only asset with branding potential is the human one. 

Vision Communications (VisionComm) was established by Tibor Szentgyörgyi in 1999 in Budapest.

The Hungarian, integrated communications service and consultant, agency provides full scale PR and marketing communication services to its customers.

The agency’s commitment is to support the cooperation based on mutual interests between their clients, and their target groups. The team believe that the business scope of their clients can be supported the most effective and cost-saving way by using PR tools.

Vision Communications precisely planned and implemented projects proved their professionalism to their clients that have done them proud of their trust for 3-6 years.

The agency’s clients are international companies, their local subsidiaries and the governmental sector.

Since its foundation, in 1997, Politics PR prepares and implements the strategic communication plans for the leading companies and organizations of both the private and public sector.

Politics PR offers full scale Communications & Public Relations strategic programs that cover the full range of services demanded in the process of building a solid public image:

Development and Formation of Corporate Image

Investor Relations

Internal Communications

Media Relations

Media Training

Brand Building

Lobbying

Corporate Social Responsibility

Stakeholders Relations

Crisis Management

Political Communication, for ministries, candidates and political parties, is a significant competitive advantage of our company.

Since 2001 Politics PR has become the fastest growing company in the areas of Communication and Public Relations in Greece by acquiring and maintaining a reach clientele of leading firms and organizations i.e. COSMOTE, PFIZER, MICROSOFT, SATO, MEDIA MARKT, UPS, ALPHA COPY, NOKIA, CARREFOUR, VIVARTIA, NESTLE, ZAGORI, MINISTRY OF CULTURE, MINISTRY OF PUBLIC ORDER, etc.

Delivering measurable and positive outcomes and taking their objectives as its personal goals makes us one of the Top PR agencies in Greece.

IF PR is one of Finlands most dynamic PR agencies. Based in Helsinki, it offers an integrated range of Public Relations services starting with strategic communication to editorial and media services. The agency manages the public profile of many different clients and helps companies undertaking the planning and realization of communication strategies.

March Communications provides a unique blend of PR and marketing services that combine local knowledge and industry expertise with European flair.
The agency delivers highly creative and innovative programs that will influence target audiences and have a real impact on bottom lines.
Based in Cambridge, MA, March PR provides a global understanding, industry expertise and strong media contacts, using these to good effect for European, Canadian and U.S.-based clients.

Martin Jones - Managing Partner

An experienced public relations and interactive marketing practitioner, Martin is responsible for the agency’s overall business developmentand creative communication programs. Prior to March Communications, he founded iJack Communications, a successful London-based interactive marketing and communications agency. He has worked with an impressive array of U.S. and European business, consumer and corporate clients across a broad range of industries and sectors.

Cheryl Gale - Managing Partner

A highly skilled PR and marketing specialist, Cheryl takes overall responsibility for the strategic direction of client programs. Prior to March Communications, she was instrumental in the launch and success of Band & Brown Communications’technology practice, where she was responsible for securing and managing international campaigns for many leading technology companies, including Cisco Systems, BT, McAfee and LogicaCMG. She began her career at The Weber Group (now Weber Shandwick) in Cambridge.

Spreckley Partners Ltd. is an independent PR consultancy, 20 people strong, with expert knowledge of consumer, B2B and IT markets. Clients range from major international companies and brands to smaller specialist businesses.

Whatever their size, Spreckley Partners Ltd. delivers consistent, effective campaigns that make a real difference to their sales and future development.

Spreckley Partners Ltd. provides PR

and much more as required, ranging from corporate identity to integrated marketing communications in some cases. Services include media, design, print, internet, sales collateral and events - exploiting the benefits of matched messaging across everything.

All their senior people have big consultancy and brand backgrounds, so clients gain the benefit of career PR professionals with enormous strategic and creative experience working within a smaller, friendlier environment.

Internationally, Spreckley Partners Ltd. works in a number of European markets and beyond using like minded local agencies who they know personally and whose standards meet their own.

Mike Spreckley, chairman, was on the board of two top-five UK PR consultancies before setting up the company in 1983. His experience covers the whole marcoms spectrum for consumer and business clients.

Richard Merrin, managing director, joined Spreckley Partners in 1995 after six years in consultancies in Manchester and London. His expertise spans business and technology clients in the UK and internationally.

Shelley Facius, director, joined Spreckley Partners in 2007, bringing 12 years PR consultancy and in-house experience including a director role in Hill & Knowlton’s Technologies practice and stints at Firefly Communications and Oracle.

Penny Clifton, associate director, leads Spreckley Partners’ consumer team with her extensive experience in working with food, drink, household and leisure brands.