23 February 2010

Avoiding boring PowerPoint presentations

It has coined phrases such as ‘Death by PowerPoint’ and the reality is most PowerPoint presentations have little ‘Power’ and are simply boring.

When it comes to writing and developing a PowerPoint presentation, 3 things ALWAYS race through my mind; How do I make it interesting? How do I clearly articulate my message in less than 50 words? How can I present it so it has impact? Read the rest of this post

4 February 2010

Social Media a Force in Stakeholder PR

We were recently involved in a stakeholder relations campaign to help overturn local government plans to build a Truck Depot under a park overlooking Bondi Beach.

Social Media emerged as one of the most powerful communications tools in an integrated campaign that spanned letter box drops, Web, photo shoots at the site, media relations, lobbying, advertising and events. Read the rest of this post

27 May 2009

Social Media and Crisis Communication

Traditionally, companies developed crisis communication plans to ensure they were ready to act quickly in the event of an emergency. For example, if the company’s operations burnt down or there was an urgent need to recall a product the crisis plan provided clear guidance on how to respond to most likely scenarios. Key to this plan was identifying stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers and the media and determining how they should be informed of an incident, by who and in what order. Read the rest of this post

5 February 2009

Communicating in the economic downturn

For companies and the media, ten years of economic growth has seen a raft of good news stories about growth, profits, opportunities and expansion into new markets. The economic downturn has created a new challenge for the public relations profession – how to communicate bad news.

Danny Rogers, editor of PR Week last month bluntly divided economic cycles into good news (in an upturn) and bad news (in the downturn). He went onto say that good news typically comes in the form of promotional messages, and during upturns PR usually reports into a marketing division. The communication of bad news, on the other hand, usually comes from board-level and takes the form of crisis management or keeping staff informed of major restructuring. Read the rest of this post

12 July 2008

Photon Embraces Two-way Communication Like the Rest of Us

A quote from Tim Hughes, Executive Chairman of the Photon Group, in the Australian Financial Review caught my eye today.

He said, “One-way forms of communication using TV, radio and newspapers will always have their place, but in this new consumer-empowered world, they are much less relevant.  Communications is now two-way.”

Funny thing is if you are a PR person, communications has always been two-way.   Read the rest of this post