RUSSIAN PR IN CHINA: EXPEDITION STARTS TODAY!

Today, on April 19, of Russian PR experts Expedition goes to China to get acquainted with the experience of the Celestial Empire’s modern image creation.

As part of the recently launched Year of Russian Tourism in China, delegation of the Russian Public Relations Association (RPRA) will visit Beijing and get acquainted with the Chinese experience of territorial brand building. The expedition will be held from April 19 till 26, 2012.

 Territory promotion, competition for investment between regions, development of tourist image are hot topics for both Russia and China, which is always able to solve these problems efficiently. Among the topics of interest are attraction of tourists (more than 53 million one day tourists visited China in 2012), holding sport events (Summer Olympic Games 2008 in China were the first to be broadcast entirely in high definition and drew 4.7 billion viewers), use of popular art for promotion of national values ​​and mentality, ideas of national identity and statehood. During the event Russian pr-experts will appreciate the communication component of the "Chinese miracle".

The visit is held at the invitation of China National Tourism Administration. The agenda includes business visits to the Chinese companies, familiarization tour to the tourist objects, meetings with representatives of industry of public opinion control.

By agreement of the parties, all events of the working trip will be reported in the special blog on RPRA website, personal blog of Alexey Glazyrin, head of the Russian delegation, RPRA Vice-President and GC Newton Chairman of the Board of Directors.

The PR profession continues to evolve

Thanks to Joe S. Epley, APR, Fellow PRSA for kind words and nice article:

"A good example of the bright new stars in the Russian profession is Natalia Gurova, a vice president for the Moscow-based Newton-PR. She sees continued growth in the profession, particularly because more small- and middle-sized businesses are recognizing the value of public relations. “There is a growing need for specialists within the profession, such as analysts, event planners and internal communicators,” she says. “Now everyone is trained as generalist.”
http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/Tactics/Articles/view/9700/101/Public_relations_in_Russia_Keeping_open_a_once_clo

Customer request

A myriad of constantly working information channels are trying to get customer's attention every single minute. It makes him to straight against this information attack. Successful PR-strategies today are not concentrated on storytelling, or product advantages, or company achievements. The main goal we are focusing is audience's interest. Only this interest leads us to concrete customer request.

audience - again

The biggest mistake that CEO may make, defining his audience for PR-tasks (and PR-budget), is idea that PR is only about media. Insofar as PR mean relationships (public relations) with numerous different people, we can not define PR to be only relationships with journalists, or just with investors, or only with the government and officials. PR - it's always contact with the audience that you need for strategic development.

Important: Your own history

It's extremely important to create, take care of and develop your history. It doesn't matter who are you now and whom you are working for - PR/AD agency, transnational company, own business or serving your one and only client. Fix everything. Especially numbers. Especially if they can tell everybody the story of your growth.
Let's have a look at two specialists. For instance manager A is huge educated person, famous among colleagues for his genius solutions and excellent writing/presenting/communication skills. He is always positive and all his tasks are prepared in time. Of course, he is popular. For the job. Inside the agency he work for. Because of all mentioned advantages he always is busy. So busy that he has no one single minute to fix the results of all his projects. He is always in process and never gets results.
Manager B is not so educated. Not so positive. Not so creative. Not so popular. But he fixes everything. He always takes approving document for every step he makes. Number of years spent in this agency. Number of sold (or just created) projects. Number of projects he was involved in. Nobody likes him - inside the area he is living now.
But time is very strange thing.

7 faces of the pr crystal: Target Audiences

Their majesties Target Audiences. People, most of whom  you'll never see, hear or ever call by name. What do you know about them? What do you know about their life? Can you imagine your product in their kitchen, or bath, or bedroom? Do you see your boss among the list of people who are interesting for your audience?
I can ask you a thousand more questions about your audience, but the main thing I'm trying to say is that you are to know your audience in every single communication. A letter you send, a phone-call you make, a banner you draw, an article you write - rise your eyes up and see the man who will read/see/hear it.

7 faces of the pr-crystal: Information field

So, here it is, our Information field. Let's try to divide in blocks and sides to stop shocking and begin working.
You have your working place, first of all. And you have your company/client, who generates information every day. Here you are responsible for filtering that information and making the decision - what is actual and important, what is waste, what is closed and so on. Of course, you can ask somebody about that. At first time you'll have to. But there will come some Magic Day when you'll have to decide it yourself and for your own responsibility. And from that day there will be no way back.
Where's the clue to solve the choice problem here? Actually, it's just in front of you. Yes, I mean it - the calculator. In fact, everything is 'calculatable'.

7 faces of the pr-crystal: Profession choice

1.    Profession choice. Please, don’t tell me you are unhappy to be in PR. The world is so large and free – try to find yourself somewhere else. Actually, the main reason of creative problems, that meets young specialists after 1-2 years of active work, is that the profession choice was made in wrong way. Why do they come to PR or AD? Cause it’s ‘cool’. Cause it promises full self-realization, eternity of creativity, clean like a tear and wide like Pacific.

7 faces of the pr-crystal

Two weeks ago I’ve made the master-class for MSU (MGU) students. The theme  was "Responsibility of pr-specialist." Could I put 10 years of journalism and public relations into 2 lecture hours? Ok, I did that.

Speaking about communications in Russia

This autumn I've made the presentation for the Belgian-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce for Russia and Belarus (CCBLR) in Brussels.
The meeting was rather interesting - I was really surprised by strong interest of European business to Russian market.
As it is told in press-release of our Belgian partners Newton-21 communication group, "an overview of the Russian communication market, its trends, legal environment and communication tools were all covered in a presentation that provided the audience with the essential knowledge required to establish one’s business abroad".

And all the event was held prior to the economic mission  leaded by the Prince of Belgium to Russia that will take place in April 2011.