Does size matter in PR?

Public relations in the Down Under area is handled solely by Australian and Kiwi agencies. Fact?

Wrong. There are PR professionals also on the smaller islands of the Oceania region. It's an encouraging thought that they too have know-how and don't only rely on help from the big guys in the yard.

In certain ways, it's also profoundly logical; I mean, who knows better the image and cultural sensibilities of a small nation, another relatively small nation or one with a population and international influence that's a hundred times that of the small islands?

Appropriate measures to match the specific needs of a given situation, I suppose.

Tuomas

Just do it, use social media!

We have already been talking pretty much about social media in this blog, but I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help it.

I found an interesting article about the differences between brand marketing and PR. Here is a clear summary of those differences

And then I found a nice blog ,written by a former Australian PR expertist, in which the differences between marketing and PR are discussed in the point of view of social media usage. I find that blog on the whole quite interesting, so need to check if there is something more to write about too.

Anyhow, about the social media and PR the blogger, Grant Common, is writing that social media means both opportunity and challenge for PR. It should be a natural extension of the PR already being done and besides it gives an opportunity to consolidate PR’s role in the organization. The threat on the contrary is if the marketing department takes the social media for itself. If that happens there is a chance that possibility to use social media as tool to build stakeholder goodwill and dialogue may be undermined and it simply becomes another promotional tool.

Those different goals of using the social media can be read more carefully in that Grant’s blog. Besides, he writes in his text, the PR practitioners need to learn how to use the social media and how to become expert in it to get in under they control, not to lose it for the marketers. Well yeah, isn’t it that’s why we are blogging in this course?

Written by Akviliina

Nation Brand Index

The image that a country has is normally thought to have a huge importance. And sure it has it, is there some land that wouldn’t like to have a good reputation in the eyes of other countries. The Anholt-GFK Roper Nation Brands Index represents yearly a unique barometer of global opinion about the nation’s images and reputations. One can read on the website that “The NBI is a report card for countries, measuring the world’s perception of each nation as if it
were a public brand. ”

In other words, The Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands IndexSM measures the power and appeal of each country’s ‘brand image’ by examining six dimensions of national competence. The six dimensions are exports, governance, culture, tourism, people, immigration and investment and the average of the scores from these constitutes the NBI score of a nation.

More about the survey methodology can be read for example in the survey made year 2008.

Year 2008 in the Nation Brand Index Ranking, Germany ranked highest. Australia ranked 9th and the nation did best in the people index, that measures, for example, the general assessment of a people’s friendliness by whether respondents would feel welcome when visiting the country and whether respondents would like to have close friend from that country.

Well, yeah, who wouldn’t like to have a friend from down under?

And by the way, both Australia and New Zealand beat Finland in the NBI –ranking. We ranked first 17th.

Written by Akviliina