ICCO will contribute to the content of the World Communication Forum as an official partner!

Davos, Switzerland, February 5 – The forum’s 7^th edition will be held on 8-9 March, at the Congress Centre in Davos, Switzerland. Communication professionals from all over the world will again get together to discuss the key trends in today’s global communications. ICCO will be among the official partners to fortify the key ideas of the WCF initiative as well as facilitate and spread the conclusions of the summit.

Maxim Behar, ICCO President, WCFDavos co-Chair and Board Chairman and CEO of M3 Communications Group in Bulgaria:
“For us it is important to be present at such an important event. I have been following very carefully the Davos Forum from its very first edition held 7 years ago, and I am delighted to see such a significant progress. As the largest Global PR community, ICCO will contribute with presentations, moderation of panels, and we shall also advise our members to join as participants.”

Yanina Dubeykovskaya, WCFDavos Founder and General Director, President of the WCFA:

“We appreciate ICCO as the most influential professional association within the industry on an international scale and see great prospects for partnerships that will allow the best PR agencies worldwide to expand their business and professional expertise via the platforms of the Forum and its regional editions, thus fostering new, fruitful relations with media representatives, corporate directors, state administrations, and non-profit organizations around the world!”

The agenda offers a diversified content and insight by global experts with out-of-the-box vision for the future of the industry: how to add meaning, integrate interests and reach a growing influence in multinational/cross-cultural businesses and brands, how to engage the globe, how to manage crisis periods on the social media, and much more.

WCFDavos will again give the floor for a discussion on more or less controversial topics:

• Talent VS Experience.
• Communications in the Arab world.
• From digital evolution to robot revolution – humanity, communications, ethics.
• Quantity or Quality? What is your social media top priority?
• Communications revolutionized – seen as a mission, rather than as a service!
• Tourism: a global industry in the age of Communications.
• Media Reality – Influence and Responsibility

… and more!

Among the speakers and moderators of the plenary panels are leading experts, such as:
ICCO PresidentMAxim Behar, Francis Ingham, Chief Executive of ICCO and Director General of the PRCA in UK, Mustapha Khalfi, Minister of Communications and Spokesperson of the Government of Morocco, Faith Muthambi, Minister of Communications of South Africa, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, National Vice President of the ruling BJP political party in India, Dmytro Kuleba, Ambassador-at-Large for Strategic Communications at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Roman Vassilenko, Chairman – Committee for International Information at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Kazakhstan, Paul Holmes, Founder and CEO of The Holmes Report and SABRE awards, Scott Fahlman, Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, also known as “Father” of the smiley emoticon, Tanuja Kehar, Vice President Corporate Communications at Unitech in India, Solly Moeng, Managing Director of Don Valley in South Africa, Sean Gardner, co-Founder of the pioneering Huffington Post “Twitter Powerhouses Series”, Saurabh Uboweja, Founder, CEO & Director Brand Strategy at Brands of Desire, Prof. Dr. Ali Murat Vural, Executive Board Member and Coordinator at Bersay Communications in Turkey, Franky Saegerman, Head of Social Media & Communications and Public Diplomacy at NATO HQ in Belgium, Bayan Tal, broadcast journalist and Senior Advisor at the Jordan Media Institute as well as former director general of the Jordan Radio & TV and foreign press secretary to His Majesty King Abdullah, Dr. Phil Osagie, Global Strategist at JSP Communications in Nigeria, and more!

Traditionally, WCFDavos holds the Communications for Future (C4F) Davos Award. However, this time it offers up to 23 categories for recognition of remarkable creativity and unique vision of the future of communications, in two major groups of awards: Personal (individual communicators with a strong influence on global communications) and Corporate (companies setting the standards for effectiveness & professionalism).

The other two professional associations supporting the event are APRA (Armenia), CIPRA (China). WCFDavos 2016 is also supported by exclusive partner agencies from all over the world: M3 Communications (Bulgaria), Kaiser Communication (Germany), Capital Communications (Hungary), CROS (Russia), Grou-AGAMA (Ukraine), Don Valley (South Africa), Cyber Gear (UAE), RADA Research & PR (Egypt), First House (Norway), Competence (Italy), The Story (Poland), JSP Communications (Nigeria), Dept WPF (Russia).

WCF is an annual global event held at the Davos Congress Centre in Switzerland. Initiated by an International Coordinating Committee in 2010, it has united a great number of acknowledged professionals from 55 countries worldwide. Since its third annual edition in Davos, WCF has started expanding its global professional community with regional sessions held in some of the largest cultural centers and business capitals across Europe and Asia. The two-day conference covers the latest trendy areas and issues and outlines future tendencies in the global communications industry.

For more information: www.forumdavos.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WorldCommForumDavos

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/WorldCommForum

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/forumdavoscom

Contact:

Valentina Atanasova, Project Manager of the World Communication Forum in Davos

Comms with Speakers & Committee, Partnerships, Website content, SM, PR

Mobile: (+359) 884435044, Skype: ataval.bg

 

Maxim Behar, new president of International Communications Consultancy Organization (ICCO) and author of books on communication strategies, shares with PROI Americas his perceptions about the way global PR industry is going – and the main trends for the future. The World PR Report 2015 informs that the global PR industry grew 7% in 2014. Will This trend continue in 2015 – or the global outlook is more challenging now for PR agencies? The trend for growth will definitely continue, even I would predict more than previous year, but the business is changing so fast that almost nobody can de- scribe nowadays what the term “PR industry” means. Imagine you have three circles, partly overlapped, depending of the countries, regions and markets. The first one logically is the classical, traditional PR, the second is for our “cousin” from advertising and the third one belongs to a business born some more than a decade ago – digital agencies. Now those three circles are uniting step by step, directly speak- ing even every single day they overlap each other and there is a big dispute which one will prevail. Some say advertising; I say PR. Vision is very, very important in the modern communications, but we, in PR business, are not only “masters of text”, but we are much more experience of earning media and we will much faster learn how to manage them. In your opinion, what are the most important changes in the PR industry in 2015? Should we have deep- er changes in the near future? The most important change since the very start of PR business more than century ago is already matter of fact. Initially the difference between the PR and advertising was very clear – PR earn media, advertising buys media. The change now is that first time in history all we own media. Yes, media is our property, to me, to you, to everyone. From that perspective the task now is not to earn media, but to manage them professionally on behalf of our clients. And this will be the main change in the next years – we must learn how to manage media, how to provide our mes- sages in the most convincing way, how to keep the “third party” independence, presenting our clients’ projects. In fact this is completely new area for the PR business, which together with the social media and digital marketing “secrets” our teams must learn every day, even every minute. How do you see the integration of communication (marketing, PR and digital)? It is happening already since couple of years and the ones in PR business who do not do it yet are really totally late. The integration is simple. Always in our business we have starting point (client’s task) and tar- gets (possible results). The everything else would be the tools reaching the results. Now it is true – we own media, but this is not enough. Using visuals, movies is crucial for presenting the messages to the audience, which means that we take significant part from the advertising business. On the other hand there some- thing else, which also makes our business unique these days. First time in the history in fact PR business is absolutely measurable – we can say exactly how many views, clicks, likes, shares, followers have our messages, we can follow exactly the age, regional and interests structure of the targeted audience. This means that we already took a piece of the traditional marketing business, and this is enormous change for us. So, all those business are already integrated. It is on us, the PR professionals to set the speed of further integration and to change the business further. And we can do it just one way – in our office  with our teams, on the brainstorming sessions, pitching and if for clients and with clients, changing our teams, involving new professions and skills into our office is not easy, I know. But otherwise the companies which are not changing with high speed will be simply out of the modern market.

Using visuals, movies is crucial for presenting the messages to the audience

Which sectors you see significant growth in the near future? Obviously the highest growth will be in the crisis management. No matter it would be financial, health- care or IT sector. In the past, during the era of traditional printed media we had 8-10 hours basically to solve crisis and also 1-2 hours to respond top a TV coverage in case of crisis for our client. Now we do not have even more that two minutes. Once the news – right or wrong, true or false, is on the social media, then we must know exactly how to respond and how to overcome it. It requires deep knowledge, professional training and understanding the modern media. And also – understanding the world we live in, the brains of new generation, their interests, feelings and moods. In recent years, technological changes led PR agencies to reinvent its business. Do you think this process will be also a reality in 2016? It is not “reinvention”. In fact this is entirely new business, which I doubt in 10 to 12 years will be called further Public Relations. Our business had been established more than 100 years ago, at that time the majority of the relations were “not-public” and some of the were “public”, so there was a need of professional to manage the public side of the events. Now… everything, everything, everything is public. Those changes will also bring to the change not only of of the description of our business and change of the need of our clients, but also will bring a new name of our profession. Two early to say what it would be… Social relations, effective relations… Who knows, life is changing so fast, everything in our business is so dynamic that next year for sure will bring to us much more surprises than we can expect. We saw in 2014 a growth of conglomerate PR groups. How this scenario affects the independent PR agencies? My vision is that the independent firms will continue to grow and the conglomerates as you say, or big international networks will feel huge difficulties. And the reason is very simple – the slow decision making process and the sometimes too big bureaucratic machine. Very often I say – nowadays worst decision is better than no decision. Independent agencies, very often small and medium sized, are much more and easy to adjust to the clients needs and also faster and more effective to cut expenses. The big networks of course have their chances only if the face huge and immediate changes of the decision making process, both internally and also towards the clients’ needs. What small independent agencies are missing in fact would be the capacity and also the experience. In the times of social media this advantages of the big networks – having much larger number of people and much bigger experience I would say are less important if they do not change according to the new media environment. And it is a know rule that changes in the big structures happen much slower and often unpredictable than in the small ones. What attributes, in your opinion, must be pursued by PR agencies to better fit in the current scenario and face its challenges? Including new business in the offices – more people responsible for visuals – graphic designers, web developers, social media experts, editors…even movie producers. All the world’s business is moving into effective visual messages and it is a trend which was very easy to predict even some years ago. Also – the educations started to be more and more important, I really do not mean the academical education which in many cases is absolutely slow in changes, but the self education of our employees – every day and every minute. In your opinion, which industry has been developing an outstanding PR strategy? Mainly if services, healthcare and pharmaceutical and also retail business. Obviously these are businesses mostly exposed to the crisis and that is why the need of very proactive and attractive PR strategies is absolutely crucial. But also – PR itself also need a lot of PR. Not so many people, even within our industry understand the changes in the business, and also do not under- stand that Public Relations is one of the fastest changing business in the world. By the way – this is now one of its greatest beauties.

Public Relations is one of the fastest changing business in the world  

How do you see the perspectives of PR industry for Americas? Our business become more global than local. Americas, mainly Northern of course, are the moth- erland of Public Relations business and  always  will have a special role in its development. The English speaking world although becomes larger and larger every day and Europe and Asia started being also very innovative, so Americas from that perspective must defend constantly its leading role in the public communications world. Rio Olympics will, in your opinion, be a valuable opportunity for PR industry? Why? Rio Olympics will not be a great opportunity; they will be really enormous one to promote the country and also its culture and history. Needless to say that sports has the most supporters and fans from any other area in our life. Use this unique chance to show the world how great and unbeatable is Brazil of creating history and spreading good and positive mes- sages globally. How do you see the role of the PR professional in a increasingly digital world? Just one word – leading! The Public Relations experts are the one who give the lights and proper messages already with the means of social media to billion. We already took a piece of the traditional marketing business and this is enormous change for us people all over the world. Our role is very special in- deed. We are the one to spread the newest trends of all businesses and must keep this role for the future. This is the reason we should keep very high ethical and professional standards. The whole world is watching our business, many other businesses are learning from us and it says everything about Public Relations now. Amazingly good business, which require every professional globally to have as a start just one important quality: sparks in his or hers eyes. It means a lot of knowledge, it means ambitious and motivation for growth and innovations and creativity. The rest is easy! Original Article from PROI

 London 27 November 2015: Five global industry leaders have been chosen to join the International Communications Consultancy Organisation’s (ICCO) International Hall of Fame.

To my dear friends in Syntec Conseil en Relations Publics,

Please accept our deep sorrow and condolences on the tragic events in Paris.

All ICCO Board members, all PR experts, advisors and professionals in the world are with you at this difficult for democracy.

We do express our deep condemnation of all kinds of terror, and reaffirm our belief that people all around the world will join us in this.

This is an attack not only on Paris and not only on France, but also on our democratic values; on the right to live free and creatively; to advance the progress of humanity.

Our business – public relations – has a very special role in building and maintaining those democratic values. With our message, with our creative job and pro-active ideas we touch the hearts and brains of billions of people. That’s why we do have enormous power and thousands of tools to convince humanity of its right to live freely and independently.

Be sure that in ICCO we will use all means, influence and authority we have publicly to condemn terrorism, and to explain how strong and convinced we are defending the democratic values of our societies.

Please, convey again to all of our friends in France our deep sorrow at the events in Paris, and assure them that all ICCO members are with them in this unbelievably challenging time for all lovers of democracy around the world.

Sincerely,

Maxim

Maxim Behar
ICCO President