The EuroComm Blog 2008

by Ulrich Gartner

When flipping through a free newspaper on the tube in Stockholm yesterday, my attention got caught by a headline reading ‘Emailing will have disappeared by the end of this year’. Kids nowadays think that emails are just for business, and used by ‘old people’. They, instead, use websites, notice boards, and social platforms to communicate with each other.

I shared the story with some colleagues who have teenage children. We had a lively conversation which, at the end, confirmed that email is practically dead with the younger generation.

I felt this situation provided some deep insight into communications: A newspaper (declared dead a hundred times but still alive and kicking) predicting the irrelevance of what just recently was the latest gadget in communication (I was so proud when I got the email function on my mobile phone last year!). The story was so interesting that it created word-of-mouth (I told it to my colleagues), and subsequently drove some buzz around the office.

I believe this is exactly what communicators today have to deal with. You can’t just keep doing the stuff you’ve known so well for many years; but you can’t exclusively run after the latest trends either. After all, you’ll have to play different tunes to make a sound that people will listen to.

When I went home in the evening, I looked around in the underground and saw a lot of the kids, who supposedly think email is old news, reading– guess what: the good old newspaper. Exciting times for communicators, aren’t they? See you in Barcelona.

Ulrich Gartner (Sweden) is Vice President Communications Europe at AB Electrolux, a global leader in home appliances. Electrolux has worked intensively with social media over the past years. Most recently, Gartner’s in-house PR team has been honoured with an IRPA Golden World Award 2007 for the best e-PR campaign.

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Ulrich will be speaking at the EuroComm Conference on:

Engage! Making Social Media an Integrated Part of a PR Campaign

Social media, still, are much too often used as a separate, even slightly disconnected communication channel for very specifi c target audiences. This session will show how they can, instead, become a truly integrated element of broader PR campaigns, delivering on a number of objectives ranging from consumer engagement to media coverage. Two case studies will be presented: Electrolux Design Lab, a global competition for design students, and Electrolux Kitchenstage, the world’s fi rst online reality show
in a kitchen. The session will discuss strategies, techniques used, results delivered, and learnings gained, with special emphasis on how traditional PR techniques and the use of social media were integrated in order to create maximum impact.

by Suzanne Salvo

“There were the huge printing shops with their sub-editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs” - 1984

Photo manipulation existed long before the age of digital photography, as this famous George Orwell quote written in 1949 implies. Photo technology may have changed since his day, but does that mean the ethics behind photo manipulation has also changed?

When George Orwell wrote those words nearly 60 years ago, news photography was still in its early years. Cameras were still huge and heavy. Photojournalists carried sacks of flashbulbs that had to be painstakingly changed out with each exposure. In the pre-digital world, it took hours in the darkroom to produce a single print.

And it took many more hours to successfully alter an image before Photoshop made it child’s play. With only pre-digital technology, even experts with years of experience had trouble making photo changes that could pass for real. But that didn’t stop them from trying, and succeeding.

What we now call photography was invented around the mid 1800s. For the first 50 years there were hardly any amateurs and only a few “professionals” were willing to operate the giant, finicky, and not very portable machines. At the beginning of the 1900s that changed when George Eastman developed the technology of film to replace the cumbersome photographic plates used up until then. Cameras became smaller, more portable and quicker to use, heralding in the age of photojournalism. For the first time in history on-the-scene, real life visual coverage of events and breaking news was possible, and people just couldn’t get enough of it. High public interest and the subsequent money it spawned created heated competition among photojournalist. That led to some extremely unorthodox photo-reporting techniques.

Test your ethics: what would you do?

Newspaper photographers back in the 20s, 30s and 40s were well known for their exceedingly competitive and questionable ethical practices. There are numerousstories of photojournalists manipulating crime scenes to make more dynamic images. Some were know to carry teddy bears or dolls in their camera bags to use in photos of house fires or train wrecks. By implying a child was involved, the image became emotionally charged and more poignant, which helped sell more papers. There are even ocumented reports of corpses being repositioned to make better photo compositions. Ask yourself: Is it OK for a photographer to change where he/she stands to take a newsphoto if that change provides a more dynamic, interesting view? What if the change of position naturally emphasizes only one aspect of the scene over other important details?

Politicians have long recognized the power of the image for propaganda purposes. Some have tried to literally change history by changing photographs. In one of the better known examples, Stalin had former comrades deemed enemies eradicated from life and either cropped out or “photoshopped” out of existing images. On the other end of the political ethics scale is the photo treatment of former US President Franklin Roosevelt. Very few photos exist showing FDR as disabled. In most cases his image was shot or cropped to show him only from the waist up. As a result a large percentage of the American public was unaware that he was severely crippled. Ask yourself: Is cropping to fit a publication&’s format acceptable? Does cropping constitute unethical manipulation in one or both of the above political scenarios? Does the fact that in the case of FDR it was done “to be nice” change the ethical consideration?

Hard news was not the only thing being manipulated in images in the pre-digital world. The classic depression era photos by Margaret Bourke-White and Lewis Hine are known to have been posed by the photographer in many instances. Ask yourself: Using real people and real settings, the photographer directs a subject to straighten his tie, or asks the subject to look in a certain direction, or removes a distracting piece of trash in the background - is that unethical? Does it make the intended message less true? Knowing the subjects and the situations were real but posed, does it make the image less compelling to you? Does it render the image ethically unusable? Some of these images are credited with helping to rewrite the child labor laws in the USA. When the cause is just, or is “news”, does the amount of photo manipulation allowable change?

The public’s fascination with photography has led to some interesting and sometimes outlandish photo alterations. In 1917 Elsie Wright, 15, borrowed her father’s camera and innocently took pictures of some paper-cutout fairies. She used a simple hat-pin devise to cause the cutouts to fall over during the exposure. On the final print this movement made it look like the fairies were realistically dancing. By a strange twist of fate, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, became involved in the fairy story lending it credibility. The photos became internationally well known and for many years were widely believed to be proof of the existence of fairies. In more modern times images of The Loch Ness Monster, now largely held to be fakes, have been used to promote Scottish tourism. Question: Is it ethical to alter an image destined only for marketing or advertising purposes? Or should the same guidelines apply to both news and photo illustrations?

Each of the above photo altering scenarios was accomplished without a pixel in sight, using film, negatives and darkroom echniques. It is now much easier to alter images, making the temptation to do so greater. The question communicators face today is deciding if and how much they should manipulate, not is it possible to manipulate.

Has the ethics behind photo usage changed for corporate communicators? Digital technology didn’t create the ethical dilemma, it only put a big spotlight on it. I’ve asked more questions than I’ve answered in this article. Where ethics are concerned there are seldom clear-cut answers and that is certainly true with photo manipulation ethics.

The subject has sparked a huge debate with widely opposing viewpoints. The topic is so hot, Hollywood has picked up on it in films like Flags of Our Fathers and Spiderman III. As a professional communicator who uses images, you have a stake in the outcome of the debate. Won’t you join the conversation regarding photo ethics? Post your comments here.

And I hope you will join me at the IABC EuroComm. “Seeing is NOT believing.” See you there.

Suzanne Salvo and her husband/partner Chris are co-owners of Salvo Photography, an international award-winning studio with bases in Italy and the U.S. The Salvos has traveled to nearly 60 countries on assignments ranging from ad campaigns, annual reports and editorial. At IABC, Suzanne has served on the 2003-2004 International Executive Board and she is a past president of IABC/ Houston, which named her Volunteer of the Year in 2002. Suzanne writes an informative on-line monthly column, called “Visually Speaking” in IABC’s CW Bulletin, conducts action-packed workshops on photo topics throughout North America and Europe and is a multiple Gold Quill winner. Suzanne is the recipient of the 2007 IABC Chairman’s Award.

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Suzanne will be speaking at the EuroComm conference on:

Seeing is NOT Believing. Real world Photo Manipulation Ethics

We live in a photoshop world where pyramids can be moved to suit a layout and CEOs enjoy instant weight loss and wrinkle removal - until they get caught. Photos are a great way to bolster your company’s brand and positively affect reputation, right? Right – unless an image has been inappropriately manipulated. The fallout can be costly in terms of company brand and the bottomline. When is it OK legally and/or ethically to manipulate and when is it not? What are the consequences to your company’s reputation?

In this session you will learn:

• How to differentiate between photojournalism and photo illustration
• What the photonews groups advise
• Practical quidelines for when, where and how much manipulation is acceptable
• What companies are doing right now to insure their reputation is protected

Some recent conversations I’ve had with executives and professioals has got me thinking: what’s in a name?

For many companies and businesses who have a natural affinity with innovation and early adaptation of new technology, a business blog is something they have embraced with enthusiasm. They see it as a great way to keep in touch with their clients and customers and to showcase their expertise. However, for other businesses still wondering if communicating online with their stakeholders in this way is something for them, the notion of a blog comes with a bundle of negative pre-conceptions - it’s for teenagers and loud-mouthed mavericks, it’s not a proper platform for serious business communications, it’s about trivial things like what I had for breakfast this morning.

Many busy professionals and senior-level executives have said to me that they don’t have time to read blogs. They aren’t interested in what someone had for breakfast. (What is it about things people have for breakfast that’s become this catch-phrase for blogging?) They’ve got too many emails to get through. What possible business value is there in spending their limited time reading a stranger’s blog?

When working with some clients, I’ve recommended that it may be an idea to re-think this interactive online thing that they are implementing. It’s just a tool that allows you to upload information quickly and easily in reverse date order - you can sort the information into categories and link to other information. What about defining it by what content or information you’re putting on it? If it’s a place where you are offering additional resources to your clients eg you are sharing your expertise for free online; or you are pointing them to other resources they can find on the web; or you are putting up your materials from a conference or workshop - why not refer to it as a Resource Centre? Or what about focusing on the objective of why you want this social media tool - is it to stimulate discussion and engage your stakeholders in conversation? Well, what about calling it a Discussion Space or Conversation Corner?

This simple re-thinking of what the tool is has opened up for my clients a whole range of possibilities which have excited them about the blog platform - a complete transformation from their previous scepticism and uncertainty. For the one setting up a Resource Centre, the creative juices started to flow and they brainstormed a long list of information, resources and articles they could post on their site. For the one creating a Discussion Space, they began to look for contributors to write articles with different views around one theme so that readers might be prompted to add to the discussion via the discussion responses facility (ie comments).

And for those coming to read or participate in such spaces, they are immediately entering an added value space that offers Resources and Discussion, rather than a potentially time-wasting personal diary thing called a blog.

For me, I enjoy reading blogs or discussion spaces or newsletter or whatever you call them, especially blogs by:

• industry experts eg high-profile marketing guru Seth Godin (whose blog is on The Times’ list of top 50 business blogs),

• trend watchers/ news breakers eg TechCrunch and Mashable

• writing and book lovers eg Bibliobibuli

• colleagues eg X-Culture by Silvia Cambie

• friends eg massage therapist Melanie Crowe

• other Asians/ Orientals eg British Born Chinese

I generally steer away from blogs by journalists and reporters like those on the Guardian or the BBC - though I do sometimes find it useful to go to those blogs as well. My reasoning is that I read or hear these paid writers’/ commentators’ views anyway via the news and traditional media channels. The joy of blogs is to hear the voices and encounter the thoughts of those who don’t necessarily already have a grand outlet like the premier news channels for sharing what they have to say. I like the democracy and clamour of the ordinary individual adding to the discussion. I keep them all on my blog aggregator and pick and choose a few to dip into over lunch or when I feel like being stimulated.

Yang-May Ooi (U.K.) is a committee member on the Board of IABC UK with the portfolio for Social Media and is the founder of
ZenGuide, a communications and social media consultancy ( www.zenguide.co.uk). Her writing and cross-cultural blog Fusion View (www.fusionview.co.uk) is read by over 8,000 unique visitors a month and has been featured on the BBC. Yang-May is currently co-authoring a book (with Silvia Cambié of Chanda Communications) on New Trends in International Public Relations, which is due to be published by Kogan Page in 2009.

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Yang-May will be chairing a panel discussion on social media at the EuroComm Conference. Details are as follows:

Creating Value through Online Communities

For both internal and external communications, social media tools like blogging, podcasting and forums offer businesses a powerful means of building networks and communities around their products, services and brands. But is it a matter of “Build it and they will come”? Or do you need a more strategic approach? And once your visitors come to your site, how do you engage them and
create value from these interactions?

In this session, you will explore:

• Planning and implementing online communities
• Leadership in community building
• Using live events to create ‘significant moments’
for your community
• Empty chat-rooms, online bores and
psychopaths: how to avoid them
• Creating “sticky” content
• Using video to build audiences
• The intersection of commerce and communities
– can/should you monetise your social media?
• Measuring and evaluating success.

Yang-May will be joined by panelists:

Marc Wright (U.K.) , the former Chairman of the International Visual Communication Association and a member of the board of IABC UK. After selling his agency MCA Live to WPP he launched www.simply-communicate.com – the knowledge site read by 15,000 internal communication professionals each month.

Giles Colborne (U.K.), President of the UK Usability Professionals’ Association from 2003-2007 and is managing director of cxpartners, a company specialising in designing user interfaces (www.cxpartners.co.uk ). A frequent guest speaker at conferences around the world, Giles writes on usability for Revolution magazine. Giles was also an editorial board member for
PAS78, the British Standards Institute’s guidance on making websites accessible for people with disabilities.

Photo: thanks to raisinsawdust on flickr.com

by Nada Serajnik

Do you remember the introduction of the euro in your country? In the last six years, fifteen European countries have introduced the euro as the common currency. And there are more countries preparing to enter European Monetary Union.

Changing currency affects many aspect of our life. Communication is thus an essential part of countries’ preparation for the introduction. One task, many approaches! Experience shows many similarities and but also differences. What do you remember from your national campaign?

We encounter public communication campaigns every day, almost everywhere we look. Most people remember election campaigns and promotional campaigns for products or services. Anyone can name at least few campaigns aimed at improving health, traffic safety, respect for human rights or protection of the environment. Not only national, but also international ones.
There are many different kinds of campaigns – memorable ones, be it for their message or creativity, those which draw criticism or annoy people, and those which pass (almost) unnoticed.

The term ‘public communication campaign’ entails “everything connected with informing, educating, raising awareness or engaging the public on a public issue or matter in the public interest”. Can public issues win their share of public attention in the increasingly saturated sphere of communications?
Actually, the number of campaigns is growing, but all too frequently clients and providers fail to ask if they all are necessary and meet the requirements to make them successful.
The following points come to mind:
• Before we decide to launch a campaign, we must know if we really need it. Will the campaign help the issue?
• Managing campaigns is not simple. They have to be planned and run strategically. Case studies show that providers omit many steps from strategic planning or give them insufficient attention. How can we succeed if we do not know how to define our purpose and goals well?
• Many campaigns focus only on the media and advertising. However, we must listen to the people, and give them a chance to contribute to the campaign, and, most importantly, show them what they have to do. How?
• Assessing and demonstrating effectiveness and efficiency during and after a project is also required for communication campaigns. How else can we confirm that we have met the goals we set or justify the use of public funds?

Every campaign is unique; it is governed by its own rules and particular features. Still, we can learn a lot from other examples, particularly good practices. Let it be Slovenian!

In Slovenia, the introduction of the euro was carried out smoothly, quickly and without major difficulties, which can also be attributed to a good national communication campaign. The campaign was also an excellent learning experience, not just for us in public sector. You will find out more about the particulars at the conference…

But Slovenia is now facing another great project – Presidency of the Council of the European Union.…

Photo: thanks to donaldtownsend from flickr.com (CCL)

Nada Serajnik Sraka (Slovenia) is a senior communication advisor at the Government Communication Office. Her professional expertise is in PR and communications working in business and the public sector. She is the founding member of Public Relations Society of Slovenia (PRSS) and IABC Slovenia and has served as President to both associations. Nada is an Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) and has a master in communication (MA).

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Nada will be speaking at the EuroComm Conference on:

Communication Lessons for the Public Sector: the Introduction of the Euro in Slovenia

The introduction of a new currency, the Euro, was a major communication challenge for twelve European countries in 2002. Introducing a new currency is a large and complex logistical project, involving the cooperation of several decisionmaking bodies. Besides technical preparations for the changeover, providing information to the public should be one of the priority tasks of the
authorities and all those involved. On 1 January 2007, Slovenia was the first new member state to introduce the Euro. According
to the report of the European Commission, Slovenia’s Euro adoption was swift and smooth. In informing the public, Slovenians took into account the experiences of the countries that had successfully introduced the Euro in 2002 as well as other factors specific to their social environment. A two year national communication campaign paved the way for the successful changeover process.

This presentation highlights the main features of the Slovenian communication campaign and shows the similarities and ifferences between the campaigns of other European countries in adopting the Euro. This session will be of interest to those involved in public communication campaigns of a large scale and similar complexity.

by Gina McAdam

If you’re searching for the secret behind good communications, you could do worse than to adopt Lord Beaverbrook’s advice to his talented but dissolute granddaughter, Lady Jeanne Campbell. In the 1950’s, young, alone and pre-Norman Mailer (she was his third), Jeanne was writing for Beaverbrook’s Evening Standard from New York when he told her:

‘Emphasise human interest. Put the strawberry on top of the basket. Write short sentences. Cut, cut, cut. Always interview people face to face. Never rewrite from another newspaper. Keep widening your circle of acquaintances – even if it means accepting the invitation of bores. Use your feet.’

Now I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first person to regard this particular whiplash approach as the template for good journalism. But I would go one step further to say that regardless of the whom, what and why – and be it B2B or B2C communications – it’s all about how you can:

- make people care about your message
- lead with the most interesting proposition
- keep it simple and concise
- stay fresh
- stay networked, and
- maintain boundless energy

My presentation at Eurocomm 2008 is called ‘Trading Places: Using Communications to engage the Private Sector in Public Agendas’. I’ll be drawing from my consultancy experience of pulling together, through communications, some truly disparate groups. Of negotiating a minefield of incongruent attitudes and dissonant voices, and harnessing them towards a common goal. One laid out by government, no less.

I think it’s fair to say that in general people who work in the public sector, at least in the UK, are somewhat ambivalent about their counterparts (if you can call them that) in private enterprise. Perhaps it’s inverted snobbery – civil servants, educationists, social workers are worthy; the rest are all free-market capitalists. Corporates and private businesses, on the other hand, can have a negative knee-jerk reaction to anything emanating from government, and see public officials as maybe just a little bit out of synch with the real world.

Perhaps the greatest challenge was getting executives to show up to meetings at all! But they did.

Keeping my interpretation of Beaverbrook’s advice close to my chest, we thought of ways to entice businesses into a programme demanding precious time without the promise of profile or riches. In the end, it was all about engaging them in own their terms, in ways that interested them as business people: speaking their language (and not in arch sound-bites), meeting them on their own turf (the empty boardroom, the Adam Street Club), using media and technology that made sense and cost less time (short emails, shorter texts), amongst others. And never, ever, using words like ‘incongruent’, ‘dissonant’ or ‘harness.’

The other side of the coin of course was getting the public sector representatives to accept these terms too. But I won’t go deeper than this here. I hope to see a few people at my seminar in Barcelona.

Being a La Sallite (or La Sallian) myself, I’m overjoyed that Eurocomm 2008 is being held where it is in Barcelona. In Manila where I’m from, De La Salle is known for generating graduates who go into the world to become straight talking, no nonsense, risk-taking leaders and entrepreneurs. In other words, the ideal communicators.

Gina McAdam (U.K.) is Director of Stratemarco Limited. She was born in the Philippines and has a B.A. in Literature from De La Salle University. Gina began her career as an account executive for Saatchi & Saatchi-Ace Compton and JWT in Manila. She has worked in teaching and publishing in Madrid and New York and used to be Head of Marketing and Head of Policy and Public Affairs for a national training organisation in the UK. Gina is Immediate Past Vice President of City Women’s Network (UK), a member of the Institute of Directors and a Changemaker for the UK charity Working Families. She is also a Director of the Café Spice Namaste Group in London. Gina holds an MA from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and attended Henley Management College.

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Gina will be speaking at the EuroComm Conference on the following:

Trading Places: Using Communications to engage the Private Sector in Public Agendas

This session will explore the work done to engage the private sector in major public sector programmes carried out on behalf of or involving key agencies in the United Kingdom, including the Learning & Skills Council (LSC), London Development Agency, Small Business Service and JobCentre Plus. Gina will describe the communication strategies she used to involve initially resistant businesses in a scheme funded by the then Department for Education and Skills with the aim of raising skill levels in the £94 billion UK hospitality and tourism industry. The outcomes prove that communication is instrumental in encouraging cooperation between public and private sector stakeholders and in helping them to ‘trade places’ and to better understand each other’s views.

by Andrew Riley

The IABC’s seventh EuroComm conference in Barcelona 4-5th February looks a right cracker. As the Chair of the sixth EuroComm in Dublin I was so pleased to meet at EuroComm nearly a hundred senior communicators from approximately 20 countries. Ramon Olle, then CEO and chairman of the board at EPSON Europe was our first plenary speaker in Dublin giving us his CEO insight into what is leadership in a diverse corporate world and how can it be communicated. He not only ended up staying to listen to the other speakers remaining for the entire two days in Dublin, but he also has been instrumental in setting up the ties with La Salle university in Barcelona to host EuroComm 2008!

What stands out for me is that EuroComm is a conference put together by IABC European professional communicators for themselves and their peers. Those helping out at IABC do it for free - because we are confident and committed to our work and because we want to make the conference registration fee accessible to people at all levels.

What I took away from Dublin EuroComm was an immense wealth of IABC friendships and knowledge of the art and craft of professional communication - such as John Simmons of The Writer sublime explanation of his use of storytelling to define the Guinness brand essence to the Guinness board and marketing team. I have never before heard a conference hushed to such silence as when John narrated an imaginary story of travelling around Africa to find the Guinness essence and ended it by the cat Pangar Ban in library of Trinity College Dublin next to the Book of Kells. In contrast to this communication approach we were sharply brought down to earth by the strategies and practicalities of combining people and technology in communication by John Leggate CBE, Chief Information Officer for BP and winner of 2007 European Excel Award, and by Paul Mylrea, director of media relations for Transport for London who led the response to last July’s bomb attacks. (Some of the presentations at Dublin are available for download at http://europe.iabc.com/eurocomm/presentations.php )

One of the take aways from Dublin was the great interest in learning about corporate communication and social media, the break-out session of Marc Wright of Simply Communicate became standing room only and so it is by popular demand that Barcelona features an afternoon panel discussing “Creating Value through Online Communities” with Yang-May Ooi, Marc Wright and Giles Colborne. Other comments we have taken on board in putting the IABC 2008 EuroComm conference together is to maintain our commitment to showcase communication excellence throughout Europe and to have more break-out sessions to cover a broad range of issues.

Now it’s time for you to take action and take a good long read through the 2008 EuroComm programme - it’s a delicious as a Dublin beer and a Catalan coffee.

Andrew Riley is an assurance reporting and communications specialist at Harrison Riley and President, IABC UK (UK)

by Michael Spencer

Spending much of my time as I do flitting between Japan and the UK in my work for Sound Strategies, I decided to set myself the challenge of attempting to learn the Kanji – the Chinese characters imported into the Japanese language some 1200 or more years ago.

There is a whole range of underlying meanings behind many of these characters which gives a depth and subtlety in nuance of which Westerners are seldom aware.

As a musician, one such coalition of characters I find particularly intriguing.

is the character for sound (pronounced ‘oto’) and when combined with the character for ‘pleasure’ gives the word for music; ‘ongaku’ .

This same character when combined with the character for ‘faith’ produces the word ‘onshin’ or communication. A subtle and potent combination from which to start an exploration into the world of sound and its role in social exchange.

Confucius said that ‘Music feeds social relationships’, and these days music can embrace a wide variety of sounds and cultures. As the avant-garde composer John Cage once commented “which is the most musical, a truck driving past a factory, or a truck driving past a music school”

My own musical journey from the London Symphony Orchestra via a position as Head of Education at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden has given me a considerable exposure to the sounds of different cultures, not only classical, and the way in which they are used to cement social bonds, pass messages, and lend a sense of identity.

For one very simple example which is known only too well by all football lovers, and probably even by those not so enamoured of the sport, click here

The way in which this has spread virally across the globe is an extraordinary phenomenon due in no small part to the exposure of large scale sporting events by the media. To a lesser extent, the same is true of Pavarotti’s ‘gift’ of Nessun Dorma to football. But it was not planned as such.

An older example can be found from the propaganda machines in WW2 where the iconic ‘V for Victory’ hand gesture was combined via its Morse code equivalent, into a powerful message for the unification of purpose. Click here.

Because of technological advance we are now just beginning to realise how hot wired we are in our relationship with sound. Neuroscience is now beginning to reveal the dance across the brain that takes place in the processing of musical stimuli in areas far more numerous that those involved in deciphering language.

Our bonds are created from our early pre-natal stirrings, and it has been shown that sounds played to the foetus can be recognised by the child up to one year after its birth.

As an aid to memory and the preservation of language, history, genealogies and spiritual wisdom song has an extended legacy reaching back through the Nordic saga tradition to the legends of Orpheus. In Japan the dissemination of news was frequently the role of the blind biwa players (a type of lute) who during the 17th and 18th centuries were one of the few groups people allowed to travel freely from town to town during the Edo period, and in Nigeria there is a long tradition of the use of the talking drum for spreading news.

In February at the IABC conference, I will be sharing the platform with David Marti; Director of the Barcelona Conservatoire of Music and Artistic Advisor of the Orquestra Simfònica del Vallès, who will help with the framing of this within a modern communications context. David is something of a rarity in the arts world having developed a career in music in addition to obtaining an EMPA (European Master in Public Administration) from ESADE. He is a deep thinker on the role of the arts and music in society and a significant player in the re-design of arts provision and opportunity in Catalonia.

Michael Spencer (U.K.) was a member of the London Symphony Orchestra and Head of Education at the Royal Opera House. He maintains a diverse career as a consultant, educator, facilitator, and commentator on the use of the arts in a range of contexts. Clients include PriceWaterhouseCooper, Unilever, Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, and the InterContinental Hotel Group. He has significant connections with Japan where he consults for the Association of Japanese Symphony Orchestra. Currently Managing Director of Sound Strategies (www.sound-strategies.co.uk), he is recognized as one of the leading thinkers in the use of sound as a communications tool. Michael will be joined by David Marti (Spain), Director of the Conservatori Municipal de Música de Barcelona.

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Michael will be speaking at the EuroComm Conference on the following:

Singing in the Brain – Why you need to Engage the Ear, as Well as the Eye

With few exceptions, business communicators currently fail to engage all the key senses in creating relationships of loyalty and trust between an organisation and its takeholders. In particular they are yet to draw on psychological research on the ways in which music and sound can be included in the strengthening and underpinning of a corporate identity programme. Identification of design systems and their logos are noted for their low scores. Perhaps a more effective interaction with the use of sound is a new territory for public relations to conquer. Drawing on recent research findings, both psychological and neuroscientific, a trail will be mapped from the exchanges of early man to present day communications systems showing how sound is fundamental to the existence both of ourselves and our societies, and highlighting how little we are aware of its potency.

by Rauf Hameed

There is no denying the fact that Jeddah roads are as confusing as a maze and often riddled with chillingly deep pot-holes. These holes blatantly confront the poor drivers in such an impulsive fashion that even adept acrobats, which most drivers here are, have a hard time in evading them. I daily feel like that as i go through many of the pot-holes on my way to and from my office in Khumra (warehouse city, in the south of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, near corniche). For the last many moons, I am desperately striving to memorise the way but all my geese have so far turned out to be swans.

The roads of Jeddah are not only confusing but cold and endlessly boring too. Driving on Jeddah roads is therefore an art, a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. I am sure I can hopelessly include it in my list of things that I would never be able to do.

Incidentally, I don’t have the luxury of driving a car in the kingdom, courtesy to my disheartening lingual proficiency in Arabic. I was unable to tell the officer behind a glass window in the motor licence issuing authority that I already have a licence and that I had been driving a car for the last 15 years, though in a country which may not have very broad roads but definitely follows an equally efficient system of issuing driving permits. We were hopelessly trying to communicate with each other, each of us in our own language. Alas, it intensely precluded me from telling him that I can drive a car on the roads, no matter how broken or mind-numbing the roads might appear.

Middle East is an interesting region which may include many countries but is united by fascinating ties such as the same language, religion and quite often, similar history. It is an amazing region, often alluded to as MENA (Middle East and North Africa) with its unfair share of troubles. The Arab world as a whole has had a public image problem, a look around the news media in the region will tell you that the region has some of the hottest issues breeding and flourishing all the time. Be it war in Iraq and Palestine, unrest in Beirut, violent reaction on Danish cartoonist’s caricatures of Muslim prophet Muhammad. In a way it is the same journey that many countries have undertaken in their journey to development and modernity.

In fact Middle East is a place much like any other and, as such, has its own complement of secrets and specialties found nowhere else. I can actually borrow and reproduce the words of Philip Khuri Hitt, a renowned Islamic scholar, born in Shimlan, Lebanon, in 1866 who remarked, “No people in the world manifest such enthusiastic admiration for literary expression and are so moved by the word, spoken or written, as the Arabs”. Though the region has its own contrasts such as Yemen versus Dubai, or Lebanon versus Egypt; Yemen being a very remote and challenged environment whereas Dubai oozes out pleasure, travel, affluence and western ideas of commercialization when it comes to the hospitality industry.

When it comes to communications it is quite clear that Arabic is the primary language of communication. The nuance may differ in each country and so can a dialect but it’s still the same language. Thus the Saudis can appreciate the movies of Egyptians and songs sung by Ferouz, who is a Lebanese singer. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, most of advertising and corporate communications is being done in Arabic, though there is a huge population of expatriates (almost 50% of the total population in Saudi Arabia is expatriate). No wonder media experts believe that TV, due to its immense penetration and maximum reach, can achieve best communication results if pan regional and local TV channels are utilised. It distinctly illustrates the power of TV to provide rapid reach of a broad target market across the entire region. Print media is also getting effective in certain audiences which indicates the strength of this medium across the GCC & Levant, as it is important for local market campaigns.

In countries like Dubai and Qatar large format, innovative advertising such as vertical skyscraper branding, bridge advertising, and huge billboards are more popular. Similarly Lebanon and Jordon are most liberal as many of the pan regional television stations are based in Lebanon, censorship on these stations is very limited. Whereas Saudi Arabia is most conservative as you cannot show any naked children and women have to be covered properly such as no revealing dresses and scarf on the head. As censorship is tied to moral/religious grounds it extends beyond creative copy, e.g. “The Matrix” was banned in Egypt. No wonder the most popular channel in the Arab world AlJazeera is based in Qatar because of its liberal poicies.

One new innovation in communication that is taking the world by storm is blogging in the Middle East. The first Arabian blogs to attract international attention were those written from Iraq, either by Iraqis or their dazed occupiers )anyone watching the Baghdad blogger, Salam Pax on CNN, will realise the importance of this tool. Similarly bloggers have sprung up in Kuwait, Israel, Bahrain, Syria, Iran, Egypt and Lebanon. Similarly if you look at the Saudi blogs they give you a peek into the real society and many of the new generation people consider blogs as a powerful tool to communicate, reach out and in showing the real face of the country.

As part of the PR Council and the editorial committee of the management magazine, Pulse, Rauf feels, he is adding value to his network of camaraderie within Tetra Pak. His last appointment was as Communication and Environment Manager at Tetra Pak Pakistan where he found a happy blend of communication and green dreams.

by Angie Macdonald

Social media is changing the way we do things and one of the issues involved is that of control. Control is slipping from corporates when it comes to promoting their products and from conference speakers and college lecturers, who are no longer regarded as the expert with the final say on the matter.

One example of this phenomenon is “back channelling”. In the social media context, this refers to people at conferences, or students, blogging and/or Twittering while listening to a speaker. It can also involve instant messaging or chatrooms and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Channels. This is the “back channel”, where the audience engage in a different conversation, separate from the speaker directly in front of them.

At some conferences, a screen is erected behind the speaker, on which the audience can post comments directly from their computers. The speaker, facing the audience, cannot see the comments appearing on the screen behind him or her. From what I’ve heard anecdotally, the comments which tend to appear are generally negative comments on the speaker’s clothes, or how bored people are, rather than comments that further the debate. It is the equivalent of heckling, only here it is virtual and silent.

I’m sure there are some highly skilled people who are able to multi-task and keep with the programme. But most people are unable to give two things the same amount of attention at the same time. If you are trying to listen, analyse, remember, write and follow the conversation all at the same time, something’s got to give. You just have to think about the dangers of driving while talking on a mobile phone to realise that multi-tasking has its limits.

In an article published in the New York Times, David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan is quoted as saying, “Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes.” In the same article, René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, when describing the ‘cognitive powerhouse’ that is the human brain, says “…a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once.”

What usually happens, is that by the time the blogger or Twitterer has finished writing or texting a particular thought, the speaker has moved on, the information that has been imparted in the interim is hazy, and the thread of the argument has been lost. This creates a knowledge gap which can result in misunderstanding, which in turn can lead to miscommunication.

Now, it’s fine if one individual has misunderstood. But what happens when that individual has published their misunderstood information online and millions of people around the world read it and get the wrong end of the stick? What are the repercussions? Where is the value in that communication?

Don’t get me wrong, I can see that there are advantages to back-channelling. It can be an inclusive behaviour too and means that those unable to attend a conference in person can follow what’s happening by reading updated blogs or receiving Tweets on their mobile phones.

It can also be a way to open up and encourage discussion and debate around a topic. So rather than information being delivered from one so-called expert in a top-down fashion, everybody who knows something or who has an opinion can join in and conference goers have an opportunity to learn from their peers. In that way, learning can become a more democratic process - a knowledge exchange offering instant feedback and reflection.

The danger is that in the process you may have to listen to people who think they are right, when they may be wrong, or people who love the sight of their words in print and subject everyone to their opinions whenever they can. As in the real world, sometimes conversations are inane, occasionally they are a waste of time.

We live in an age where children are being medicated for Attention Deficit Disorder and adults put their lack of success in life down to the fact that they were never diagnosed with ADD in school, and yet, here we are as adults, actively engaging in attention deficit behaviour. Not only that, but rather than being in the moment and giving it all our attention, we are taking a step back to observe and comment on what is occurring, analysing it as it is happening, rather than experiencing it.

There is no doubt that technology is changing social behaviour, communication and relationships. In spite of the advantages, I still think that in today’s attention-seeking world, perhaps the highest form of regard we can offer anyone, is to give them our full-blown attention.

I’m not sure if there’s going to be a screen for a back-channel at the EuroComm conference, but it will be interesting to hear what you think.

Photo: thanks to jean djinni on flickr.com (CCL)

by Ian Andersen

All of us working in communications on an international level dream of the Holy Grail of campaigning: the one-size-fits-all messaging that plays equally well in Karlstad and Kuala Lumpur, the universal slogan that will bring in the punters from Shannon to Chamonix – and yet we are all stumped by culture, by habits, by mores and meaning, by ways of life. And so we adapt, we localise… The products as well as the selling.

I work in a slightly different context – at the coal-face of European politics, in the interpreting service. The European Union, in its essence, can be seen as one long, on-going, intense political and technical conference. For 50 years, the Member States have been negotiating day in and day out on the basis of proposals from the Commission. The Regulations and Directives that make up EU legislation begin around the conference table.

The Commission’s interpreting service has as its chief objective to make sure that all those people – politicans, officials, technicians, union representatives, young farmers, employers – you name it – that they can all understand each other and that the organisations or bodies they represent can safely send their best experts to meet the other Europeans, they don’t have to send the colleague who is best at speaking foreign languages. With now 23 official and working languages to deal with, the interpreters of the European Commission are probably the busiest in the world.

The big headline above all this activity is “Unity in Diversity”. We work together but we respect our cultural peculiarities and languages across the board. For a long time the press service of the Commission thought that it could just focus on briefing the journalists from big newspapers stationed in Brussels and that it did not have to worry too much about local news and smaller papers – and that journalists anyway would dig out anything particularly relevant to their particular readership. But it is now more widely understood that audiences have become even more local, have atomised and are quickly moving away from dead tree editions of most things and are increasingly plugged-in, wired, digitized or at least broadcast.

Websites and pictures and the future fusion of web- and audiovisual services is clearly the way things are moving. We can discuss the speed but there is little doubt about the direction. Is it 3 years? 5 years? 12 years? Whichever it is, the lead-time for a complete change of the current media picture is remarkably short.

This is the horizon from which the European Commission is looking forward today, reflecting on how not only to get in touch with its more and more localised audience but also to engage the citizens in a genuine political discussion. Engagement is a key word in democratic development in the future – and it must happen across borders and language barriers if it is to be truly European. There are technical legal reasons why this is a must, but there is also a more traditional feeling that we are only really a European Union if we are all able to debate the same things – with each other.

It’s all very well that the Lithuanians discuss banking regulations or consumer protection in Lithuanian – with themselves, and that the Italians or the Finns do the same – with themselves, but that is not what we really think we need. How can we be one political entity if we are not able to say: we have one audience? And if we do not have that one audience, how can we go about creating it? And in what language? Do we have to accept that the true European language is what former Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene dubbed “Le Bad English”? Or is there another solution – and I am not talking about Esperanto!

This month, the Commission will propose a new strategy for its Internet site – the EUROPA server. We are looking at better regulation of languages, more interactivity, more involvement. And we are looking at how to create that ONE audience… I would ask you to be part of that reflection. I shall speak in Barcelona on the Commission’s new strategy and on a number of the communication initiatives we are working on in partnership with the Member States and the other institutions in Brussels – where clearly agencies will have an important role to play since most of the practical work is outsourced. Join in the discussion, help make sure Europe Be Heard!

Ian Andersen (Belgium) is Head of the Communication and Information Unit at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Interpretation. He is an active member of a number of inter-service working groups on the Commission’s internal and external communication strategy. Prior to his current focus on communication, Ian Andersen worked for 15 years as a conference interpreter and a trainer of Chinese interpreters. He holds an MA in Chinese studies and a BA in political science from the niversity of Copenhagen and has worked for Danish National Television and as a business consultant before joining the European Commission in 1986. He is a member of IABC Belgium and of the National Press Club of Denmark.

Photos: top - Ian Andersen; middle - European Commission press room seen from interpreter’s booth
Thanks to Ian Andersen

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Ian will be speaking at the EuroComm Conference. His session details are below.

Communicating Europe: Is it at all possible to create one European audience?

The European Commission is moving from stakeholder-oriented communication to direct interactive communication with European citizens at a moment when traditional forms of media are being supplanted, modified by, or merged with electronic media. This underscores the challenge of going local and communicating in a language the citizens can understand. The political decision-making in meetings now takes place in 23 languages without any particular difficulties. The European Commission has recently published a general reflection on its communication policy and a more specific document setting out its Internet strategy for the next few years. What are the practical consequences of these strategy papers? How can European issues be
communicated from Brussels in collaboration with the Member States?

Multilingual and multi-cultural communication across a large number of languages is complex, and although not impossible, nor prohibitively expensive, does require careful preparation. But the question remains whether all European citizens need to be part of a European public sphere in order to feel involved in the democratic process and be sufficiently well-informed. Even if the exercise of democratic rights across the continent might call for one single information marketplace, the question remains: Is it at all possible to create one European audience?