The EuroComm Blog 2008

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 Carlos Ramil

Corporate Training is a department of the University La Salle focused to sell courses to professionals, organize events, and train the employees of many corporations into different subjects.

Any event celebrated in La Salle is managed by Corporate Training, organizes and takes care of any detail and tries to get our customer’s satisfaction.

When an event/conference is being prepared, La Salle always develops an informative website, promotional brochures and accreditations for all assistants. All these design projects are developed in the Corporate Training IT Support’s Area formed by Adrià López and myself. We have taken part in some important national conferences supporting all digital implementation requirements.

We also manage Corporate Training’s website www.salle.url.edu/ctraining (where the in-companies, professional development programs and events are presented) helping with the high-quality services this department offers and increasing its sales year by year too.

The success of web design starts with the usability of its pages and the “visualization process” where as the design-webmasters, we try to give users fresh visual effects and provide a good innovation design in order to provide users’ pleasure. All the websites include an internal security data protection for the users and its data contact.

For EuroComm, the design was a very important part in the website and blog development. The design was focused on Gaudi’s architecture , the modernism and the main monuments in Barcelona, where the conference will be takingplace. We hope to inspire visitors to the website and blog with a sense of the city of Barcelona even before they come to the conference itself.

If you would like to contact the webmasters with any question, suggestion or requirement you can do it writing an email to cramil@salle.url.edu or adrial@salle.url.edu

Photo: La Salle School of Engineering - thanks to salle.url.edu

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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?

Following on from Martin Crocker’s post last week announcing the Excel Award winners, one of the Excel team involved in considering the nominations and giving the award is Rauf Hameed and he adds his comment here on why he became involved with the Award scheme.

Rauf Hameed has been the Communication and Environment Manager at Tetra Pak Arabia since January 2007. His last appointment was with Tetra Pak Pakistan since August 2002 as Communication and Environment Manager. Having waded through the communication waters for the last 15 years, sometimes as a journalist and sometimes as a public relations practitioner, Rauf feels the passion to communicate hasn’t shrunk with the passage of time. He is an accomplished corporate communicator and has a passion to share the information with colleagues round the clock. Pakistani expatriate Rauf Hameed is a green dreamer and a passionate poet. Last year, he relocated over 3,500 kilometres from his hometown of Lahore, Pakistan to exotic Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to become the Communication and Environment Manager of the new Tetra Pak Arabia team.

“I consider the EXCEL awards remarkably useful as they acknowledge non-communicators for their communications excellence and for their overwhelming desire to connect and get themselves across. I think it is very important that we continue to do it as by doing so we will be contributing to the profession of communications by offering best practices.”

by Ulrike Bleistein

When they think of IT most people think of computer geeks who sit around in dark rooms, isolated from the rest of the world passionately investigating the inner landscape of computers. Of course, this is not the case. Today, Informatics in a pharmaceutical company is about the clever application of technology to business. Relationships with customers and understanding their needs are key. Communications has moved up the ranks and is today considered a critical capability for this new generation of IT professionals. However, coming from a technology environment, communications does not always come easily to them. As a former scientist with a strong interest in technology, I can bridge the gap. That’s where my job starts.

On joining Roche Pharma Informatics, I did an analysis to find out where communications are most needed to support the business effectively, where the biggest issues are, and I then decided on a step-wise approach as resources were limited.

As a first step, I wanted to get employee communications right as employees are the most important ambassadors of an organisation. Informatics had just started to globalize, coming from an environment where every site had its own IT department. There was an urgent need to create a common understanding of the Informatics strategy, goals, performance and issues. We introduced global web cast meetings, which at the time was a technological challenge for us and we had some hiccups at the beginning. Now they work really well and give us the feeling of being a single global community. Over time, more and more locations have joined the web cast and now we connect about 15 different sites at these meetings. We regularly invite speakers from other Pharma functions to help Informatics people better understand the pharmaceutical business.

The year after, I added activities aimed at the external world – articles in the trade media and speaking engagements at conferences, because we needed to attract additional talent. For a scientist, Roche is an obvious choice, but an IT professional will first think of big IT players as possible employers. Roche has exciting jobs for IT professionals, but this was not generally known or publicised.

At the same time we professionalized customer communications, rolling out communication packages on new Informatics services globally. This was highly appreciated by our colleagues around the world as it significantly reduced the resources needed for communications and helped us to speak with one voice to our end users.

At the moment our focus is on supporting middle management in communications. In many organisations middle managers struggle to explain the big picture to their employees. However, research tells us that understanding the business enhances employee performance. Lack of time, as the operational business is very demanding, as well as the need for training are some of the obvious reasons why it doesn’t happen. That’s where we are now in our journey.

Our survey data tells us that we’re a high-performance environment in terms of communicating with employees and the customer feedback on information about services is also very positive.

Ulrike Bleistein (Switzerland) is Head of Pharma Informatics Communications at Hoffman-La Roche. She established the
communications strategy for the Informatics department at Roche Pharma. Prior to this, she worked for Novartis Pharma, the World Exposition in Hanover, Germany, the Swiss Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape and as a journalist and communications consultant. Ulrike has a PhD in molecular neurobiology from the Swiss Institute of Technology and a degree in journalism.

Photo: thanks to Ulrike Bleistein

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ulrike will be speaking at the EuroComm Conference. Details of her session are below.

Roche Pharma Global Informatics: The Power of Communications on the Road to Globalisation

This session will explore how the lobalisation of the Informatics department at Roche Pharma Global over the past five years required significant changes in leadership ehaviour, organisational design, as well as strategy. Targeted activities in the areas of employee, customer and change communications contributed significantly to the successful globalisation process, resulting in an organisation that is much more flexible and efficient than in the past.

Implemented changes included:

• Town Hall Meetings webcast globally with a common look and feel to create a sense of community,
• A CIO Award programme to recognise new leadership behaviour
• A project communications tool kit that supports managers in change activities
• Creative services communications to help increase usage of existing Informatics services
• A framework of measurement tools to proof communication effectiveness.

by Yang-May Ooi

The speed of communications is ever increasing, especially now that online messages can be zipping round the world virally via digital word of mouth in the time it takes you to type an email message or blog post.

Now that anyone can be pundit or citizen journalist who has a mobile phone, camera, laptop or just an opinion and access to the internet, anyone out there can share their views or stories about you in moments. Equally, anyone can express an opinion or a view or tell a story without deliberating over it or checking the factual basis for it - and indeed, online social media encourages that rapid action and reaction because of the ease of uploading content easily, cheaply and quickly.

For those whose every move makes news - like high profile politicans, world leaders, celebrities and the like - this trend is becoming a huge challenge. How do you control misinformation or misinterpretation of your actions and words in this rapid response world?

Taking legal action or sending out cease and desist letters can make you the “heavy” in the drama, causing more damage than good. Legal processes can also take time - and through that very process could keep the issue in the news more than you would like.

Hilllary Clinton’s campaign has come up with a clever way to deal with misinformation about her and her campaign for the US presidency, reports The New York Times. She has “introduced a Web site dedicated exclusively to the instantaneous rebuttal of charges or news reports it deems offensive or wrong”, called Fact Hub.

On the Fact Hub, Clinton’s team painstakingly sets the record straight wherever she has been misinterpreted or where others have got their facts wrong about her statements and actions. For example, it corrects Barack Obama with an statement headed Obama Misrepresents Hillary’s Views On Social Security and there is a rebuttal of a claim that Clinton and her team did not leave a tip at a diner where they had a meal (which is the subject of the New York Times article I just mentioned).

It looks like the website uses a blogging platform and includes an RSS feed so you can subscribe to it to receive the latest updates - another example of innovative ways to use blogging technology and blogging without calling it a blog.

For those of us of less grand profiles, it is still useful to keep an eye on what is being said about you online and to consider carefully how you would respond to any erroneous claims being made about you or your business. I am curious to know what processes you are using to monitor what is being said about you on the online grapevine at the moment and what plans you have in place to deal with any erroneous claims about you or your business. Please add a comment or email me using the Contact form above.

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

by Silvia Cambie

I wrote a while ago in my blog about my attempts to explain the virtues of communication to a US immigration officer. Our profession tends to be misunderstood.

But it’s not always that bad.

Actually, to quote Austin Powers (I know it’s childish, but I love him…), these are very groovy times to be in communications.

Top management is finally waking up to the idea that corporate communication is important. They know that what they need from us is strategic advice, not colourful brochures… And the reasons why they are waking up are

* Intangible assets (customer loyalty, brand equity, reputation, etc.) are becoming more and more important. They are difficult to imitate by competitors and investors look at them before deciding whether or not to put money into a company. Communicators are the masterminds behind reputation and brand recognition.

* Publics are becoming increasingly difficult to convince. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer , 44% of the people interviewed in nine EU countries trust conversations with friends and peers while only 33% (!) trust articles in newspapers.

* Gen Y. Seventy-five million young people born between 1977 and 1998 are slowly appearing on the corporate radar screen. They might be working as interns at the moment, but they are definitely the board faces of 2020. They have grown up on participatory sites like YouTube and MySpace. They are not as loyal to a company as their parents used to be. They will not accept sanitized corporate speak. In order to recruit and retain them, corporations will need top-notch internal communications

* New channels of global communications are being opened up by social media tools, bringing different cultures across the world together instantaneously. Culture is no longer about the culture of nations, it is created by networks of people coming together in new groupings and tribes. In this new environment, it is essential to pay attention to communication.

At EuroComm 2008 we will be discussing these topics and more.

I look forward to seeing you in Barcelona!

Silvia Cambié is the Chair of EuroComm 2008 and the director of Chanda Communications, a London-based consultancy specialised in reputation management and social media. She also serves as director on IABC’s International Executive Board.

Photo: thanks to Silvia Cambie

Ridley Scott is just about to turn 70, yet he’s got 3 movies on the go in Hollywood. In a recent interview for the Guardian newspaper he said:

“People have no idea how physically tough making a film is. I do pretty big movies and you have to drive the bus - that’s the job. A lot of people cannot deal with all the personnel. My crews average anywhere between 400 and 500 people, but I never even think about it. It’s like walking into an army camp every morning. You have to go right [he claps his hands] and everybody moves. You have got to embrace the manpower and embrace your Department Heads.”

“If I’m excited it tends to leak out. I think that’s what I’m good at - I’m good at pushing the pace.”

Leadership - the hardest part of business.

by Martin Crocker

This week, we announced the winners of the 2008 IABC Europe/Middle East Excel Award for Communication Leadership.

As a reminder, the Excel awards recognize senior people (for example CEOs, Managing Directors and Presidents) who are not communications professionals but who actively exhibit outstanding commitment to and skills in communication for the benefit of their organizations.

Applications were assessed against four criteria:

o Communication Leadership: the extent to which they support innovative and dynamic strategies which contribute to the success of their organization

o Commitment to communication: the extent to which they actively participate in his/her organization’s communication programmes – internal and external at local, national, and international levels.

o Personal communication skills: the extent to which they are skilful and effective communicators with diverse audiences

o Ethics and professionalism: the extent to which they show commitment to the highest ethical and professional standards

This year we received 6 nominations – twice as many as last year – of which five were of a very high standard. The committee comprised IABC members from five different countries throughout the Europe/ME region, so we had a good spread of opinions and perceptions.

The assessment process – going through two rounds of detailed analysis, and basing ourselves as far as possible an objective criteria – provides a fascinating insight into the work of some of our region’s outstanding business leaders.

Although the competition was close, there was finally one clear winner: he is John Mullen, CEO and Board Member, DHL Express.

John has clearly made a remarkable impact on the success of his organization through his commitment to communication; has shown examples of communication at its best both internally and externally, speaking honestly in the face of problems and using the personal touch with colleagues; and has clearly put communication at the heart of his leadership style, devoting time, energy and enthusiasm to dealing openly, directly and credibly and with his many different stakeholders.

John Mullen will be presented with his award at the IABC’s Eurocomm conference in Barcelona on 4th-5th February 2008, where he will present the keynote address.

Four other nominees receive Excel Merit awards:

Franjo Bobinac, President of the Management Board and CEO Gorenje, Slovenia; who is noteworthy for his personal communication skills, and the value this has brought to his company.

Ditlev Engel, CEO Vestas, Denmark, who impressed with his commitment to communication both internal and external, leading his company through a cultural change towards greater visibility and success.

Mr. Monther Al Harthi, General Manager, AlRabie Saudi Foods Company, Saudi Arabia, who is impressive for his personal communications skills and communication leadership, especially in a sensitive cultural environment.

Jean Stéphenne, President GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, Belgium, for whom communication is central to realizing his vision for his company. This particularly shows itself in his commitment to a wide-ranging external communications program not just in the media, but also with NGOs and other communities, and includes active listening as well as presenting.

Previous Excel Award winners have been: David Radcliffe, CEO of Hogg Robinson (2004); John O’Neill, CEO of AXA Ireland (2005); and John Leggate, CIO of BP (2006).

Martin Crocker is Chairman of the IABC Europe/Middle East Excel Awards 2008 and Marketing Communications Managare at Gemalto in France.

Photo: thanks to Martin Crocker