Issue No. 609
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24 - 30 October 2002 Issue No. 609 Home news |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Global and local
Is there a future for public relations in the Third World? From Willa Thayer's vantage point at an international conference that brought senior PR professionals together in Cairo, the industry appears vigorous the world over
Falling stock and CEOs on the dock are surely recurring motifs in any Western public relations professional's nightmares these days. And while PR professionals in the Third World surely have their fair share of bad dreams, one of the messages of the conference of the International Public Relations Association (IPRA), held 13-15 October in Cairo at the Conrad Hotel, was that the industry has a bright future in Less Developed Countries (LDCs).
Some 140 senior public relations professionals -- approximately 40 of them from Egypt -- met under the title "Public Relations in a Changing Global Environment". Added to this number was a group of 10 Cairo University communication's students.
Although Western PR professionals these days face the unenviable task of being the bearers of much bad news while, at the same time, watching their clients' PR budgets decline or disappear altogether, in keeping with the profession's general ethos, speakers focused on the opportunity side of the current situation.
"This is the best time to be in the PR business. It's a great challenge to help corporations in these times," said Alasdair Sutherland, executive vice-president, Manning Selvage & Lee Inc of the UK.
"Asia-Pacific, Latin American and Africa and the Middle East now account for 17 per cent of public relations business worldwide," explained Donna Zurcher of the UK firm MD Ogilvy & Mather Public Relations Worldwide. Zurcher, who in her "industry snapshot" at the outset of the conference, said that in the coming decades LDCs are expected to capture a larger share of global PR business relative to the shares of US/ North America and Europe, the two largest markets respectively.
A handful of companies represented at the conference, ones from the UK, in particular, appear to be taking up the challenge by setting up offices in Cairo and other Middle East capitals -- projects they were sure to mention alongside speeches or during the many "networking" opportunities.
One session that melded a strong international and local flavour was that about media transparency. From Russia, which has given PR lexicon the term zakhzuka [bribery], to the UK, where campaigns are afoot to challenge the practice by some print media outlets of charging a company for "colour separation" should the publication decide as part of its regular editorial content to carry a photo showing the company's product, delegates from across the globe had horror stories to share.
The local dimension to media transparency was left to one of the session moderators, the affable Emadeddin Adib, editor-in-chief of the Cairo financial daily Al-Alam Al-Yom and a presenter for a show broadcast on an Arab satellite channel. Discussing press junkets in some Gulf countries. Adib said, "When you [a journalist] return to your hotel room there will be a bag, and inside is a Rolex watch, a Qur'an and $10,000. If you are honest, you will keep the Qur'an and return the rest. The only problem is that they [the event organisers] will begin to wonder when you return the bag if your problem was that $10,000 wasn't enough."
When Al-Ahram Weekly asked Adib about the prospects for improved media transparency in Egypt, he said, "Terrible. It's all affected by the general trend in society; is it a corrupting social environment or a helping environment?"
Wrapping up the conference out on a serious note, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa spoke to delegates about the salience of public relations to international relations, with a particular eye to the situation in the Middle East.
"It is insufficient to have a just cause in order to be capable of claiming your right. It is equally important for one to be armed with a good public relations campaign. The Arab world is in need of launching a sustained long-term [public relations] campaign. We must learn in this part of the world to better deliver the message."
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