Institute for Public Relations

Earlier this month at London’s historic Reform Club, Bill Nielsen (retired Corporate Vice President for Johnson & Johnson and past Chair of the Institute for Public Relations) delivered the International Distinguished Lecture to a sell-out crowd of European public relations leaders. Nielsen believes that the public relations profession itself needs a core statement of what we value and the responsibilities we own. This would be something very different from a code of ethics, or a list of do’s and don’ts. Rather, Bill envisions a declaration “of what we fundamentally believe and value, and the responsibilities we are prepared to assume.” He ...

To multiply, or not to multiply. That is the question. No, wait, it’s two questions. Is there evidence to support the existence of PR multipliers? And if not, are we hurting our own credibility by claiming such? This week’s Conversations column introduces a new paper (free on the Institute website) by Mark Weiner, president of Delahaye, and Don Bartholomew, senior vice president of MWW Group. In “Dispelling the Myth of PR Multipliers and Other Inflationary Audience Measures,” the authors describe the ways in which multipliers are used by public relations professionals to report total impressions and value. Multipliers are sometimes rationalized based on ...