Blog Stuck On You

Public Relations is a business science that faces an accelerated evolution. Bozidar Novak, the founder of SPEM Communication group is one of the communication experts that pushes business of strategic communications on the top of agenda of many big companies. If it once was important to nurture good contacts with editors and journalists, today the good contacts with the top management of the client are as crucial as ever.

The internet surely played a great role in the change Public Relations experts are experiencing for some time now, the term “media” became must more indefinable and broad. Public Relations people like Bozidar Novak have are in a role of strategic partners with client’s executive board, making client’s life easier once a crisis situation happens. So the job of crisis communications is to keep client’s on a safe distance from possible crisis situations. Public Relations, where issue management, crisis communications and lobbying are represented, are not in vane called “relations”.

Bozidar Novak’s advice to the Public Relations profession is to become as close partners of their clients as possible, to meet with client’s top management as frequently as possible, to get that feeling of where the client ‘s business is steering to and which communication challenges my lay on that path. There are those bitter events of multinationals loosing enormous amounts of money owing to badly timed or poorly managed crisis, that remind us on how fragile the image really is. There is too much on stake for a responsible company to gamble with its international image, and there are good financial reasons why not to do it as well. A lack of clearly managed Public Relations function within a company is worse than having no PR function at all, especially in times of crisis. Not knowing what to do in times of negative publicity is a dangerous game to play.

Bozidar Novak SPEM witnessed many bad communication decisions that ruined the reputation of some successful companies worldwide. Bozidar Novak made a strong statement in one of his books on crisis communications, where he writes: “If perception oriented company loses its reputation, it loses all!” Bozidar Novak also believes that a successful communication advisor needs to have sector and industry specific on field experience to be able to anticipate client’s communication challenges.

Tags: Education, Learning & Training