How do you top the first day of a World PR Forum that ends with dinner for 500 people? Particularly when dinner is at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Grounds with a spectacular sunset.
The answer is a program bursting with content and inspiring sessions from world leading communicators topped off by the arrival of even more delegates.
The final day of the 2012 WPRF continued the trend of discussing the issues relevant to the industry and sharing ideas among the best PR minds across the world. A clear theme developing from the forum was around ‘story telling’, which was a phrase echoed in many presentations.
Enthusiasm was high for the start of day two with Richard Edelman’s keynote speech painting a picture of the future of public relations and what practitioners must do to keep up with a changing world. He described PR as “the truth well told” and emphasised the need for PR to tell emotional stories just as well as our advertising counterparts. He also expressed the challenges of avoiding spin while working for an organisation concerned with litigation.
Charlie Miller from Boeing took the conference to new heights representing the manufacturer in a global environment. The company places the communications team on the decision-making table, ensuring communication and business strategies align. He discussed how Boeing fought against using a single global PR agency and instead built a network of local agencies that are aware of the PR environment in their local regions.
At the same time, Anna Adriani from illycafe discussed how she considers customers the most important part of the business. While illycafe is a private company with only 800 employees, they consider transparency to be the key to creating sustainability.
Paull Young from charity: water and Michael Sheldrick from the Global Poverty Project were a huge hit with the delegates and lit up the Twitter stream, helping #WPRF become the leading trend in Australia. They gave an inspiring presentation demonstrating how social media can bring about change. Both agreed it was important to share the progress being made with followers, rather than focus on the problem itself to prevent cynicism about charities. One of the most memorable moments of the session was the story of how the death of a nine year old girl inspired others to donate $1.2 million to charity: water in her name.
The day came to a close with the Global Alliance Chair Daniel Tisch presenting the final draft of the Melbourne Mandate, a document that will shape the code of PR practice for years to come. Daniel also announced that the 2014 World PR Forum is heading to Madrid, Spain. He also announced Kenya’s interest in hosting the 2015 World PR Forum.
The 2012 World PR Forum, which was the largest to date, closed on a high with more than 800 delegates from 29 countries having attended 3.5 days of sessions, workshops and meetings sharing knowledge and ideas.
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