about Bob Pickard

My LinkedIn profile says that “Bob Pickard is an international public relations executive with two decades of experience focused on providing communications counsel for senior decision-makers.” This is a fancy way of saying that for my entire working life, I’ve been advising clients about how to share information with people so that folks will do or think what my clients want them to do or think (often to give them money, which usually has motivated the client to finance a bigger PR budget for my firm, which has helped achieve my career objectives).

Then my bio goes on to explain that: “With a global reputation in the PR industry for business-building entrepreneurialism, Bob Pickard has co-founded and led successful award-winning hypergrowth public relations consultancies (offices and practices) in four countries: the United States, Japan, Canada, and South Korea.” OK, so in other words, I am an international PR entrepreneur. I enjoy building something where there was nothing, and have usually found the most professional satisfaction tackling the most difficult challenges (especially building the first Canadian-owned PR firm’s operation in the United States market from 1996 and establishing Edelman at Japan from scratch in 2005).

“Bob is especially known for having achieved a mastery of the commercial dimensions of the profession by inspiring top talent who deliver superior quality.” Well, that’s a deluxe way to say that I’ve been consistently quite fortunate to work with smart people who share in common an ambition to be the best we can be through continuous improvement as we aim at achieving excellence together. I know that sounds like management rhetoric, but I really believe in that philosophy and have felt unconstrained over the years about making decisive changes in my career to live that way professionally.

Outside of work, I am a devoted father to my two young children. My primary hobby is radio; collecting antique sets and amassing a large digital archive of broadcasts from the late 1920s through the early 1960s.

I have real passion for public speaking, and do most of my reading these days to educate myself about interests in psychology, social technology, renewable energy and marketing.

I am a film noir aficionado and a lapsed Star Trek fan.

Bob Pickard interview, August 2009

Here I am in one of my more recent interviews talking about modern PR trends. I have media trained several hundred executives in North America and North Asia over the years. Keeping in good practice before the camera makes me a better coach, especially when the interviewer is Jeff Ansell, a long time mentor and one of the world's top media trainers.

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