Bob Pickard » speaking platforms

Image and reputation in the age of digital communication

Bob Pickard — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:00:45 +0000

This morning I delivered this presentation to the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore. We discussed the crafting and co-creation of persuasive narratives, digital storytelling through the newsfeed with stakeholders, the production and packaging of content for the new public mind, and how the art of PR is becoming more of a science.

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Executive MBA lecture at Nanyang Business School

Bob Pickard — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 08:00:56 +0000

On July 27th I was honoured to guest lecture executive MBA students in Martin Roll’s class at Nanyang Business School. I talked about the scientific roots of the PR profession, putting the consciousness of corporations online through social media news streams, mapping data to design through digital storytelling, the worldwide rise of apology communications, and how with new crisis communications, anything that now goes wrong in a famous way is called a ‘PR disaster.’ This edited video is eight minutes long:

How the art of PR is becoming a science

Bob Pickard — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 07:08:17 +0000

On April 23rd, I gave a speech to the 5th Annual Opinion Mining Workshop in Seoul. Attended by 150 academics, marketers, and social media thought leaders, the event was hosted by Daumsoft, a very exciting Korean company that among other things provides ultra-advanced business intelligence-gathering and media monitoring systems using their text mining technology. Here’s a copy of the presentation that I delivered:

How the art of PR is becoming a science

Related blog post: The art of mapping the science of PR

18 lessons learned after 18 years in the PR world

Bob Pickard — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:00:41 +0000

Lately I wrote an article about 18 reflections after 18 months away from PR. Sticking with the ‘18′ theme, I am posting a PowerPoint presentation delivered to the staff of Edelman Japan in June 2008 that outlines the 18 lessons I’ve learned each year working in the PR world starting in 1990. I began using SlideShare recently and thought this would be a good first deck to upload.

View more presentations from Robert Pickard.

Guest lecture to PR students in Hong Kong

Bob Pickard — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:00:17 +0000

On November 10th, I was honoured to address PR students in the Communications School of Hong Kong Baptist University. I was invited and hosted by the distinguished Dr. Flora Hung as well as the wonderful Dr. Regina Chen. The theme of the speech was “Building modern PR campaigns and telling digital stories in the age of social technology.” Feel free to download a copy by clicking the screen shot below:

It was my best effort to ‘connect the dots’ between my own two decades of communications consulting experience and the ideas of thinkers like Gerald Zaltman (re. metaphors tapping into the unconscious mind), Martin Lindstrom (re. neuromarketing and ‘unconscious’ storytelling), Dale Carnegie (re. making people feel important in conversations) and Robert Cialdini (re. the psychology of persuasion).

These are the key points made in the presentation:

No brainer: the mind is the key issue when it comes to PR.
The unconscious mind is more powerful than the conscious mind.
The emotions of the unconscious mind determine PR success, not the rational logic of the conscious mind.
Metaphors communicated through storytelling tap into the unconscious mind where people make decisions.
PR pros need to design and conduct campaigns accordingly.
Unfortunately, the ‘storytelling zone’ of news journalism (which has also been the province of PR people interacting with reporters) is shrinking as the traditional news media business plummets.
So marketers and their money are migrating to the entertainment media and social media spheres, where stories can be told directly to consumers.
Nowadays every company can create its own content and tell its own stories, like a media company.
Digital is now changing narratives; new stories are actually being co-created via conversations with people online.
Understanding the ‘psychology of persuasion’ within networked contexts is a key skill for modern communicators.
PR people of the future must think like story writers and media content programmers.