2nd International PR Day
Julia Haselberger, Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML
"Möller Horcher PR’s International PR Day 2011 was very informative and gainful in many ways. The event did not stop at giving an overview of the different national perspectives on PR work and the different respective requirements. Even if this in itself was very interesting. The very open style of the presentations and the professional – but relaxed – atmosphere made it possible to already discuss individual items in a constructive manner during the talks. Participants had a lot of opportunities during the breaks and at the end of the event to speak to the international experts and ask any remaining questions. The mix of theory and practice was especially valuable. Not only did this provide insights into the differences between individual countries with respect to PR and the trends that might come from the USA to Europe but also into how PR experts should deal with them in practice."
Click here to view the presentation of France
Click here to view the presentation of Germany/Austria/Switzerland
Click here to view the presentation of Italy
Click here to view the presentation of UK
Click here to view the presentation of USA
Network
Over the years, we have been able to develop a sustainable network with excellent national and international partners. On the domestic market, we work with experienced top IT managers such as Frank Sempert or Richard Seibt. But we also have other national partners such as agencies that complete Möller Horcher’s consulting portfolio with respect to visual arts and advertising services. We are often asked if we can also develop advertising campaigns, corporate videos or brochures. In these cases, we like to fall back on the expertise of our partner agencies.
Our international partners, with whom we cooperate on a regular basis, are from France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the UK and USA. In addition, we maintain contacts to other agencies in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland and Russia. Möller Horcher PR deliberately decided to not join an international agency network because we choose our partners with great care and in accordance with our customers’ needs and requirements. Important selection criteria are of course the respective agency’s IT and high-tech sector competence as well as its B2B focus. Our aim in selecting a partner is always to achieve the best-possible service for our customers and to ensure – also on an international level – the performance standards the customer is used to and can expect. Given our client structure, large international agencies are seldom able to fulfil these demands. In addition, our partner agencies have to be similarly flexible with respect to the fee models they use.
If desired, we can act as a lead agency for our customer’s international activities or we can arrange a contact to our partner agency, which will then work independently for the mutual customer in that language area. We would be very happy to assist you in choosing a suitable international agency.
In addition, as members of ION, an international communication network, we now have direct access to a number of reliable and professional PR agencies around the globe.
Möller Horcher’s 2nd International PR Day (#2iPRDay) is over – time to take stock and also to thank all active participants, visitors and, last but not least, our gracious host in Berlin, snom technology. No matter whether they were from the U.K., Denmark or the US – the overall opinion among the international agencies was clear: The media landscape is changing, print publications – from daily newspapers to trade magazines – are increasingly faced with difficulties, newsrooms are shrinking and the workload of editors and journalists is rising. This is changing the face and the conditions of PR work, which now also has to cater more to communication forms in social media channels such as blogs or Twitter than in the past.
The agencies’ presentations highlight how conditions have changed in the respective countries. Gabriele Horcher of Möller Horcher reports that in the face of shrinking circulations figures and decreasing advertisement turnover, more and more trade publication editors are forced to focus on acquiring new advertisement clients. At the same time, new faster information channels are required for overloaded editors – webinars will increasingly replace actual newsroom visits. And to the degree in which the press release is losing its former significance, exclusive press materials is becoming more and more important. John Gates of the Boston-based agency, Elevate Communications sees activities such as education, lead generation and content sharing as focal points. Recycling content via a broad range of platforms to make it distributable is important; in the US, platforms such as facebook promote sharing.
Luke Davies of aspectus PR in London, likewise confirmed the demise of print trade publications and a trend towards online channels. It is important to define key messages and feed these into a wide range of channels to attract relevant traffic to customers’ websites. Octavio Rojas of túatú social media & pr, Madrid, considers quantification essential so that an increase in social media activities resulting from an agency’s work can be documented and presented to the customer. The intelligent combination of different online analysis tools and analysis portals make it possible to present information to the client with respect to changes such as the number of tweets and twitter activity related to a certain topic. Last but not least: Kate Mills from Rocket in London reported on the issue as seen both from her own agency’s point of view as well as that of ION, the global agency network with 44 partners worldwide. One conclusion: For many agencies, search engine optimisation will become increasingly indispensable and be in great demand because SEO complements classic PR work.
