Some links about Iceland

http://www.iceland.org/info/iceland-crisis/

http://www.imf.org/external/mmedia/view.asp?eventID=1329

Jaana

Interesting PR services in Deski

Communications Director is down with the flew, so I had to came up with something else.

Couple of weeks ago I was at a seminar that was about social media (during this autumn it has been impossible to go to a marketing seminar that doesn´t cover social media somehow). There was an interesting presentation that handled (digital) PR. It was held by Tiina Hosiokoski, marketing and commutations director in PR agency called Deski.

Here is how Deski describe themselves:
“Deski is a PR agency that is offering a new kind of conseptualised PR services to external and internal communications. For PR officers Deski is knowledgeable, innovative and cost effective partner.

For the needs of Internal communication Deski offeres a service called Coffee Room TV to help organizations communicate with their staff in a new way via internal TV. For external communications Deski has a servise called My Speech that disseminates information of the organization on the radio, print and internet.”

Even if you don’t know Finnish, go check the website, www.deski.fi. I’ll try to explain what kind of service they have there.

They call their website a site of ideas for journalist. It is a supply of story ideas, background information and news reports. Topics come from the customers of Desk, as informative bulletins from organizations, articles and radio interviews. Using the material is free for journalists, and freely available.

Materials on their site are in free use, journalists/media doesn’t have to pay for it. If is possible to have the material send automatically to ones e-mail. Deski.fi has five different tittles in their website: today’s Deski (päivän deski), Weekend Deski (viikonvaihde), Invitations (kutsut), Radio (radio) and Facts (faktaruudut).

Today’s Deski is about current issues. It has newsletters about agriculture, the labour market and environment just to mention few topics.

Weekend Deski is a bit more entertaining. It has news letters about e.g. entertainment, food and travelling.

Invitations has a lot of information about upcoming events and seminars that journalist are invited to.

Radio has radio stories that are already edited.

Facts have facts about different things and organizations in a very useable way.

For me Deski has an new, interesting way to do business in PR field. They seem to exploit internet very well and they offer services not only in text but also in useble format for radio and TV. I don’t know how common this kind of PR business is in other Scandinavian countries or even in other PR companies in Finland. It seemed that this kind of service has been very well received as Deski has hired more staff during this year.

-Henna

About Danish Communications Association and Maine magazine

I have two things for you.

1. Articles in the website of DKF
Somehow it is extremely hard to find anything about the history of PR processes in Denmark. Maybe I'm just searching from wrong places.

But I have made some surfing in the website of Dansk Kommunikation Forening. The association has 3.000 members.

There's a site about articles that show what is happening in the PR field. And because I have a language fetish, I translated the headings and first sentences to English to have an overall picture what is happening in Danish PR today. Translations are quite rough and maybe unreliable in some points.

Articles

Here's some examples:

Branding begins from and stops to coworkers
Managers are interested in intern branding in danish enterprises, but they are often insecure about how they should organize the communication.

The new agenda for Public Affairs
Public Affairs is not anymore in recession in communication field, it's a crucial requirement for enterprises and organisations that affect decisionmakers and also constituents, citizens and consumers.

Human resources and comminucation ride a tandem
More and more Danish enterprises situate communications and Human
Resources to the same department. This improves work environment and image.

Bureau 2019
What kind of bureaus are there after 10 years? This was the theme in debate that took place in the last session of Kommunikationsdagen 2009. About 70 participants tried to imagine it. We didn't got so many answers from people in the top, but we got some thoughts and ideas which really are important when we are talking about the future. We got again a good insight to that purchasers and sellers don't fully agree on what the exact commodity is.

IKEA-guidance in journalism
"Write like a journalist" is an IKEA guidance in journalistic handicraft and a description of several newspaper genres. Søren Marquardt Frederiksen gives advice how one can have ideas to newspaperarticles and how one can overcome writing blocks and have a good writing process.

Enterprises will report about their social responsibility
Many enterprises try to inform about their CSR-activities despite that it may give them open advantage. This is totally a misunderstanding, says the manager of Novo Nordisk, Mads Øvlisen.


2. The article about Sweden and Finland in Maine Magazine

I found the article Aleksi recommended to us from the fourth number of Maine. I thought it would have been a little bit more comprehensive. But there were some nice info:

In the future, the PR managers in Sweden will be more like marketing managers. Typical PR-officer in Sweden has studied economics, politics, behavioral sciences and corporate communications.
In Sweden it has been able to study PR from 1950's, so it is true that in Finland we have studied it longer.

In Sweden they invest in communications with 5 billion euros. This doesn't include the money that is put to marketing and advertising. When Finnish PR-officers saw this number in one seminar, they asked "Is the comma in the right place?" :)

The reason why the communications and PR sector is larger in Sweden than in Finland is the "culture of consensus".

That's all, folks.

Jaana


Jaana

Finnish propaganda during the Winter War

I was compelled to write something about war propaganda, so here goes.

In 1937 Finland established Propaganda Union and Finlandia News Service-news agency which was responsible for publicizing about the Winter War. Two years later, just before the war, Finnish army raised their state of readiness and founded headquarters propaganda division which sent newspapers to the soldiers on the boarder. Soldiers were also provided a possibility to listen radio to keep in touch of the situation. In the beginning of the war Finland had 60 propagandists, mostly civilians.

The Red Army attack against Finland was launched in November 30^th 6.50 a.m. with artillery fire, although the Soviet air force had already bombed Finish towns few day’s earlier. The attack was a major win for Finn’s in propaganda sense. Western press turned their attention to Finland and visions of a gigantic Soviet Union mangling small but resilient Finland started to spread in people's mind. At this point Finnish propaganda system wasn't organized well enough but because of the Olympics that were supposed to be in Helsinki 1940, many foreign reporters were already in Finland. They became war reporters instead of sport journalists.

According to Juhani Kaskeala, the former commander of the Finnish army, well planned propaganda operations played a part not until in the end of the Winter War and in the Continuation War (25^th of June 1941 - 19^th of September 1944) when eleven publicizing companies (TK-company) were established. People working in these companies were mainly civilians: journalists, writers, artists, radio reporters and advertisers. During the war they worked as front correspondents, reporters, photographers, front guides and film makers. The focus of the Finnish propaganda was especially in the welfare of the troops. Entertaining, newsletters and pictures were the most important ways of propaganda in the home front because they had the most positive influence on the soldiers mind.

When Soviet Union had attacked Finland, the Finn's starter radio propaganda towards the Soviet troops. Also flyers and loudspeakers were used to tell the enemy that it is useless for them to fight and how they would only face death in the cold conditions and snow filled woods. In it's entirety Finnish propaganda didn't gained such magnitude as in other countries during the Second World War, mostly because of the order of C.G.E Mannerheim, the Marshall of Finland, and the censorship, which was already in effect during the war. Despite this, newspapers reflected the hatred and hostility towards the Soviet Union.

Propaganda was used in four different ways: against Soviet troops, moral boost for own troops, propaganda for the civilians at home and propaganda towards others countries. This was done by sending newsletters to foreign press, mostly to Scandinavian countries, but also to the USA, Great Britain, Germany and Italy. This was suppose to enhance positive thinking towards Finland and it's efforts in fighting the invading Soviet troops.

Jani

Public Relations Review

Hey!
I searched for new and interesting information about Scandinavian PR in the electronic database of the university. I found an interesting article published in "Public Relations Review".

Here is a small summary:
The article is about loyalty and conflict in the PR field in Norway. It is a study about ethics and ethical behavior. It focuses on loyalty between PR practitioners and their employers and PR practitioners and their target groups. The research was done with questionnaires, which 251 PR practitioners from the public and private sector answered.
The findings show that ethics is an important issue among PR practitioners. Many of them think that there are often ethical conflicts in the PR field. They perceive themselves as the ethical consciousness of the organization.
Regarding conflicts, they think the most conflicts occur with the management, followed by colleagues, media and target groups. But the loyalty to the management or employer is the highest. If there is a conflict, practitioners are often on the side of the management, not the target group.
The level of conflict rises proportionally to loyalty. Ethical issues often emerge through conflicts.

Well, if you are interested, read the article!

Maria

PR in Iceland

Here is a summary of PR in Iceland made by Guðjón Pálsson. He is the President of the Public Relations Society of Iceland. And also an CEO in Icelandic PR-company.

In my oppinion quite nice review. Note also the full report.

http://www.wpp.com/wpp/marketing/publicrelations/thepropportunityiniceland.htm

- Henna

p.s. I´m ashamed that I forgot to write here on Friday. Sorry!

p.s.2 I`m planning to shortly interview the PR Director of City of Tampere about development of municipal communication in Finland. If you have any questions you would like ask her, post them here on wednesday at the latest.

The 30th of September, 2005. Denmark. Mistake?

As we know one of the most influential tools in PR is media. It can be the best friend of yours but in the same way suddenly become the worst enemy. I’ve mentioned media, because I want to remind you about events that took place in Denmark, September 30^th 2005. That day the largest Danish newspaper “Jyllands-Posten” published satirical cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. World was shocked, because nobody expected to see this in the serious and independent newspaper in the Scandinavian country. The question was – who is standing behind it. This article gives some answers. http://www.mediabv.lt/res_zinpr_det.php?id=428

Muslims world took this Danish society step as an offend for their religion views and all culture in general. While at the same time in Western countries freedom of speech was the main issue to be discussed. World again came back to the questions is there and if yes where is the limits in freedom of speech.

Here you can read (yes, it is wikipedia, but it provides really good general view of this situation:) how world reacted to Denmark newspaper publication.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reactions_to_the_Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy

"Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection."
Neal Boortz

***

by Egle

Some random years and decades of PR in Sweden and Finland

As this change of posting days came quite "out of the blue", I don't have much for you. I was going to get my Finnish "Maine" magazine tomorrow from the main library and find some interesting facts about differences between Finland and Sweden. I'm still going to get that magazine, but maybe I spare that info to some other time. So thank you Alex for that tip! Hope I will find something :)

Although we maybe have already discussed enough about the PR development in Sweden and Finland, I will put here some extremely relevant years and decades of both countries.

Sweden:
After the second world war there were already people that considered themselves practitioners of an activity that could be defined as PR.
First publication about PR was edited in 1945.
SPRA (Swedish Public Relations Association) was founded in 1950 (The number of members in 2002 4,200)
The end of 1960s: Striking growth in the public sector.
1970s: The first academic courses
The beginning of 1980s: Development in the private sector start emerging strongly.
The 1990s: explosive growth in both sectors.

Finland:
It seems that the development of Swedish PR is not so "colourful" or "stormy" compared to Finland, as you can already see from Maria's post :)
The roots of Finnish PR are in advertising and propaganda of war times.
In 1947 a society Tiedotusmiehet was founded. Focus was on conducting the public opinion after the war.
1950s: First "real" PR professions
1960s: PR emerged in industry.
1970s: the PR boom
1978: PR education in the university of Helsinki, Osmo Wiio
In 1983 Suomen Tiedottajien Liitto, now called as PROCOM (the number of members in 2001 1,700)

Although the book that Maria recommended (Public Relations and Communication management in Europe) is very good, it didn't offer much info about the early development of Swedish PR. Now it looks like that Finnish PR has not lagged behind that much I assumed. But I will continue with this theme later!

The difference in the numbers of association members is quite revealing, thouhg.

Good night,
Jaana

PR Industry Standards in Sweden

At first I must apologize that I didn´t post anything on Friday as I should have. I had my best friends wedding on Saturday and I was her BestGirl. But now I´m back on track.

Using Google I found the Association of Public Relations Consultancies in Sweden (PRECIS). In their website www.precis.se (> In English > industry standards) they determine the standards that PR consultants in Sweden use in their work.

They manage following topis:

1. The PR consultancy sector
2. The PR consultancy secter and society
3. Confidentiality
4. Methods and remuneration
5. Conflicts of interest between assignments
6. The consultative role
7. Refusing and terminating assignments

You can find many interesting points in these standards. Escpecially topics 2 and 4 cover the idea and grounds of PR in Sweden (and in other Scandinavian countries too, in my opinion). In these standards they write about write about open and democratic society where everyone has the right to express their opinion. They also go over different ways of control the field of PR; there are both legal and voluntary regulations in PR in Sweden.

- Henna

PR History in Finland

I have found a link, due to Aleksi (thank you!). It is the website of Procom, the Finnish Association of Professional Communicators. It is a very interesting website with a lot of information about PR in Finland. I will give you the link: http://www.procom.fi/en/
Furthermore i will summarize what it is said about the history of PR in Finland:

there are 5 stages, wich marked PR in Finland:

• The first stage was before and during WWII. Press offices were created in order to communicate with the public. The first PR association was also founded. It was called Propagandaliitto and dealt with Propaganda. After the war this association was transformed in a different kind of PR association.
• The second stage began after WWII and lastet until 1956. At this time, PR became more and more to a profession. First television transmissions were made. This influenced the PR industry profoundly. It became more media related. The importance of internal communication increased.
• The third stage lastet until the mid 1960s. This stage was marked by increasing importance of PR in the industrial sector. More and more books about PR were published.
  
• The fourth stage ended in the 1970s. The PR industry expanded more and more. Laws were passed concerning internal and public communication and communication in municipalities. In 1970, the PR agencies created the Finnish Association of PR agencies. In 2004, Procom was created. It was the former merger of the two associations, which I already mentioned. It has now about 18000 members.
• the final stage, called maturity stage, lastet until 1980. The first chair was created and universities recognized the importance of The PR industry.

Thank you for reading!!!

Maria

Scandinavian countries in the internet space. First impressions.

One of the PR functions is to provide and share information for others in the way that we see things or even with much better intentions. So if we are talking about PR in Scandinavia, first we have to see, how Scandinavian countries represent themselves. I promise to come back to the same topic in the end of our course and see the same things from the new point of view, which will include knowledge about PR processes in these countries.

Anyway, for now it seems that Norway PR specialists are working in a really professional way, because the site is really innovative and provides a lot of information not only about Norway, but also about it’s connections with your home country ( http://www.norway.info/ ). Finnish tries to reach their public in the more popular way. In Finland site you can find not only basic information, but also popular nowadays internet society links – like bloging about the country from different points of view ( http://finland.fi/public ). Ironically, but Iceland and Sweden has the same “gateway” slogan in their websites. Though Swedish ( http://www.sweden.se/ ) site is much more attractive for visitors, then Icelandic ( http://www.iceland.is/ ). And finally Denmark website in my opinion is the most structuralized one ( http://www.denmark.dk/en ). All information you need, you can easily find, but sometimes we are looking for something more, aren’t we?

"If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied."

Alfred Nobel

***

by Egle

About the term "PR" in Scandinavia

Great work, Jani and Maria!

It would be logical to continue with PR in Sweden. But unfortunately, my massive audience, I’m not going to do that.

I would like to talk a little bit about the concept of PR in Scandinavia. In this article “On the definition of public relations: a European view” Verčič, van Ruler, Bütchi and Flodin studied the differences of the term PR between U.S and Europe. They found out that, for most of the countries, it has been difficult to translate the term PR to their own language. The English term PR is about both relations and communications.

However, in most cases, the new translated term means something quite different than the original. Verčič & all. also claim that “there was a strong reaction in many countries against the use of the American expression which together with a recognition of the inadequacy of its translation caused several European public relations associations to rename themselves in their languages into some kind of “communication” associations (although they still define themselves as public relations associations in English). This has, so far, happened in Denmark, The Netherlands, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.”
Finnish and Swedish Wikipedias define PR like this (yeah, yeah, ultimately academic source, I know):
Finnish: Tiedotus- ja suhdetoiminta (PR, public relations) = Something like “Activity concerning communication and relationships”, which is quite complicated term and nobody (?) really uses it.
Swedish: Public relations, "omvärldsrelationer" = Something like “Relations with the world outside”. But what about the communication?

So, there are two differences of the European approach to public relations as compared to the U.S and one is the lack of a conceptual dualism between communication and relationships and the other can be seen in various strategies adopted as a solution to the problem of a translation of the U.S. term “public relations.”
An other difference was found when the research group studied the roles of European public relations. They found four:
1. Managerial: to develop strategies to maintain relations with public groups in order to gain public trust and/or mutual understanding.
2. Operational: to prepare a means of communication for the organization in order to help the organization formulate its communications.
3. Reflective: to analyze changing standards and values in society and discuss these with the members of the organization, in order to adjust the standards and values of the organization regarding social responsibility and legitimacy.
4. Educational: to help all the members of the organization to become communicatively competent, in order to respond to social demands. This role is concerned with the mentality and behavior of the members of the organization and is aimed at internal public groups.

According to Verčič & all. these two latter roles in some countries, in particularly in Denmark, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden, “are becoming the core of advanced public relations capability.”

So what’s the point here in my post? I think there’s none.
Instead of giving you the point, I’ll give you a nice link considering Swedish PR.
PR of Sweden

- Jaana

P.S In the last lecture Kaja told us how PR processes have developed differently in U.S because, in Europe there has been quite a lot of conflicts, that have retarded the evolving of European PR. I presume quite the same disposition is with Finland and Sweden. Because of wars (and the wars lead us to the fact that some do not consider Finland as a part of Scandinavia...), the history of Finnish PR must differ from those in Sweden. I would like to know how they are different. Maybe it would be good to figure out first, what Scandinavian countries have in common and then focus on how they differ...?

A brief overview on the development of public relations in Norway

The first associations of public relations in Norway were established after the Second World War. In 1957 The Norwegian Public Relations Club (founded in 1949) had passed 100 members, two of them women. The professionalization of PR in Norway was largely influenced by the trends from the USA.

During the 1970s more and more Norwegian businesses established public relations departments. This changed the attitude towards PR compared to the previous decades because during the 1950s and 60s the internal information was dealt by personnel departments and the external public relations were handled by the marketing department. The change enhanced the democratization at Norwegian workplaces. The government sector also experienced changes at the same time. Because of the Public Information Act (1970), much of the archives of different government bodies were opened which lead to new opportunities to journalists, which in turn created a need for development of the public relations function in both the public and private sector.

Nowadays there are over 30 public relations agencies in Norway, but there is no exact knowledge of how many people work in PR. Guesses vary from 3000 to 5000. The biggest challenges in Norwegian PR now and in the future are related to education. According to Hårsle (2004), Norway has to establish more communication programmes and offer special programmes for Ph.D studies. Nowadays PR agencies have difficulties to find qualified personnel, because the huge growth in the field of PR has bypassed the amount of education.


References:

Ihlen, O. & Rakkenes, K. (2009). Public Relations in Norway: Commucation in a small welfare state. The Global Public Relations Handbook: Theory, Research, and Practice, Expanded and Revised Edition.

Hårsle, P. (2004). Chapter 17. Norway. Public relations and communication management in Europe: A Nation by Nation Introduction to Public Relations Theory and Practice.

PR in Finland

I am going to start with our topic Scandinavian PR. Today I want to focus on PR in Finland:

In the second half of the twentieth century, Finland faced several crucial changes in economy. It moved from an agriculture- and forestry-driven country to a country, where innovations and manufacturing new communication technologies is important. Today, Finland is a forerunner in this industry, especially in mobile phone technology.
These communication technology developments affected organizations and also governments and municipalities heavily. Within a few years, they used Internet to inform the stakeholders and the public. In 2002, more than 50% of Finnish households had access to Internet. 89 % of Finnish municipalities organize their services and information via Internet in 2002. Today, noone can imagine organizations without modern communication technologies.
Developments in Public Relations in Finland do not differ so much from other European countries. You can see the same trends. In the 1990s environment issues were a popular trend and organizations published environmental principles and developed environmenatl programs. Later in the decade, the trend went towards organizational values and ethics. Once again, organizations reacted to this and created ethic program and corporate social responsibility.
There are a rising number of women working in this field. In 2000, already about 80% of communication professionals were women. However, leading positions is still in men's hands.