Porter Novelli named Best Multinational Consultancy to Work For
Brussels, 9 May 2012 – The Holmes Report has named the winners of its annual Best Consultancy to Work For awards, which are based on a survey of more than 5,000 employees from PR agencies across the EMEA region. This year, a record 84 firms participated in the survey. The Holmes Group is dedicated to proving and improving the value of public relations, by providing insight, knowledge and recognition to public relations professionals.
Best Multinational Consultancy to Work For: Porter Novelli
For the second consecutive year, Porter Novelli will take home the award for the Best Multinational Consultancy to Work For in the EMEA region, with employees from around the network of offices in the region praising a “warm and collaborative” culture, “honest and transparent” management, and “strong ethics.”
A team-building exercise for 170 senior staff in Miami last year, regular regional and sub-regional meetings, Christmas parties and summer activities all contribute to strong interoffice cooperation, and a professional development program that includes internal and external trainings, the Porter Novelli University for top performers, as well as a robust exchange program. The firm also offers a variety of flexible options for work-life balance.
Several employees cite the firm’s “Give Something Back” CSR initiative, which allows employees to give a half day of work to volunteer for charities, and encourages local projects through the co-operation with United Fund for Belgium and the Special Olympics.
Tags: 
Job opening for a Communications Co-Ordinator
Are you an outgoing, practical and organised person people can rely on? A real team player with a hands-on mentality who loves to get things done? Then this may be a job for you!
Porter Novelli Brussels is hiring a Communications Co-ordinator. Comms Co’s take care of the day-to-day administration and co-ordination of the office: they can multitask and can handle the pressure of a busy agency.
Duties and Responsibilities
- Day-to-day administration: answering the phone, mail distribution, booking meeting room
- Full co-ordination of mailings
- Handling of press releases
- Plan and execute activities in a timely, efficient and high quality manner
- General office management
- Assist the account teams where and when necessary
Knowledge and Skills
- Minimum 2 years of work experience
- Very good knowledge of English, Dutch and French
- Good knowledge of MS Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access)
- Proven ability to effectively organise and manage multiple responsibilities
- Ability to work well with others
- Positive, professional and especially flexible attitude
Interested? Send your CV to Carolien Van Driessche: carolien.vandriessche@porternovelli.be
Porter Novelli named finalist for 15 Sabre Awards
By Kathy Van Looy & Molly Verbeeck
Porter Novelli has been named a finalist for 15 SABRE Awards in EMEA, The Holmes Report announced last week. The SABRE Awards, which recognize Superior Achievement in Branding and Reputation, are managed by The Holmes Group, a leading global public relations publishing operation. The Brussels office has been nominated for a Gold SABRE Award in the category Blogger Outreach for the campaign “Are you having an Affair with your Hair” for Wella Pro Series. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Brussels on May 31.
A short description of the Wella Pro Series campaign:
In April 2011, Procter & Gamble launched its first professionally inspired retail hair care brand, Wella Pro Series, in Belgium, and asked Porter Novelli to make the products the talk of the Belgian beauty world.
The team carried out research among beauty bloggers to see what topics they blogged about. This showed that most beauty bloggers were focused on make-up and nail products, and rarely blogged about hair and hair care products.
Wella wanted to get people talking about hair online. The team’s strategy was to introduce the products directly to bloggers at a workshop, and run a competition to find ambassadors for Wella Pro Series among the community of beauty bloggers.
PN organised two workshops to introduce the new products to key journalists during the day and then selected bloggers the same evening. During the workshops, the team presented the new product range, and then the journalists’/bloggers’ hair was washed. They were split into groups, and each group was encouraged to create a certain look, using Wella products. On the night, the team announced the Wella Pro Series Ambassador competition for beauty bloggers. Ten bloggers would be chosen as Wella Pro Series ambassadors.
Each of the ambassadors received a toolbox of products and haircare tools, and had six weeks to put together a portfolio of blog posts, reviews, and how-to videos. The public could vote for their favourite ambassador via Wella’s Facebook page.
Porter Novelli’s blogger and media relations campaign to launch Wella Pro Series created a huge amount of offline and online buzz in Belgium. The total reach of the campaign was approximately 15m online and 12 million offline.
Aston Martin Appoints Porter Novelli as China AOR
Aston Martin has confirmed the appointment of Porter Novelli as its agency of record in China.
The appointment follows a competitive pitch to select a PR agency partner to build brand engagement with Aston Martin’s target audience of ultra high net worth individuals in China. The Porter Novelli team’s work includes building social media, lifestyle and auto media and influencer relationships.
Marcel Fabris, Aston Martin’s Asia Pacific marketing and communications manager, said: “We have been looking for a PR partner who can really help us connect with our target audiences, building effective relationships between our brand, our dealers and our current and potential consumers. Porter Novelli ticked all the boxes, combining pragmatic strategy, market insights, traditional and social media savvy and on-the-ground resources.”
John Orme, senior partner, Porter Novelli, said: “We are delighted to be working in partnership with a brand with such a powerful global heritage and style. Our initial focus is the launch of Aston Martin’s Weibo (Chinese Twitter) brand account, and supporting the brand at the Beijing Auto Show in April.”
Peer Print your life… Michel Bauwens: A Belgian on the world’s most inspirational list
Originally posted on www.heliade.net
Belgium. We are a small tiny country. A small strip of rather bad highway on your way to Germany. A restaurant stop halfway between Paris and Amsterdam. We have sprouts, waffles, crazy politicians, mussels, and more beer than is technically good for us; chocolate and a little bronze three year old peeing in public.
We have Kim Clijsters, Jean Claude Van Dame and Jacques Brel . We have a king . We have Brussels and the European Parliament. On your map, we’re that snotty spot just at the right side of London.
But… now we have Michel Bauwens. At 53 years old, he is a Peer-to-Peer thinker and an active writer, researcher and conference speaker on the subject of technology, culture and business innovation. He is notoriously listed at #82, on the Post-Carbon Institute (En)Rich list, http://enrichlist.org/the-list/, a competitor list to Forbes’ richest people, celebrating a wealth of inspirational individuals whose contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures.
Bauwens believes in WiKi economy, based on Peer Production, as an emerging add-on to the existing capitalist structure: “Peer to Peer is mostly known to technologically-oriented people as P2P, the decentralized form of putting computers together for different kind of cooperative endeavors, such as file sharing and music distribution. But this is only a small example of what P2P is: it’s in fact a template of human relationships, a “relational dynamic” which is springing up throughout the social fields. There are three partners in this emerging model” says Bauwens: “a community of contributors that create a commons of knowledge, software or design; an entrepreneurial coalition that creates market value on top of that commons; and a set of “for-benefit institutions” that manage how this co-operation takes place.”
From musicians that crowd fund their album, before peer distributing it; to entrepreneurs that wiki-build a viable car with mostly 3D printed parts… the crowd sourced peer production thinking is interesting. It allows pockets of smart, connected people to reach out, move fast, and create wealth and added value with limited investments. It runs often on free software, engaged communities and free thinkers. It preaches an open internet, and an open mind. It brings a guerilla version of the mastodont economy.
Bauwens’ visions start like a bad day, and can turn on a dime. Roller skate, jet ski economy that allows to rove between the bulky ocean liners. The Occupy movement shows that Bauwens’ vision on peer to peer economy can easily migrate to other areas: politics, healthcare, space exploration… the sky really is the limit.
Social Media and Social Collaboration are the backbone to Bauwens’ new society. Small successes of crowdsourcing, crowd funding, co-creation, crowd distribution, and crowd politics are emerging at increasing speed, from the Black Eyed Peas, over the Occupy Wallstreet movement and the Arab Spring to Sonic Angels and online gamer communities solving multiple sequence alignment problems within disease associated genes.
Clearly, small highly connected pockets of people can move ideas and initiatives quickly, using the power of social connectivity. Linked to hardware shops and hybrid entrepreneurs that real-life the virtual thinking, the butterfly effect of online thinking will soon result in real hardware that can be bought for real cash. This will do much more than just ripple the traditional economy…
Bauwens’ 82nd place on the list, is just the beginning…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGjQSki0uyg&feature=related
Men Are From Foursquare, Women Are From Facebook
By Helen Nowicka
Our fascination with the differences between men and women has spawned countless TV shows, hit songs, and best-selling books. And now we’re starting to understand how gender also influences social media use.
I began thinking about this while reading Porter Novelli’s EuroPNstyles research, conducted among consumers in the UK and other European countries by my colleague Melissa Taylor, EVP of strategic planning and research. Drilling down into the facts and stats around social media, several clear trends emerged showing that the same preferences and behaviours are being played out in the digital space just as they are offline.
Of course both sexes are highly engaged in social media, but our data indicates that women are using social channels to reinforce existing social connections, and to interact with friends and family. By contrast men demonstrate a clear bias toward showing or sharing status, and promoting their opinions to the wider world. Never mind Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus – today it seems Men are from Foursquare, Women are from Facebook.
I pulled some of these trends into a presentation that I gave as part of Social Media Week London, here are a few UK highlights:
- Women are more socially active than men: 65% of women access social media at least once a week, compared with just 51% of men
- Women are more likely to connect with people they know: 93% of women using social media do so to read posts and view pictures from friends or to comment on their friends’ profiles. For men the numbers dropped to 89% and 84% respectively.
- UK women lead the rest of Europe in following brands to access deals and offers – this is the motivation for around 64% of women in social media, compared to a European average of just 52%, and 56% among UK men.
- Men are more likely to use social networks to display status and opinions. In the UK, 45% of men use social media to check into places compared with just 33% of women. Men are also happier to broadcast what they’re saying to the world: 35% of socially-savvy men are Twitter users compared to 27% of women.
- Men are also more active in the blogosphere: 54% of digitally-active men say they seek out other people’s blogs to read, compared with 46% of women. Men are more active bloggers than women too (34% vs 24%).
It’s interesting to see that Forrester, the Wall Street Journal, comScore and even Facebook are all seeing similar trends, although brands and marketers are not always following suit. As Forrester’s Tracy Stokes argues: “Women have the potential to drive a brand’s reputation online because compared with men, they are more connected with each other and like to talk about brands and products, especially in social media. But marketers, particularly in more male-oriented categories like finance, are not making a digital connection with women.”
It sounds simple but in this new era of communications, it’s not enough to know how to “do digital” – we still need to understand people and what influences them, regardless of the medium. Those brands that manage to combine social media savvy with human insights will maximise their chance of success.
Note: EuroPNStyles is an annual study conducted by Porter Novelli among more than 10,000 European consumers in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands (UK sample = 1,700 people). It reflects our agency’s belief that research uncovers insights which can trigger behavioural change.
Kiki McLean on Belgian national television
Kiki McLean, our MD of the Washington office and global leader of the Public Affairs practice, appeared on Belgian national television on Super Tuesday. Watch the video here
Inspiring people
Some weeks are just more exciting than others. Period. This week was a week that didn’t pass by unnoticed: we had some brilliantly wonderful people over in our office, and yes: we want to share that with you. Not that we want to make anyone jealous or anything.
On Monday & Tuesday we had the pleasure of welcoming Michael Goldberg in the office. Michael is a Senior Partner and the global CMO of Porter Novelli, and based in New York. He gave a truly inspiring presentation to all our staff on new biz and pitching, and led a workshop on Business Development, helping us to shape the future. Michael left us with an energy boost, a great feeling of commitment, a new way of looking at things and a real American football helmet (we are still fighting over which floor it can stay on).
As if one American wasn’t enough, Kiki McLean also landed in our office for a couple of days. Kiki provides leadership for the Porter Novelli Washington DC office, as well as the agency’s global public affairs efforts. One of the top public affairs strategists in the country, she appears frequently on national television as a commentator on politics and current events. During the 2008 election season, Kiki served as a Senior Advisor to Hillary Clinton for her Presidential Campaign, and frequently appeared as an on-air surrogate for the ‘Obama for America’ campaign. In other words: she drinks coffee with the Obama’s AND the Clinton’s. Yes, we were impressed. And proud to have someone like her within the Porter Novelli family. Kiki gave some media interviews (national TV, newspapers – more info to follow in the coming weeks), an internal training session, went to see the US Ambassadors Gutman & Kennard, and gave a presentation to a selected group of clients on “The US Elections and the Impact on Europe”. A woman with a huge agenda, tremendous knowledge and an even bigger heart.
Watch this blog for more details on the media interviews with Kiki in the weeks to come.
Storytelling: the new old for brands?
By Nicholas Courant & Jurgen Mortier
Think about some of your favourite brands and the first things that spring to mind. Are they key messages, a company vision and mission? Probably not, right? Like most consumers, you’ll probably think of stories that characterise the brand for you: great customer experiences or moments in your life where the brand mattered to you.
And still, when you look at what most brands and companies provide on their websites and company literature, it’s all about vision, mission, strategy and press releases. No stories, just hard facts. No real emotions and real characters to which people relate, but very rational documents with well-crafted key messages.
Conquer the hearts and minds of your stakeholders
The real key to engage customers on a deeper, more emotional level lies in the ancient art of storytelling. No matter how many gadgets and hi-tech gizmos we might carry around, in the end we are living anachronisms: modern day mass-consumers with a stone-age mind. And that mind, as evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker have argumented, is particularly receptive to narratives.
So is it any wonder that in the age of social media, with its yearning for authenticity and credibility, brands are looking for ways to tell their own stories? Apple is probably one of the best examples of a company that has understood the importance of creating stories that resonate with customers. From the iconic 1984 Superbowl ad over the Get A Mac series to Steve Jobs’ heartfelt Stanford Commencement Speech, Apple and its late CEO have a track record of great storytelling.
Many of the so-called love brands are in fact serial storytellers. Rather than trying to convince and explain, they inspire, share emotions and focus on authentic experiences. It’s often what differentiates them in the hearts and minds of their customers.
Keep talking
What’s more, you don’t have to be Apple to tell a great corporate story. Johnny Walker managed to turn a brand in decay into an inspirational brand with the Keep Walking campaign and Coca-cola changed their marketing strategy when they realised their customers already tell more stories then they as a company ever will.
Within every organisation, the stories are usually there, with each of your colleagues. The challenge is to open your eyes and ears and capture the stories. Go talk to your colleagues or listen to your customers and ask them how they perceive your brand. Take the critical perspective of a journalist to discover the various stories that are connected to your brand and start sharing them in your presentations, magazines, social media, etc. You might just find out that the ancient art of storytelling will revive your brand in today’s modern world.
Online business driving economic growth
“The single market – getting Europe’s SMEs online”, an event organised by Google last Tuesday, gathered a wide range of people to talk about the role of European SMEs in economic growth. Representatives from the European Commission, MEPs, EU trade associations, NGOs, the media, entrepreneurs, consultancies and more traditional companies were present to discuss opportunities and obstacles of an online Single Market.
SMEs are the engine of the economy and the Internet is a powerful tool for them to leverage for expansion. 15 “success stories” of online companies from 15 different European countries showcased how the Internet helped them to start or to grow dramatically. With 2.5 billion Internet users globally and 5 billion mobile phone users, there are huge opportunities for business. The disruption of the Internet is clearly a myth as numbers show that for every job lost there are 2.6 new positions created in the digital economy. As the Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani stated yesterday, online SMEs grow twice as fast as other companies, thus driving economic growth. The European Union fully supports them and put the digital economy at the heart of its strategy. “Our goal is to double the amount of commerce online by 2015,” Tajani said.
However, online business is scattered and very sensitive to competition. And the amazing resource that the Internet is can still be seen as too technical or too expensive by entrepreneurs. That is why Google launched the initiative “Getting business online” to spread all the benefits of going online. Some entrepreneurs present at the conference confirmed how Google AdWords campaigns have helped them to find their target audience and increase sales.
We are still far from an online Single Market though. Entrepreneurs and the traditional business services companies that accompany them – postal and telecommunications companies – agreed that there are still strong barriers to more e-commerce in other, sometimes neighbouring, European countries. Those obstacles include: taxation and payment systems, consumer rights legislation, freight and delivery costs.
According to the entrepreneurs at the event, the recipe for an online business success story is to find first THE niche market where there is no offer yet, thus no competition, and where consumers tend to go online to search for what they cannot find ‘IRL’ (in real life). And the second most important key to growth is targeted marketing: getting to the right audience online to be able to sell. However good an idea is, if it is not made public, it will not sell. Hence the importance of a good integrated communications strategy, which can be difficult for entrepreneurs who often have to do so many things at the same time to launch their business. Finally, online businesses cannot avoid Social Media as part of their communications strategy, as it is now a key channel for reaching online prospects.
- Making Doughnuts. http://t.co/kngZBpX3 #PNID mjgoldberg (Michael Goldberg)
- RT @mjgoldberg: A fine Porter Novelli Friday.. http://t.co/vSota0zB #PNID loveayanna (Ayanna Luke)
- Awesome! RT @noahbanning: Nice one! MT @PRWeekUS @porternovelli picked by HHS to conduct $20m healthcare campaign http://t.co/lHqWrjSK #PNID fizzpoptweet (Fizzle Pop)
- Nice one! MT @PRWeekUS @Porternovelli picked by HHS to conduct $20m healthcare campaign http://t.co/eQeKVGhI #PNID noahbanning (Noah Banning)
- @mjgoldberg congratulations! #PNID emsi (Stefan Vadocz)
- More #FF #PR pros @robmctree @THE_REAL_JW @ashleysays @ashmatty @noahbanning @angie_s #PNID fizzpoptweet (Fizzle Pop)
- "Life's a party, but you have to put up your own decorations" 1:1 wisdom via @KarenvanBergen #pnid saying_grace (Grace Naugle)
- RT @mjgoldberg: A fine Porter Novelli Friday http://t.co/rrdzyybe #PNID Nina1302 (Yasmina Plas)
- RT @mjgoldberg: A fine Porter Novelli Friday http://t.co/TjVfFcGh #PNID kathyvanlooy (Kathy Van Looy)
- A fine Porter Novelli Friday.. http://t.co/vSota0zB #PNID mjgoldberg (Michael Goldberg)
- My #SXSW Photo RecapI came, I saw, I blogged, I tweeted, I facebooked, I ate, I danced, I sang … I can’t wait to come back! This is my #SXSW recap in photos! […]