BU Research Blog

The Public Relations Research Group welcomed the leading Canadian practitioner, Fraser Likely, on Wednesday when he presented a lecture on communicating the value of PR departments to top management. It was attended by regional practitioners, students, academics, and Marketing & Communication staff.

Mr Likely, who is an adviser to Canadian banks, corporations and governmental bodies, emphasised the need for senior communication staff to understand their organisation fully, identify the elements of their department’s work that create value and operate in an entrepreneurial manner.

“This presentation was the first of several events in which academic research and practice issues are discussed with practitioners, students and fellow academics”, said Prof Tom Watson of The Media School. “On Wednesday, our speaker was an internationally highly-regarded practitioner and researcher. In others, BU academics will take recent research to practitioners at events in London and locally.”

The Public Relations Research Group is planning short seminars with the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in London and Wessex, as well as with Ketchum, a leading international PR consultancy group.

Simultaneously, the US-based Institute for Public Relations posted Fraser Likely and Tom Watson’s latest Research Conversations blog post on future trends in PR measurement and evaluation. It is based on a recent book chapter in a festschrift to the leading PR theorist, James E. Grunig: http://www.instituteforpr.org/2013/10/future-trends-in-measurement-and-evaluation/

Prof Tom Watson (l) and Canadian speaker Fraser Likely (r)