I just had a scan of the program for the forthcoming Advertising, Marketing & Media Summit 2009 scheduled to be held in Melbourne on May 11-12.
I searched hungrily to see which public relations experts had scored a gig in what is a pretty high profile conference within the marketing industry (for the record, I was part of a PR panel for last year's instalment of the same conference in Melbourne; it was a solid, worthwhile event).
No mention. Not one PR speaker. Zilch. Nada. Zip. Zero.
Maybe it was simply an oversight (in a McDonald's-forgetting-to-put-a-burger-in-the-bun kinda way)?
The flipside, of course, is that public relations (a core element of the marketing communications mix) was left out because, well, perhaps the organisers did not consider it to be important enough?
Interesting.
Try telling these highly-rated brands that PR is not important:
Apple.
Virgin.
Starbucks.
Zappos.
Xbox.
Red Bull.
McDonald's.
Southwest Airlines.
Oh, and some dude named Barack Obama.
