Archive
Author: Corporate Marketing
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Should we all be going local? Focusing on public affairs’ triple bottom line as elections approach
February 18, 2008
Whether you are an MEP or a public affairs practitioner, after a while in the Brussels Bubble, there is a tendency to go native. Arcane, albeit clearly interesting, discussions about the boiling point of paint, the details of inter-institutional agreements or the latest spat between Commission services can take over from what real people (i.e. not us) care about. Thankfully, elections are the pin-prick that our bubble occasionally requires. And while there are those who...
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Why is their politics cooler than ours?
February 15, 2008
Barack Obama definitely has the wind in his sails as he heads towards a possible (probable?) Democratic nomination. And an increasingly cool wind it is too. The latest foray of pop into politics sees hip-hop grandee, Wiil.i.am, front man for the Black Eyed Peas and producer of the Pussycat Dolls, lend his voice in support of Obama in the way he knows best; a pop video. The combination of Obama's spoken words and singing raises...
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“Obviously, the markets for EU-related books are not tremendous”
February 12, 2008
So reads the EPP press release that trumpets the new EU textbook by Alexander Stubb MEP. Apparently the first edition sold 12,000 copies. That he finds time to write EU textbooks that are "not only for nerds" in between winning plaudits for his online efforts and being an MEP is in our view impressive. Even more so that it only took 298 pages to explain how the EU really works, when fellow blogging MEP Richard...
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Online polling finds new currency with the EU
January 31, 2008
The European Commission communicated with the people today. In fact, it launched an online poll, asking us to vote on the design of a commemorate 2 EURO coin. The coin will be released on 1 January 2009 to mark the 10 year anniversary of the Euro. I’ve never seen an online poll of this nature being launched by the Commission before and I can’t help but think that this could be a useful way to...
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Italy’s comic turn
January 25, 2008
Another Prodi government falls, albeit with at least some grace. The FT joins the recent chorus of English language newspapers reveling in a beautiful country's ugly decline. Italy looks on with resigned disdain at a distant political class seemingly incapable of action. Perhaps it takes a comic to believe that some form of pride can be restored to the country through a hard hitting blog and a web-based election list where anyone can put themselves...
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Commission Strikes Back with EUTube
January 17, 2008
In case you haven't noted, Commissioners are apparently getting lobbied left, right and centre from a plethora of Member States who have all suddenly realised that committing to a renewables target of 20% by 2020 actually means you have to do something to achieve it. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cysaOnlv_E&rel=1] The Commission's comms department has struck back with a EUTube video reminding us all of why the targets Member States want to back away from are apparently still a...
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Does blogging matter? The world has it say and we have ours
January 16, 2008
Earlier this week BBC World's Have Your Say Forum chaired an interesting radio and online debate entitled; "Do political bloggers make a difference?" Certainly the comments in the forum represent a mixed bag. On the one hand we find the likes of Lamii Kpargoi, Coordinator for Initiative for Mobile Training of Community Radio in Liberia, who feel that blogs played an important role in drawing the attention of the world to “the situation in [Liberia...
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Return to work (or Facebook as it’s now called)
January 4, 2008
The Christmas holidays being over for some of us, we returned to work yesterday to a near empty office and lots of internal email traffic predicting the results of the Iowa caucus (most of which had been proven wrong by this morning). As we had already read the important emails on the Crackberry over Christmas lunch there was nothing left for it but to get straight back to work. As such, we went on Facebook...
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Britcham Blogging Event on 17 January
December 19, 2007
An interesting event from the folks at Britcham in January, as the "Britcham New Generation" host journo-bloggers Mark Mardell (BBC) and Jean Quatremer (Liberation) on the subject "How to communicate Europe: is blogging the way forward?" on 17 January. Registration can be made here. Many of us have been involved with the New Generation for years. Despite now being decidedly older, we still attend for what are usually some great discussions with some interesting people...
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Top Ten Sustainability Blogs: our picks
December 19, 2007
As proof that good ideas travel fast within well functioning companies, we are pleased to see that our global sustainability communications practice has recycled (fittingly one may suggest) the concept of our top ten blogs list for particular issue areas. The global team have created their own top ten sustainability blogs. The recycling may of course have something to do with the involvement of our dearly departed Dan Baxter (who leaves Brussels over Christmas to head...