The 22nd Annual General Meeting of IPRN, perfectly organized this year by Russian member, PR-Partner, attracted more than 30 public relations CEOs and senior practitioners to discuss worldwide PR trends, best practices, learn about the Russian PR culture, networking and client opportunities.
Among trends discussed was Media Speed Dating, a new way of interacting with the Russian media, and greater integration of services being driven by client needs. Inna Alexeeva, principal of PR Partner and this year’s Chairman, says: “The IPRN members gather together each year to exchange views and better understand how public relation’s skills are developing in the countries of fellow members. It has been a great honor for PR Partner to organize and host this year congress”.
IPRN as one of the largest independent global networks continue expanding its global reach by approving in Moscow new member agencies from USA, Spain, Colombia and Panama that join a growing number of agencies and consultancies already members.
The IPRN also elected Athena Wang, of the agency Blue Focus, from Beijing, China, as the new Chairman from the period 2017-2018. In this role, she and her team will be responsible for organizing the 2018 IPRN AGM and Congress. They also elected Pawel Bylicki, from Public Dialog from Warsaw, Poland, as the new vice chairman of the organization for the same period.
“This conference allows us to share insights with our global colleagues, connect with the sharpest minds in the profession, know better each other, improve our skills and do some business for our clients” said Luis Gonzalez Canomanuel, President of IPRN, “the Digital Age is transforming consumer behavior in such a way across the globe that our agencies need to adapt and interchange knowledge constantly”.
The IPRN Annual General Meeting and Conference is also the moment to showcase the best work of the members in a contest that gives agencies a glimpse at the excellence works happening in different parts of the world.
This year there were seventeen exceptionally high calibre finalist: four in the Corporate/ Corporate Social Responsibility category, six in B2B, 4 in B2C and three in International.
The overall and C/CSR winner was Schwan Communications, from Germany, for its fantastic campaign “MusikImPuls,”. In the other categories, JPA Healthcare (USA) was the winner of category B2C with the project, “Let’s step out of the shadows and check in on eating disorders”, Evercom (Spain), in B2B with “Watch in the bar” and Binsfeld (Luxembourg) in International with “Larger Sheet Piles From Arcelor Mittal Connecting Pioneers”.