NEW PERSPECTIVES

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Heard about the member benefit that pays?
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Our member referral program pays $100 for new Full members that join CPRS Toronto on the strength of recommendations from members like you.

Here’s how it works:

Tell a colleague about how CPRS membership has helped you professionally and suggest that they check out the benefits of belonging.

If you are named on this application form as our referring member, you’ll be informed by the CPRS National office that you’ve earned a $100 credit, as soon as the new Full member is confirmed, up to a maximum of $800 per year.

Need to know more? Drop us a line.

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Calling all practitioners – Bright and motivated GTA students need you!
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CPRS Toronto is in search of mentors to participate in this year’s mentorship program. The CPRS Toronto Mentorship program pairs students or junior-level practitioners with senior public relations professionals. As part the of the mentorship program, participants will build mutually beneficial professional relationships throughout the year.

While each relationship will be different, mentors and protégés are expected to be in contact by e-mail, phone or in person, at least once a month during the program’s duration to share information, attend CPRS events, get to know each other and have fun.

If you are interested in being a mentor please contact AJ Goodman at aj.goodman@fticonsulting.com to learn more. Application forms are also available online.

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A new global mandate for the public relations profession
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At the recent World Public Relations Forum in Melbourne, Australia, public relations leaders from 29 countries identified three emerging areas of value for public relations and have issued a new ‘mandate’ for the profession.

The Melbourne Mandate speaks to the role of public relations in defining organizational character, building a culture of listening and engagement, and instilling responsibility in organizations and individuals.

Are you practising to the full scope of the mandate? Can the mandate be used to guide your professional development, enhance your practice, or inform your clients?

To help CPRS Toronto members grapple with these and other professional ideals, we’ll be bringing you the idea guy behind the Melbourne Mandate in the New Year.

Watch this space for details of our February professional development event with Daniel Tisch, APR, FCPRS, Chair of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management. You can also read Daniel’s reflections on the release of the mandate.

Is the Melbourne Mandate relevant to your practice? 

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Dumb ways to die viral video
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Melbourne Metro Trains launched a video titled “Dumb ways to die” that is gaining a lot of attention for its PR approach in promoting safety.

What do you think? The video has almost 26 million views on YouTube.

  • Lois Marsh
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CPRS Toronto immediate opening for board position – ACE Chair
150 150 Lois Marsh

One of the CPRS Toronto Board positions, the ACE Chair, is currently vacant and the Board is looking for a candidate to immediately fill the position.

ACE (Achievement in Communication Excellence) is a celebration of the highest calibre of communication programs in the Toronto area.  The awards are decided based upon submissions from the organizations that produced the original work following a stringent judging process and are distributed at a gala event held around the end of April every year.  The Chair of the ACE committee oversees and guides the team of dedicated individuals who conduct the submission and judging processes, as well as the preparation and execution of the gala.

CPRS Toronto members interested should provide their resume to Lois Marsh at marshl@marsh-executive.com

Participating on the board enables you to enhance your corporate governance skills, contribute to our profession in a meaningful way, and interact with and learn from your industry peers.

All members are invited to apply. Having an APR, more than five years of communications experience or being an active volunteer are assets.

Please reply by November 30th.

ACE Summary

The ACE chair position requires a firm commitment until May and involves the following key tasks:

  • Coordinating a team of volunteers, coordinating roles and overseeing event progress including everything from judging to logistics
  • Attending regular board meetings, facilitating necessary approvals and updating other board members of the progress of the event
  • Managing the ACE Awards budget and volunteer team meetings

The time estimates provided below are estimates and may increase if issues arise. While there are lots of team meetings, the new chair should be aware that this role involves a lot of email correspondence, most of which takes place throughout the work day. Because of this, being accessible throughout the day is an asset.

September (~5 hours for the month)

  • Book venue
  • Begin recruiting volunteers

October (10 hours for the month)

  • Finalize team and begin monthly meetings
  • Finalize critical path with dates from committee
  • Start working on contracts for the program, trophies and AV requirements
  • Find judges to act as judging chairs
  • Marketing plan completed and approved by ACE chair
  • Approved updates made to entries package

November (10 hours for the month)

  • Begin recruiting for MC
  • Marketing for entries/event begins, continues until April
  • Theme selection
  • Ensure all sponsor requirements are in hand – ongoing management of sponsor’s needs

December (10 hours for the month)

  • Judging panel finalized (with 50 per cent APR)
  • Staging plan from AV company, theme for PowerPoint presentation

January (5-10 hours per week)

  • Entries deadline – deal with escalations from entries and judging team
  • First draft of program complete
  • PD event on how to write a good submission (if doing again this year)
  • Menus finalized for venue

February (5-10 hours per week)

  • Executive summary judging and related issues
  • Begin working on script and PowerPoint presentation
  • Event survey approvals

March (~10 hours per week)

  • Increase meeting frequency to every other week
  • Full submission and best of show judging takes place, must be on site for both events to deal with related issues
  • Media materials approved by board
  • Florist finalized
  • Media list complete
  • Trophies ordered
  • Finalize music selection

 April (~10 hours per week)

  • Program approved by board members
  • Script approved
  • Event takes place – day of issues management
  • Lots of last minute emails!May (~5 hours for the month)
  • Follow up media requests and photos
  • Regroup with team to determine what worked, what didn’t
  •  Reconcile budget and create wrap report for AGM
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President’s Message: Establish sound strategy
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The trick to the twelfth hole is to avoid the water on the left, avoid the out-of-bounds roadway on the right, land your tee shot on the right because the fairway slopes left big-time, and try not to lose your ball to the right of the green on your approach or you’ll be fighting chickens and roosters to get it back.

So much to keep in mind…how does one learn the skills to properly manage their way through a golf hole with so much to think about?  One needs to master course management.

The twelfth hole needs to be approached strategically…you have to have a sound strategy before you tee off, and then execute that strategy as you start to play the hole.

A Public Relations campaign can be like the 12th hole.  There is so much to keep in mind at one time, and one has to consider so many elements and keep so many things in balance all at one time.

A strategic approach to public relations helps practitioners manage public relations effectively from the start of a project to the end.

Where do we go to for help?  Golfers can take golf lessons, but where can we, in PR, go for help?

One of the most important tools of education we have at CPRS is the Accreditation program.  November is the last month to prepare your application for the 2013 Accreditation year.  If you’re a member of CPRS and have five years experience in the profession, you may be eligible to go for your APR designation in 2013.  Applications are due December 3rd.  I hope you will visit www.cprs.ca to get more information or contact our Co-chair of Accreditation, Kathleen Garrett at kathleen.m.garrett@gmail.com.

I found the Accreditation program to be a great learning experience in approaching PR from a strategic point of view.  It drove home, for me, the difference between tactics and execution (very necessary work) and planning strategy (the well-researched plan to determine what tactics and execution are needed).

As I look back, I see how fortunate I was to be a member of CPRS Toronto while I was obtaining my APR because I was able to participate in a Study Group.  With our substantial member base, Toronto normally has a handful of people looking to get their Accreditation in any given year, so, as candidates, we are not normally going through the APR process on our own.  Those numbers provide us the opportunity to form Study Groups with candidates like us.  The Study Group meant I could share the workload with my colleagues, get clarification, talk about the exam material and learn about experiences I would not have otherwise been exposed to.

I encourage you to complete the application process if getting your APR designation is something you’ve been considering.  I wrestled with whether the year I finally committed to Accreditation (Class of 2006) was right from a timing point of view with the pressures of my job at the time.  It was a busy year, and I considered putting it off again.  Now, as I look back, I realize subsequent years were even busier, so glad I did it when I did.

Just like golf where one can continue with their current game and be overwhelmed by that tricky 12th hole, or take lessons in course management and learn to master it, Accreditation is there for us to pursue, and we just need the determination to say Yes…this is my year!

There’s still time to get in on the 2013 program if you are interested.  Become an APR and take your career to a new level.

 

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Social media advice from a bro
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Now that it’s Movember, you might be wondering how to weave some social media magic of your own.

For the strategy behind the success of the Movember social movement in Canada, check out CPRS Toronto’s archived PD event.

More PD on file.

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Tweet highlights from Passport to PR
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Wonder what happens at the yearly CPRS Toronto students Passport to PR event? Wonder no longer. See 28 highlight tweets from today’s event in this Storify. CPRS Toronto would like to thank all of the students and our gracious hosts for today’s event!

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President’s message: Make your choice
150 150 Lois Marsh

What is it about that 11th hole on our PR golf course!  It’s a long Par 5, and it’s straight.  From the teebox, it looks like there’s nothing to worry about so you just swing your best straight shot off the tee.  As you walk towards the spot where your ball landed, you can now see that just before the green, there’s a creek that runs across the fairway bounded by tall reeds.  

This is decision time. 

There are two basic choices to consider as you take your second shot.  You can go for the green in two shots if you feel like you can clear the creek.  This will allow you to get on or near the hole in two shots (your original tee shot and the one you are about to make).  This means that you have the potential to take just two more strokes including your putts to get the ball into the hole.  If successful, you could score a 4 and birdie the hole.  Even a par score of 5 would be a good result.  Of course if you don’t clear the creek and land in it, then you have to take a penalty stroke and that’s not good.  This will mean extra strokes (bad in golf) plus…you likely lost a ball in the process.

Alternatively, rather than going for the green in two shots, you can “lay up”, which means that instead of taking your second shot over the creek, you can make a shorter shot and land just before the creek. Now you avoid trouble altogether. You can follow that up with a short shot that will easily clear the creek and land on the green. You may not make a birdie, but you could still make par, and, in the process, you removed the risk of losing your ball in the creek and really adding to your stroke count. 

Two choices that allow you to weigh risk vs. reward.    

We all face decisions like this in our day to day work. The important thing is this: once you’ve made a decision on an action, commit to it and execute it to the best of your ability. 

I hope our experienced practitioners will make the decision to volunteer as a mentor for someone new to the profession. Having been a mentor myself a couple of times, I found it to be a worthwhile experience for myself.  I learned from the protégé assigned to me, and I hope the feeling was mutual. 

I think sometimes mentoring can be viewed as one-way…mentor imparting information to protégé. Certainly, that is the purest intent of the relationship.  Experienced practitioners have so much to offer…insight, guidance, connecting, listening, reassurance, encouragement, feedback…the list goes on.  That said, it’s fascinating how much experienced practitioners can gain from the relationship.  

Another bonus about the mentorship program is how flexible it is from a scheduling and timing point of view. So many of our time commitments in our roles in public relations are determined by someone else. Finally!…we can make a schedule that suits both mentor and protégé and we get to determine the timing. How cool is that! 

I hope you will make a decision today to give some of your time and expertise to make a meaningful difference in the career development of our young professionals or those new to public relations.  

Believe me, it’s a much easier decision than determining whether you should go for the green in two or lay up. It’s also more fruitful and a lot less frustrating!  

For more information, please email: mentorship@cprstoronto.com

Vincent Power, APR

 

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2012 APEX Scholarship winner announced
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The Communications + Public Relations Foundation and APEX jointly announced the recipient of the 2012 APEX scholarship. Below is the news release, also posted on CNW on October 31, 2012. Congrats Cole!

TORONTO, Oct. 31, 2012 /CNW/ – Toronto resident Cole Douglas is the 2012 winner of the APEX Scholarship, established by APEX Public Relations in 2010/11 for launch in 2012. The scholarship assists a student in need of financial aid who has demonstrated high academic achievement following completion of the first year of a four-year public relations degree program at the Toronto-based Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. The scholarship offers $3,000 per year over a three-year period to the same student contingent upon academic achievement. It is offered on a three year cycle.

In his first year at Humber, Cole was a lead ambassador in the Recruitment Office at the College and served on the Student Board of Directors for the Humber Students’ Federation.

He has consulted on social media work with Hearth Place, a support centre for cancer patients and their families to assist the organization to better understand how to use social media tools and the use of monitoring analytics, which resulted in a Canadian Public Relations Society 2012 Silver ACE Student Award for campaign of the year.

This past summer, Cole was a communications intern for Humber’s Student Recruitment and Advising Office where he researched and developed a plan to engage students to share their first year experience with their high school, revised the College recruitment brochure and tour scripts, among other activities.

“The jury felt that Cole’s early involvement and interest in the public relations industry was inspiring and his community involvement and grade point average demonstrated the qualities we look for in a young practitioner,” said jury Chair Scott Bonikowsky, Vice President, Corporate, Public and Government Affairs, Tim Hortons Inc. “Cole is an outstanding scholarship candidate who will make a difference in public relations in Canada.”

“There are a number of talented students who have the potential to be leaders in our industry”, emphasized Pat McNamara, CEO, APEX Public Relations, “but might not have the financial resources to obtain the education they need. We hope this scholarship will help Cole in his pursuit of a public relations career, and look forward to supporting his progress.”

The Communications + Public Relations Foundation, manager of the scholarship, promotes the advancement of communications and public relations as vital functions in society, is dedicated to the public interest, and is committed to increasing public knowledge and awareness of the role of public relations in daily life. The Foundation accepts individual and corporate contributions towards research and educational initiatives nationwide.

“We are delighted to be working with both APEX and Humber College in establishing and managing this Scholarship,” said Dr.Gordon McIvor, chair of the Foundation, especially, when we can support leadership development in our industry”

APEX Public Relations is a high-performance, high energy, public relations firm with an unmatched track record of award-wining campaigns. Its clients include consumer brands, and corporations with a focus on financial and technology communications.

For more information about the Foundation and its public relations educational initiatives, contact Barbara Sheffield, Executive Director, Communications + Public Relations Foundation, Suite 1515, 73 Widdicombe Hill Blvd., Toronto, Ontario, M9R 4B3, or phone 416 242-6146, or e-mail: foundation@prmediaconnection.com.

SOURCE: Communications + Public Relations Foundation

For further information:
Barbara Sheffield, APR, FCPRS
Executive Director
Communications + Public Relations Foundation
(416) 242-6146
foundation@prmediaconnection.com

Pat McNamara, APR, FCPRS
Chief Executive Officer
APEX
416 934-2120
pmcnamara@apexpr.com

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