From April 8 to 10 Yerevan hosted the third edition of PR Summit Armenia 2016. Leading international experts held a series of lectures concerning modern public relations. The PR professionals discussed modern trends and challenges of the field.
Serge Vaezi, an expert from the UK, thinks that getting a degree or a qualification as a PR specialist is not going to make a big difference.
-Being an interesting person with unexpected ideas is the most valuable quality you can have to become a PR professional. At the end of the day, PR is all about how you talk about things and promote them.
To bring something unique with you Serge Vaezi suggests to study PR plus something. For instance, PR and Art, PR and Sciences or Ideally, PR and Business Studies.
In addition, the fast growing influence of technology has made Social Media a competitor to the traditional media. Nowadays ordinary people can convince mass groups very quickly either for or against a particular thing. However, Serge Vaezi doesn’t think that Social Media is a death to the traditional media. On the contrary, it forces the traditional media to have a better quality and a real opinion to survive.
-In a world full of voices the voices of a few who are more educated and informed become important and people start to gravitate towards those. For example, when someone says something about Volkswagen, people will turn to BBC or The Guardian, because these sources are trustful, they have researched the topic and their opinion is based on truth.
Cheryl Procter-Rogers, an expert from the USA, added that because of social media our response time has to be much quicker, than it had in the past. Social media is a great tool, when used correctly.
Everyone interested could attend the public lectures held in the American University of Armenia. PR Summit Armenia was organized by Deem Communications with Im Yerevan portal being an informative partner.