New media launched for Communications industry

Public relations has become a crucial part of the brand marketing team with communications specialists at the frontline of brand campaigns, providing measurable value through intelligent and targeted publicity. This is evidenced by the acquisition of a number of PR shops by leading ad agencies, as well as the growth in PR companies specializing in investor relations for clients.

But despite this success, PR is often still perceived by the wider business community as a light-weight career practiced by socialites and wannabee models, not the business-minded people, academics, specialists, and journalists who really make up its ranks. To dispel these myths and upskill the industry, independent communications specialists are launching an electronic newsletter for the industry on April 14.

Louise Marsland, media strategist and editor with 17 years media experience, and Marie Yossava, Director of Grapevine Communications, have teamed up with leading advertising news agency, Bizcommunity.com, to launch 'Communicate', a fortnightly ezine. Communicate will keep communications practitioners, as well as other business people, abreast of industry happenings and issues. News will focus on industry trends, concerns such as quality of research, the importance of branding, marketing in a culturally mixed country, and making your message heard in a cluttered environment.

"Brand reputation and image building by media and communications specialists is becoming as important as traditional advertising, in providing a full service to a brand and in differentiating agency service. Traditional PR of the 'boobs and balloons' event management style with routine press releases churned out without knowledge of the media, is past," explains Marsland. "We want to benchmark the level of professionalism in the industry and provide a forum where issues can be debated and knowledge shared."

The Communicate team points out that the ezine should not only be read by people in the industry. "We believe that a media platform that contains interesting, sometimes contentious, industry news will be of interest to everyone in business, and it will help to raise the communications profession to the level at which it rightly belongs – in the Boardroom," says Yossava.

Bizcommunity.com, which supplies daily advertising industry news to more than 9000 subscribers in South Africa, will provide the technical support and the news software platform. Director Andre Rademan says the launch of Communicate dovetails with Bizcommunity's strategy to offer quality industry news for all disciplines within Marketing.

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