Photo: Ben Levine
Through six thematic panels, about 200 experts and communicators heard more than forty prominent speakers from Slovenia and abroad, and identified the key challenges and opportunities for the future of public relations.
The first thematic unit of the conference proved to be the most important, in which Ben Levine, a renowned British expert and vice president of Ketchum Global Research & Analytics team, talked about the inefficiency of the current methods of measuring the value of communication. Experts agree that the Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) gives a false sense of reach and has nothing to do with the achievement of business and communication goals. So one of the biggest challenges for communicators in the near future is the monitoring of methods for measuring communication that comply with the document from Barcelona, and how to convince the leaders of organizations. On the first day of the conference, guests were also addressed by Klaus Valskov, brand manager at General Electric Oil & Gas and president of IABC EMENA, who emphasized the role of internal communications and its added value for an organization. After that the third program unit was unveiled, based on the lecture by the spokeswoman of the IT Office of the European Parliament in Slovenia, which highlighted new dimensions of efficiency and effectiveness of communication by means of digitization.
On the second day of the conference communicators participated in a session on the theme of the harmony of an organizations’ business and the communications associated with it. A round table on media changes and changes in the media attracted great attention. Participants connected changes in the media with changes in public relations and the analysis of changes in the relations of both professions. In the final thematic section, well-known Slovenian experts spoke about the right to information and privacy in public communication.
As is the tradition, The Slovenian Association for Public Relations awarded the Prizma awards and the Primus award again this year at the SKOJ. The Prizma 2015 for excellence in communication projects per categories went to BTC Ljubljana and the Pristop agency, Renault Nissan Slovenia, Lidl Slovenia and the Taktik agency, Gorenje Sirovina and Triglav Insurance. The Primus Award 2015 for the best communicator among Slovenian managers was received by Marjan Fank, Director-General of Police. Special award for exceptional visibility, efficiency and creativity went to the institute of the Museums and Galleries of Ljubljana for their project Museum in Miniature – Emona Returns. Nika Grašič, president of the Student section of the Slovenian Society for Public Relations, received the award for Volunteer of the Year 2015.
