Insight

Purposeful Relations co-founder Stuart Bruce is one of the speakers at the World Communication Forum Association’s global summit on 7 June 2022.

Unfortunately, unlike the World Economic Forum, the World Communication Forum isn’t back in Davos yet. This year’s summit is still as an online event, rather than returning to the Davos Congress Centre where it has been in previous years.

The remote summit is on Tuesday 7 June. The theme is The New PR World: Look ahead. Re-think. Change. Succeed.

It’s free to attend and speakers include: Maxim Behar (Bulgaria) – president of WCFA and CEO of M3 Communications; Arun Sudhaman (Hong Kong) – CEO/Editor-in-Chief, PRovoke Media; Francis Ingham (UK) – PRCA Director General; and ICCO Chief Executive; and Purposeful Relations co-founder Stuart Bruce (UK).

Stuart will be talking about The Key Role of Public Relations in the Global Recovery.

There are speakers from Armenia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, UK, USA and Vietnam.

You can find out more information on the WCFA website.

The World Communication Forum Association in Davos has elected Purposeful Relations co-founder Stuart Bruce to its global executive committee to govern its activities for the period 2022-2025.

Stuart Bruce will work alongside four other executive committee members and its global advisory board. The executive committee members were approved by the WCFA General Assembly, the main deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the Association, and legally accepted by the Swiss Commercial Register. The new executive committee is tasked with developing the WCFA through the next phase of its global expansion in members and activities.

The sitting WCFA president Maxim Behar (Bulgaria – CEO of M3 Communications) was approved to take on a new three-year mandate. The executive committee now consists of Stuart Bruce (UK – founder of reputation management and crisis communications consultancy Stuart Bruce Associates and co-founder of comms digital transformation consultancy Purposeful Relations); Aaron Kwittken (US – founder and CEO of CommTech company Prophet and founder of global PR and brand strategy firm KWT Global); Mai Anh Le (Vietnam – Regional Country Manager at Global PR Hub); and Thabisile Phumo (South Africa – Senior VP and Head of Stakeholder Relations at Sibanye-Stillwater).

The annual general meeting also elected the members of the first WCFA Global Advisory Board, comprised of key business representatives with deep experience in communications. The board is made up of Alasdair Townsend (Brazil), Cesare Valli (Italy), Ganesh Chandrasekaran (India), German Saa (Japan), Hesham Mesbah (United States), Michael Schröder (Germany), Nurul Ashiqin Shamsuri (Malaysia), Pelin Kocaalp (Turkey), Rosanne Bourque (Canada), Saurabh Uboweja (India), Tatevik Simonyan (Armenia), Vlad Bazikalov (United Kingdom), and Zsofia Lakatos (Hungary).

Purposeful Relations has launched to provide CommsTransform™, a digital transformation roadmap for communications and corporate affairs. It offers the new platform to in-house teams and PR agencies globally.

Purposeful Relations been set up by PR futurist and communications transformation specialist Stuart Bruce and digital transformation specialist Tim Bailey.

Stuart Bruce said: “For the last 10 years, I’ve worked independently to help clients modernise through a blend of consultancy and training to help them use communications technology more effectively and to adopt new processional practice. CommsTransform™ is a synthesis of this experience with Tim’s experience of digital transformation across numerous sectors.”

Bruce explained CommsTransform™ as an audit and analysis of people, processes and products. It analyses individual and team capabilities, work processes and existing technology products and services. It benchmarks these against the PRTech, CommsTech and MarTech markets and global capabilities for communications and PR professionals. CommsTransform™ provides actionable insights for improving the use of existing technology, streamlining and improving workflows, new technology to enhance performance and professional development in skills and capabilities.

Purposeful Relations has set up a global advisory board of senior external experts to provide insights and critical thinking on the future of society and business as well as public relations and communications. The advisory board members include:

• Emeritus Professor Anne Gregory at University of Huddersfield who led Global Alliance’s work on creating the Global Capabilities Framework.
• Tim Johns, former vice president of global corporate communications for Unilever.
• Associate Professor Kara Alaimo of Hofstra University in New York and formerly President Obama’s spokesperson for international affairs in the US Treasury.
• Becca Caddy, technology journalist and author of Screen Time about finding a better balance with technology.
• Wayne Burns, executive director of the Centre for Corporate Public Affairs in Sydney.
• Amith Prabhu, a Global Alliance board member and dean of the School of Communications and Reputation in India.

Tim Bailey said: “Technology has revolutionised the legal, financial and marketing worlds. Communications and public relations are playing catch-up. The Edelman Future of Corporate Communications Study 2021 reported that 70% of chief communication officers said CommsTech is a top area of investment for the coming year and 56% said they are increasing their use of technology. Despite this eagerness to invest many will fail as barriers include identifying the right technology, justifying the investment, and resolving conflicts with IT and marketing.”

Stuart Bruce said: “Critically 47% of CCOs say their teams struggle to adapt and leverage digital tools and analytics. All these challenges are what CommsTransform™ is designed to solve. We help clients to not only solve their technology challenges but more importantly the bigger cultural and professional practice challenges.”

Bruce and Bailey previously worked together at Wolfstar, one of the UK’s first digital-first PR consultancies that Bruce set-up in 2007 and exited in 2011. Tim Bailey was an early recruit when he joined as a client facing chief technology officer, which was a first for a PR agency at the time. Bailey has subsequently worked in a series of in-house digital transformation roles and at digital and ecommerce agencies.

Over the last 10 years Bruce has worked has worked primarily with international clients in Europe, Middle East, India, Asia and Australia as a corporate adviser and trainer on modernising public relations as well as providing consultancy on crisis communications and measurement and evaluation. Bruce is a chartered public relations practitioner and served as a CIPR director for three years. He is also one of only five fellows of AMEC and serves on the UK PR Council of the PRCA.

The core CommsTransform™ product is supported by four related services. Purposeful Relations is tech and vendor agnostic so helps identify, evaluate, select, buy and implement PRTech, CommsTech and MarTech. Its professional development practice provides training, learning and mentoring through its own trainers, associates and signposting to third party training courses and professional and academic qualifications. Its measurement and evaluation practice helps clients develop and implement bespoke measurement playbooks, frameworks and dashboards. Finally Purposeful Relations also helps clients to identify and keep up with emerging trends in public relations practice including purpose, ESG, behavioural science, and disinformation and misinformation.

Purposeful Relations director Stuart Bruce is speaking at two events in AMEC Measurement Month 2021.

Stuart Bruce is speaking at the ‘Steps towards measurement maturity and the future of evaluating communications” webinar organised jointly by the the Nordic Alliance for Communications and Management (NORA) and the European Communications Directors Association (EACD). It takes place on 24 November 2021 at 13:00 in the UK (14:00 CET).

He is also speaking at the PRCA Measurement Conference on 30 November. Stuart is speaking in a session moderated by AMEC global chair Richard Bagnall on the rise of technology. The conference is sponsored by CARMA.

You can read more about both events on Stuart’s PR Fururist blog and find the registration links. Both events are free to attend.

The Communicate DataComms Awards recognise and celebrate the use of data in corporate communications and by corporate communicators. Purposeful Relations director Stuart Bruce has been selected as one of the judges.

The judging panel has a wealth of expertise of PR and communication professionals steeped in data and analytics. It includes Kerry Sheehan, head of development and innovation at GCS; Alex Malouf, corporate communications director at Schneider Electric and Rebecca Zeitlin, head of communications and external affairs at Hybrid Air Vehicles.

You can find out more about the DataComms awards on Stuart’s PR Futurist blog.