Beiruting News

As part of the company's long-term initiative to promote the profession of public relations and build an indigenous industry across the Middle East, TRACCS, one of the largest public relations networks in the Middle East & North Africa, partnered with P World to bring the first edition of The Global PR Trends Summit to Beirut. The two day summit proved a great success as it was led by some of the world's most innovative PR experts from BP America, Unilever, P&G, AstraZeneca, Schneider Electric and other renowned global organizations. It gathered over 80 communication and PR practitioners from Lebanon and the region and presented two days of open discussions on the latest trends in PR, with special focus on crisis management, social media, reputation management and content management. The second day was dedicated to Donald Steel's, former Chief Communications Advisor at BBC and the corporation's Chief Media Spokesman for 11 years, highly interactive crisis simulation workshop.

Opening the summit with the regional keynote speech, TRACCS's CEO, Mohamed Al Ayed presented the state of PR and communications in the MENA region. According to Mohamed, "Effective communicators should not only aspire, but also inspire." "The development of the PR industry stands on five phases and factors: Attaining Exploration and Realization, Development and Trust, to reach the capstone of the PR pyramid by building Innovation", he adds.

Commenting on the occasion, Katia Yasmine, Managing Director of TRACCS Lebanon, says, "Public Relations can transform, build and protect the image and identity of an organization. This is even more true in our troubled times today." She adds, "Since the practice of public relations has great potential in Lebanon for both private and public sector organizations, we were proud to partner with The Global PR Trends Summit to raise awareness of this powerful and cost effective communications discipline and further nurture its growth."