A guest lecture to MA students of the Faculty of Communication and Public Relations, hemophilia Bucharest, unhealthy Romania (March, gastritis 2012)

The end of March has been really busy. After a thought challenging event dedicated to social media for internal communication, I continued my day with a guest talk to a group of master students following the courses of one of Bucharest’s communication schools.

Business Promotion Techniques (Tehnici de Promovare in Afaceri) is taught by Alexandra Zbuchea and covers business promotion from advertising, public relations, branding, marketing, sales and sponsorship views. As the course covers already a lot, my talk about social media as a business promotion channel was case study focused and aimed to show that social media allows tactics to be combined but in essence requires the same strategic thinking as all other promotional efforts.

In this sense, I presented social media as a support for various goals – from marketing, sales, customer service, public relations  – and revisited some of the most popular recent examples including the Old Spice Man You Could Smell Like campaign, Nestle vs Greenpeace, the Icelandic volcanic ash.

I enjoyed the evening and the questions, especially those about the future of social media and of the internet. Of these, I’ll have to think more and perhaps come back with an answer at a later date. Until then, the Core Foresight Workshops of the European Commission might be of some inspiration and provide some food for thought.