Students’ impressions

 In the amphitheatre A3 of Belgrade Business School, on 16^th November 2005, at 12am, Professor from George Washington University and former Director of the American University of Rome , Dr Margaret Melady, read a paper on “The role of PR in trading”.

 She looked back on the history of PR and its beginnings in the form of promotion. She explained the early use of PR and how the formation of false notion can affect and to what extent it affected the reputation of the very promotion. In her further discussion she explained the very concept of promotion and the importance of promotion of every individual, company owner and the level where those moves can change the conscience of individuals, employers of certain institutions, improve their trust in the leader and the very productivity of a company. She gave basic directives where the organization and the individual should circulate, and how to approach certain problems.

“You don’t only need to promote company, organization or product but the way people feel about those products.”

 With very concise sentences, as the one above quoted, so methodical and thereby uttered to give away the picture of spontaneity, and with amazing interaction with the students, Professor explained the essence of PR. Concretely with this sentence the attention was drawn to the fact that the picture where both sides would profit, must be formed! She particularly emphasized that everything must be done wittingly! Therefore, you could not expect to wake one day and that solutions simply occurred to you, but everything was a result of capabilities of people from PR who must be artists, must be creative, must explore and use their experience and of course, must have a plan. It is very significant to emphasize that Professor tried to come to all crucial conclusions by communicating with the students and therefore even more to draw their attention and to enable them to understand the theme. Thus, we all concluded on this example that in that case the research would focus towards students, their parents, the staff, the government and surely, the media.

She also emphasized the necessity of goal definition, above all general goal, as the necessity of ponderable goals, because that kind of goal then became the guide. Surely that one of goals was the improvement of firm’s reputation too, or for example the reputation of school, faculty etc.

As a highlight of the lecture, Dr Margaret Melady gave an example from a firm in which she had worked and she explained how much relations with the community and the church can affect the realization of goals, how important to inform people was and how much media influential in those situation were.

The lecture of such an expert showed how important approach was. It showed that dozens, even hundreds of barren pages could be replaced by a single good example and how a qualitative relation with students and their involvement in conclusion affected the acceptance and comprehension of the given theme.

After this lecture followed the discussion of the Director for Marketing and Career Development on the American University of Rome , Dr Robert Sonnabend, who read a note on global marketing – integrated marketing communications. This lecture was equally impressive. Professor explained what the notion GIMC nowadays represented (Global Integrated Marketing Communication), bases and new ethics. He explained that there were no five nor six but ten instruments of marketing mix. He concluded that the key task was coordination and integration of these instruments nowadays and that certainly such a common effect was always bigger than total of parts’ results.

According to the scheme which he exhibited, basic components were product, price, promotion and distribution. Indeed it provoked in the mildest term curiosity among our students right away. Where did we lose our place, the question was. Well, that was the question which was answered by unique cooperation with the students, by examples, by the story which was very spontaneous, unique and which you ought to hear in order to understand what I was talking about. I would not write a reply to that question, for it was very logical. He did not mention anything spectacularly new, but a great fact which proved something that every student had already known. More correctly, he only induced us to think and surely, to come to our own conclusions. This approach fascinated us all, we felt as if we had solved the complete mystery of marketing. That was the object of every Professor, and we witnessed exactly the same on Friday, 16^th November 2005 .

Dr Robert Sonnabend, after clearing up this small, but then again big question, he explained the role of verbal communication which today accounts for only 10%, indeed in relation to nonverbal communication. Then he finally revealed the mystery conjectured at the beginning of the lecture about numerous instruments. Something that was also very interesting was the very course of the lecture which was so well rationalized and performed because the instruments were already mentioned and through examples clarified so that in the end it was sufficient only to count those instruments. Those instruments were: advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, PR, personal sale, crisis management, exhibitions, sponsorships, influence of the Internet and products’ positioning (in the sense of placing the same into cadres of the most wanted series, programs, films etc.).

The fact that our students are more than interested in this kind of lectures was shown by a great response of the students which surprised me as well as our professors, and what is the most significant, it surprised our guest lecturers pleasantly. Also, one of the indices is the participation of our students in the very lecture which certainly increases the weightiness of this success.

In the end I can only hope that it will be more visits of the eminent professors and successful businessmen who have concrete answers to many essential questions of successful trading, and those are certainly answers which worth more than any definitions to students. I will only thank the school directory that made all this possible and to encourage them not to stop here but to enable us to see more of these lectures and surely to thank the guest lecturers and ask them to come back again.