1. Provide resounding endorsement of the value of the office and post of Economic Envoy for Northern Ireland;
2. Ensure that it remains and its role is embedded as a core strand of economic development for Northern Ireland;
3. Highlight the importance of how a speedy replacement of the post of Economic Envoy for Northern Ireland will benefit the Northern Ireland economy during the remaining term of Secretary Hillary Clinton at the US State Department.

The statement on Declan Kelly’s resignation can be found here

I would like to extend an invite to attend the 2011 Kennedy Memorial Lecture and discussion at Queen’s University Belfast on Thursday 26 May at 6.00 pm. The lecture will be given by renowned US Presidential historian Robert Dallek on the subject ‘The Presidency of John F Kennedy’. 

The event will be hosted by the Chief Executives’ Club at Queen’s in association with MCE Public Relations and will take place in the Peter Froggatt Centre.

On the 50^th anniversary of the inauguration of President Kennedy in 1961, Robert Dallek will look back on the leadership and legacy of the youngest man elected President of the United States of America.

 Robert Dallek is the author of the international best-selling book ‘An Unfinished Life: John F Kennedy, 1917 -1963’,  which remains the most widely read one-volume biography of the 35^th President. He has taught at Columbia University, UCLA and Oxford.  He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Society of American Historians.

Refreshments will be served in the foyer of the Peter Froggatt Centre from 6.00pm and the lecture will begin at 6.30pm.

This event is free to attend.  We anticipate a high demand for places and would recommend that you register as soon as you can by contacting Brenda Carabine:  brenda.carabine@qub.ac.uk  Tel: 028 9097 1153

Robert Dallek will also speak in Dublin at Newman House (85/86 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2) on Thursday 2 June at 6.00 pm. This event is supported by the UCD Clinton Institute, Taoiseach’s office, the Washington-Ireland Programme for Service . We anticipate a high demand for places and would recommend that you register as soon as you can by contacting: catherine.carey@ucd.ie by 20th May Tel: +353 1 7161560

2011 marks the 50^th Anniversary of the inauguration of President Kennedy and the video captures some of Kennedy’s values in terms of tenancy, courage, leadership and commitment to overcoming some of the most challenging public issues of the day. Even 50 years later his words can speak and every one of us. As part of the 50^th Anniversary inauguration of President Kennedy the Kennedy Memorial in Belfast will focus on the first 1,000 days of his Presidency.

If you want to learn more about Kennedy Memorial or ways to support please include your details in the comment section below.

This has a big impact on not only businesses but marketeers on how information is imparted to consumers. I would say this but the PR profession is ahead of the curve on this just by the very nature of their work. Try it for yourself by selling in a story extolling the virtues and uniqueness of your product to a journalist and wait for the silence. Journalists by their nature apply the litmus test of whether the story has relevance, its commercial nature and whether it represents a genuine effort to impart helpful or interesting information to consumers. Journalists are also looking for transparency and something authentic. In the words of one journalist “honesty is the new black”. In some way this reflects the current position of consumers.   

So how do appeal to consumers in a new era of consumer activism?

In what might be a radical move businesses and brands need to stop marketing their products and services and instead promote a concept or values that relate to the product. The idea of concept or value based marketing is that you align the values of your product with the values of the target demographic or generate concepts which speak to the audience more clearly. You only have to think of innocent drink whose mantra is to make delicious, healthy, natural, ethical food universally available for all. I can also think back to a number of campaigns that I’ve worked on that reinforce this idea. For launching Hewlett-Packards smart phone into the Northern Ireland marketplace we focused on the concept of mobility (now this is back in 2006) based how people’s personal and professional lifestyles were merging and the need to provide device which would facilitate this. I’ll be posting a few more examples of concept marketing in the coming days – the good, the bad & ugly.

 In a City that has produced 95 Nobel prizes winners and whose Gross Domestic Product (GDP) outshines a small country like Sweden; Chicago is an unlikely setting for a new awakening that is taking place in terms of economic development. In fact, it has been driven in part by Illinois no longer being able to compete for jobs and investment on cost alone and a realisation that founders of promising start-ups like YouTube and Paypal were choosing to relocate from Illinois to more innovative environments.

For many the only way that Chicago could compete globally is by literally catapulting themselves above the competition through innovation. In short, Chicago is now seeking to become a global centre for innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. So what has this got to do with Belfast or Northern Ireland? During a recent visit to Chicago as part of a group known as Transatlantic Network 2020 we spent three days with President of the Chamber of Commerce Lance Pressl to explore how innovation and learning is being applied in the City. I came away thinking that there is a lot that Northern Ireland can learn from Chicago and I think the same is equally true for Chicago.

Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce has a clear vision of how it wants the region to become a more innovative through: collaborative networks, training the next century’s innovation talent pool and fostering business innovation leadership. That said, when compared to Chicago, Northern Ireland has a number of things going for it that we need to take stock of. Chicago gets no real Federal assistance in terms of economic development compared to the significant resources and important role of an economic development body like InvestNI. Despite President Obama hailing from Chicago, he has only returned three times and the economic development of Illinois like all other states is one of many priorities for the White House. In contrast, Northern Ireland is extremely fortunate to have Declan Kelly as an economic envoy – a fate that no other region globally has achieved. In Washington DC, later this year Northern Ireland will have its own US-NI Economic Conference were innovation will no doubt top the agenda.

 For me, the most important lesson is that innovation is not something that just happens in a science lab, it’s something that all businesses and entrepreneurs can engage in through collaboration. The impact of innovation is creation of new ideas or practices which become widely adopted to create significant economic and social value. That is surely the hope for the economic development for both Chicago and Belfast and there is no reason why the two cities should not collaborate further in a joint pursuit of innovation.

 The British Council’s Transatlantic Network 2020 is a network of young emerging leaders from Europe and North America who are interested in establishing transatlantic and global links.

 There used to be a joke about the Internet in the advertising community. They said, ‘We’ll advertise when it starts to look like TV, ” says Michael Galgon, former global chief advertising strategist at Microsoft. “Well, now it’s starting to look like TV.” That was from an interesting article in the International Herald and Tribune on the rise of internet TV. It now seems that there is not only a demand for TV online but also a business model to back it up.  It’s not only China that internet TV seems to be getting traction. I wanted to flag this article as it pricked my interest as a friend recently mentioned she no longer has a TV in the house and instead uses her computer and a combination of DVD’s/iPlayer & movie download. It seems that internet TV is an evolving phenomenon and business opportunity.

You can watch the tip tapping friendly busker below:

Just thought i’d get my blog singing and dancing again. I’ve been away for a while.