Walkthons, an excellent tool of CSR

Yesterday, I was reading an article on the sunday newspaper about the walkathons organized for 2nd year by Ecco, a well known athletic brand. Ecco has introduced this set of events that take place in several cities of Denmark, Germany and Poland, as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility Program. Last years events raised more than 400.000€ which have been donated to the organizations chosen by the participants themselves!
But its not the first time an event of this type is organized. The first known walkathon was held in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1953 by the famous comedian Ramón Rivero, who walked 80 miles to raise money for the Puerto Rican League Against Cancer.

Since then, several CSR focused businesses encourage community members to voluntarily get involved with a walk event of a predetermined distance. The main cause varies from fund raising ( registration fees / donations / corporate sponsorships) to public awareness of the subject the organisation wishes to communicate.

Walkthons are excellent tool in the kit of public relations specialists as it mobilizes broad based community support, with participants from a wide range of ages and economic backgrounds.

Nowadays, hundreds of walkathons are organised all over the world, including Puerato Rican League Against Cancer, Walk and Rock, Arthritis Walk, Breast Cancer 3Day, Memory Walk by Alzheimer’s Association, PetWalk by Petsmart Charities and Out of the Darkness Community Walks by American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

New Media : Concerns ....

A survey was conducted in the end of 2006 by the PRSA and Dow Jones & company, in an effort to measure the degree of acceptance of new communication technology by the PR professionals and students of the field.

The findings of the survey were presented in the Public Relations Tactics and among others supported that there is an increased acceptance of the new technology tools as they considerably help Pr specialists engage with their key stakeholders. From all the available tools, the ones that provide the best opportunities to professionals are the news web sites, the blogs and the social networking sites.

Although, new media’s popularity was increasingly rapidly, the survey’s results suggests that there were serious concerns about the credibility of the information; there were no clear regulations and the potential for reputational harm was present at any time. As a consequence, there was a greater trust in traditional media.

Four years after this survey, I believe the same concerns are more contemporary than ever and a serious work towards the building of new media’s credibility has to be done.

Questioning the contribution?

A few days ago while driving at work and listening the morning news, once more I understood the extend of deprecation of PR’s role in my country. The broadcaster of a highly respected radio station was wondering why the Greek Ministry of Education included in its budget, during these difficult times, the amount of 15.000€ for PR activities! Can you imagine it?

It is true that still in Greece there is a lack of knowledge concerning PR profession and its contribution to the achievement of effective relationship building.
The last decade there was a huge improvement towards the acceptance of PR profession by the communication market as well as by the general public. Nevertheless, many things have to be done till we may achieve the recognition the profession experiences in other western societies.
The main reasons for this lack of appreciation are that:
 A number of persons present themselves as PR practitioners and offer ambiguous level of services
 Media entitle PR gurus persons that have no actual relation to the profession
 There is a lack of legal rules according to which the professionals are eligible to offer PR services


PR practitioners should see this situation as an excellent opportunity to communicate their job contribution as best as possible. At the end, communicating effectively is not what we are supposed to do better?

Twitter & PR practice

Twitter, since its launch in 2006, is an excellent tool in the hands of communication specialists. It allows organizations to communicate in a direct, informal way with its interest groups and create an active online, virtual community of followers.



Although Twitter shares some common characteristics with other social media - products of the last decade’s technological developments - it forces its users to be concise by responding with a maximum of 140-character messages. Further more, it is a mean that provides the unique ability to the user, of posting a tweet regardless of where he /she is (e.g. via mobile).

Its benefits have been identified by PR professionals who based on the special needs of its communication program, take full advantage of it.

More specifically it:

* Provides an instant access to an organization news
* Adds the human element in strictly business relationships
* Promotes the loyalty of followers
* Is an extremely valuable tool for the effective crisis management / especially in cases of emergency, due to its real time monitoring aspect

I am employed in the Tourism sector and my recent registration to Twitter proved to be extremely helpful! As I chose the TRAVEL option from the Interests list, I receive on a daily basis news related to new destinations, hotels, travel packages, travel guides and tips from trustworthily sources such as nymag.travel, Frommer’s, Conde Nast Traveller. Thus not only I save time and money but also it is a precious tank of ideas that promote my creativity!