Author Archives: Ana Mangahas

The Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) brings in Firefly for campaign support

By Ana Mangahas | Published: May 14, 2012

The Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) has re-enlisted Firefly’s issues-based PR services following successful project collaboration in 2010. Originally tasked with raising mainstream awareness of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and establishing CEDR as a leading voice in the industry, the latest brief will see Firefly focus on the organisation’s not-for-profit work via the CEDR [...]

Communicating a merger or acquisition: often, it’s a question of culture

By Ana Mangahas | Published: April 17, 2012

One day last week, I woke up to the idea that thousands of young, would-be tech entrepreneurs must all be thinking the same thing: “When I grow up, I want an exit strategy just like Instagram’s”. And who could blame them? The ‘Instagram 13’ as I like to call them, have achieved overnight fame and [...]

Lead from the middle or shine at the fringes? Public relations and the nuances of international PR coordination

By Ana Mangahas | Published: February 22, 2012

Being a European PR agency, at Firefly, I have the pleasure of working with French, German and Scandinavian colleagues on a regular basis. And those are just my co-workers: in the course of my day-to-day work, I also come across plenty of fellow Americans, Antipodeans, western and eastern Europeans, and many, many citizens of the [...]

The world in a #: the age of nano-public relations

By Ana Mangahas | Published: January 24, 2012

We live in an age of nano-PR, when a mere symbol (#) followed by a few words smashed together (justlikethis) can spell glory or doom for your PR campaign. Here is a recent example of the latter, which was brought to my attention in this post by Gordon Macmillan. In a nutshell, a McDonald’s campaign [...]

On matters of Wikipedia…can PRs really be Switzerland?

By Ana Mangahas | Published: January 11, 2012

There have been some great posts recently about how to make the Wikipedia and PR “dance” more like a waltz and less like head-banging; Stuart Bruce’s and Phil Gomes’s being two that convey solid arguments in favour of open and responsible Wikipedia editing by PRs and corporate communicators. To rewind: agencies – most notably, Bell [...]

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The PR Output-to-Outcome Ratio: Make it Worthwhile

By Ana Mangahas | Published: January 9, 2012

Over the Christmas break, after filming a rather hilarious “dad dance” sequence on my iPhone, I got to talking with some folks about the glory days of the personal digital assistant (PDA). My “wow, you’re old” moment came when I mentioned the Palm Pilot, which in the late 90s was the show-off executive gadget of [...]

Freedom appoints Firefly to reposition for growth in TMT market

By Ana Mangahas | Published: September 20, 2011

UK-based technology, media and telecommunications solutions provider, Freedom, has appointed Firefly Communications as its agency of record. Firefly will deliver a fully integrated campaign which includes internal communications support, as well as development of the PR strategy, planning and implementation to support Freedom’s growth plans. Pat Botting, managing director of Freedom, said, “Firefly was selected [...]

Let Your PR Agency Sweat the Conference Assets

By Ana Mangahas | Published: August 22, 2011

As the song goes, “back to life, back to reality”.  August 2011 has been an eventful month and (social upheaval aside) repeated a long-time trend. For those working in PR and communications, August is rarely ever slow; more often than not, in our profession, August is often breathtakingly frantic. This is due to a number [...]

Is Social Media Eating PR’s Lunch?

By Ana Mangahas | Published: July 11, 2011

Now before you think, “what a bizarre question,” with regard to this blog post’s title, let’s just stop and reflect on one thing for a moment: Twitter. Nothing about Twitter could have bypassed your notice; and if Time magazine had a “Thing of the Year” issue, the Tweety-bird logo should be firmly plastered on its [...]

The PR power in Twitter?

By Ana Mangahas | Published: May 11, 2011

A slambook looks innocent enough: a simple notebook with a series of questions (What is your favourite colour? Who is your favourite actor? What is your favourite subject?), passed around by the owner to his/her classmates for them to fill out. Many a rainy lunch hour in my American sixth grade* class was spent poring [...]