International

The image above is already being dubbed “Russia’s Tiananmen image.”

The photo was snapped by New Yorker columnist Julia Ioffe, who attended a protest against Russia’s new President Vladimir Putin on the eve of his inauguration. She tweeted the image and it has since made its way around the world and into the media.

Protesters rallied against the re-elected Putin, who swapped jobs with the previous President, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the prime minister. Many believe the last election was rigged in Putin’s favor.

[via ABC News]

Brunswick Group has restructured its leadership in order to make chairman Alan Parker more available for external and client-facing work. Susan Gilchrist (left) has been promoted to a new position, group chief executive, based in New York. Rob Pinker has been promoted to the new position of COO based in London and Johannesburg. Both execs have been with the firm since 1995. Gilchrist was previously head of U.S. operations, a position she took in 2010 after relocating from London. Pinker was managing partner for the Middle East and Africa.

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APCO Worldwide is participating in London’s Chelsea Flower Show, the first comms firm ever to do so. The firm’s garden display will have a communications theme, “reflecting its role as a setting for important conversations and decision making throughout history,” according to the release. Comms as plant art!

At right, we have a rendering of the garden, with a list of all the plants being used available here. The water is meant to represent the flow of conversation, the planting beds provide seclusion, and it’s eco-friendly.

According to Ruth Willmott from the garden design company Willmott Whyte, the exhibit will be “a contemporary interpretation of a garden of communication.”

This seems like a lot to ask from plants, but as we Americans learned from Downton Abbey, the English are very expressive with their flora. And dead serious about their plant and flower shows. The Chelsea Flower Show is a five day affair that attracts 150,000 from around the world and is a bit of a social scene in London. It takes place May 22 through 26.

Waggener Edstrom Worldwide has invested in Shout Communications Korea, marking WagEd’s expansion into the Korean market.

Shout Communications Korea was founded in 2003 and has 50 consultants on staff. It specializes in PR and marketing services including strategic comms and event management.

Waggener Edstrom’s global network spans across 80 markets including recent additions in Australia, Belgium, and South Africa. Click here to read the profile of Melissa Waggener Zorkin, CEO and founder of the agency, for our Women Leaders in PR series.

InfiniteLatitude, a global network of 24 corporate communications professionals, has launched, covering 14 markets on five continents.

The network was founded by Ulrich Gartner, also the founder of Gartner Communications, based out of Frankfurt. Each of the participating pros has a minimum of 15 years of career experience and most have in-house experience. The network will focus its energies on subsidiary companies for major multinationals and small- to mid-sized businesses.

Among the network’s areas of expertise are crisis communications, IR, and targeted outreach to the U.S. Hispanic market, a specialty of Boston-based principal Richard Miles from Acumen Strategic Communications.

There have been a couple of global network launches in recent months, including The Surround Group and Brand Activation Network. Other firm networks include the Public Relations Global Network and IPREX.

OMG! Was Vladimir Putin crying?!

A photo of the newly-reelected Russian President as he made a speech over the weekend has everyone asking if the man known for doing judo and running around without a shirt got a little emotional after his big win. That glistening on his face in the photo at left is the tear in question. The Wall Street Journal has a close-up of the controversial tear on the cover of today’s paper.

When asked if the tear was real, Putin responded, “Well, yes, they were real — real from the wind.” Because, of course, Putin doesn’t cry. “Well, at least that was his explanation for what happened,” his spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, later added.

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Bender/Helper Impact and Indigo Pearl, a German-based comms agency, have launched The Surround Group, a coalition of international PR, marketing, and communications firms that will focus on areas of entertainment, media, and consumer technology.

Among the other firms involved in the venture are HiLinks in Chile, The Red Agency in Australia, and Webidiotz in Canada. Services will include social media consulting, financial and corporate relations, and graphic design and advertising services.

“Rather than establishing a loose alliance of affiliated PR and marketing agencies, Surround Group partners operate in a fully-integrated and collaborative manner – as well as being financially committed to the success of this venture,”  said B/HI president Lee Helper in a press release statement. Helper is now also the general managing partner of The Surround Group.

As PR (and other industries) continue to build their businesses across the African continent, it has become imperative that they gain local knowledge.

Social Media Week kicked off yesterday and, here in New York, the day ended with, among the cocktail parties and other discussions and festivities, an event titled “Meet the Afropolitans: Digital Media + Culture in Africa.” Moderated by Ngozi Odita, the founder of Society HAE, the discussion started with a look at some research into digital practices across the continent.

Portland Communications, which has offices in London, New York, and Nairobi, Kenya, found that the top three tweeting countries in Africa are South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria, with Eqypt and Morocco not too far behind. Moreover, their research found that most tweeters are between the ages of 20 and 29 years old and most activity is being logged on mobile devices. You can gather more info about that study here, and we have an infographic after the jump.

As the study and the panel made clear, Africa is made up of separate and unique countries. So blanket statements won’t do.

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Lord Tim Bell

The Financial Times is reporting that the Lord Bell and the Piers Pottinger are looking into the buyout possibilities for their firm, the Bell Pottinger, which they founded in the 1980s.

Bell Pottinger is big time in the U.K. though it recently made major headlines for footage of agency execs making unethical offerings to journalists posing as potential clients.

The FT says PR is a large but slow-growing business for Chime Communications, Bell Pottinger’s parent company. The Holmes Report says fee income for the Bell Pottinger Group (which operates as Chime’s PR division) were £68 million in 2010. Talks are in the early stages.