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The Fusion of Marketing & Technology

The Marketing Innovations Club produced yet another eye-opener. This time the event was “Public Relations and Internet”, supported jointly by the Departments of Information Technology and Marketing.

On March 1st 2006, the students of the IMBA and Marketing Management programs had the opportunity to gain insight into the rapidly growing use of technology in Public Relations (PR).

Presenting the topic were:

* Pablo Paniagua, founder of Paniagua Consultores (a Spanish PR consulting Firm)
* Juan Iván Martín, MD and Financial Director of CommPact (a leading Spanish Technology PR firm)
* Steve Maynard, Director of European Marketing of Visto UK.

Visto is the client of both Paniagua Consultores and CommPact. They provide a platform for mobile email solutions to mobile operators in Europe and USA.

The discussion was focused around two main areas: the emergence and importance of technology in Public Relations and where the technology ends and the marketing begins. The icing on the cake was the case study of Visto itself on how it used technology based public relations to gain footprint at 2005 3GSM Congress at Cannes.

Students at Instituto de Empresa showed immense insight into the industry and came up with questions that tested the knowledge and experience of the speakers. Tools such as Viral Marketing, Webstat, Rapid Action Sites, Virtual Pressroom and many more were discussed in detail, evaluating the pros and cons of each. The case of Visto was special as it also brought to light that technology is an augmenter of Public Relations and thus can not replace traditional PR at the very core.

We thank Compact, Visto and Paniagua Consultores for insight into the fusion of marketing and technology! We also thank Eduardo Fernandez Cantelli and Jose Esteves from the departments of Marketing and Technology here at Instituto de Empresa.