Seminar overview
This one-day seminar concentrates on outlining corporate cross-cultural communications strategies, and ways of preparing them, that work in today’s fast-changing world of global commerce. The seminar will emphasize how to identify, and subsequently exploit, the tangible and intangible factors that make your product saleable to foreign markets. Special attention is also paid to the increasingly significant role of digital media and marketing in not only selling products but also in creating and maintaining brand identification and customer loyalty. Specific examples of successful and unsuccessful approaches are provided, as are examples of real tactics that can be put into practice in your business right away.

Who Should Attend
This seminar is ideal for CEOs and other corporate leaders wishing to gain a ‘big picture’ view of desired operational goals in cross-cultural corporate communications, in order to assess future budgeting needs and strategy in regards to this area. Also, from the point of view of detailed execution, it is most relevant for Promotions, Marketing and Corporate Communications executives and employees.

Generally, the corporate profiles of potential attendees include any company with aspirations to export its products, as well as media bodies, publishers, and businesses wishing to attract other kinds of foreign interest, such as tour operators and purveyors of products appealing to locally-based foreigners.

How will you benefit?
· Learning how to better understand cross-cultural markets and their needs and desires
· Learning methods for better strategizing cross-cultural communications campaigns
· Learning to ‘speak the language’ of other cultures, and integrating your cross-cultural communications campaign with their perceptions and world view
· Being informed of current and future developments in the world of New Media and online platforms- and how this affects your company’s cross-cultural communications tactics
· Networking opportunities with other corporate leaders and foreign experts

9:00 Registration

9:30 – 11:00 Module 1: Quality Cross-Cultural Communications: Why Bother?
· Informed cross-cultural communications: does it even matter?
· Identifying (and adhering to) Minimal Standards: the brief checklist for any company
· Quality cross-cultural communications vis-à-vis risk mitigation and brand perception issues
· Taking stock: identifying inherent resources and relevant communications opportunities
· Are we selling what we think we’re selling?
· Cross-cultural communications in practice: Some successful and unsuccessful examples
· Exercise. Looking within: identifying company-specific resources and how to better communicate them to a cross-cultural audience (20 minutes)

11:00 – 11:15 Coffee Break

11:15 – 12:45 Module 2: Developing and Implementing Cross-cultural Communications Strategies
· From identification of resources to forging communications strategy
· Lateral thinking, critical thinking, team management and trust from the top: key factors
· Where are we going with this? Forging multiple communications strategies for differing cross-cultural markets- without losing broad product identity and appeal
· Exercise. Ready, set, go! An experiment in cross-cultural communications idea generation (20 minutes)

12:45- 13:30 Lunch Break

13:30 – 14:30 Module 3: Current trends in New Media, and communications tactics during a period of economic recovery
· Overview of today’s New Media ecosystem: social media and network development, cloud computing, the migration to hand-held devices and so on
· The trend toward specialization, communities, and spontaneity in innovation
· Building buzz- and sustaining it- by enhancing cross-cultural corporate promotions and marketing with help from external, self-perpetuating Web communities
· Transformational cross-cultural communications campaigns: where the human and technological come together

14:30-15:00: Final questions and comments

Christopher Deliso

Chris Deliso is an American author, travel writer, media consultant and online media developer. A longtime resident of the Republic of Macedonia, he directs the Balkan-interest news and analysis website www.balkanalysis.com, one of the most respected sources of independent information on the region today. As a freelance writer he has contributed since 2001 to numerous newspapers and magazines in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as other European countries, and is also a correspondent on Macedonian politics and Balkan security topics for the Economist Intelligence Unit and Jane’s Intelligence Weekly, respectively.
Chris is also the co-author of numerous recent publications from Lonely Planet (www.lonelyplanet.com), the largest and most influential travel publisher in the world. These books include bestselling guidebooks to Greece, the Greek Islands, Bulgaria, Western Balkans and Eastern Europe, with special coverage of Macedonia for the final two. However, Chris is arguably best known to Macedonian audiences for his travelogue Hidden Macedonia (Haus Publishing, London, 2007, translated as Skriena Makedonija in 2008).
Chris has lived and traveled in several Balkan and Mediterranean countries since achieving an MPhil with Honours in Byzantine Studies from Oxford University in 1999. In addition, he has intermediate knowledge of the Greek and Macedonian languages. His personal website, with further publishing information, background details and media citations, is www.chrisdeliso.com.

10,000 den + 18% VAT per participant (does not apply to Trustee/Executive members)