* Speech made at the opening of the Seminar on International Communication Aberje-Global Alliance on April 26, 2012. The event was organized by Aberje, who received the delegation of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management unprecedentedly for its annual meeting. The board of Confederation, which is the most important confederation of communications and public relations in the world, meets in Aberje for a series of discussions and deliberations on the area of ​​communication.

Dear guests

It is an honor to welcome you and, more importantly, reunite you at this event. It is an honor to bring you together: the great communicators of the world and the great communicators of Brazil – a community of excellence that is leading the development of communication, society, democracy, human relationships and business environments.

A network of 160,000 communicators is represented by the associations of the Global Alliance, brought to Brazil by invitation of Aberje.

For the last 45 years, Aberje has been the think-tank of Brazilian Corporate Communication, becoming a School of Communication at companies and institutions, which fits the concept of the paradigm as developed by Thomas Kuhn: in the Aberje environment, a constellation of beliefs, values, and communication and relational technologies were shared and developed by communicators and managers. Thus, Aberje created the field, dignified the profession, developed concepts and ideas and stimulated production, developing ideas that led the communicator from an operational to a strategic role through ethics and aesthetics, which have enriched and developed techniques. Even under the military dictatorship, Nilo Luchetti, the founder of Aberje – to a lesser extent than we do today – reunited the communicators who have created and developed company communication activities, and based on education, knowledge management, relationships, recognition, creative economy and communicational intelligence (our work fields), we have been slowly developing the roles of the communicators we brought together at that time and many more whom we approached and spoke with in the in the following decades.

It was in this multiplying sense - based on intelligence, effective management and a systemic view of the world - that we changed the trajectory of communicators and the scenario of communication of companies and institutions in Brazil. From our field work, we lead the communicator to go beyond a technical role to incorporate the role of manager and qualified intellectual in working directly in decision making and information management and transforming business; we lead business communication from an affirmative activity to a legitimizing activity that articulates viewpoints on the joint construction of narratives that involve and give meaning to work and to relationships in the world.

We recognize the best market assets with our Aberje Award, the most anticipated and sought after prize in Brazilian business communication.

We have served as a source to communicators who have needed an educational foundation and references in knowledge management. We have created, maintained and continue to articulate a network with the most important companies and their communication and business executives at the highest levels, so that the exchanges among them and development in a creative landscape gain momentum with communicational intelligence.

Brazil is not an exotic country today. We have legal security, political, civil and economic stability, democracy, advances in qualification and work specialization,  a rich environment and great energy potential. And besides this, we have excellent communication, the kind that can be exported, created by companies that act directly in the changes experienced by the country over the past two decades and that speak for the world today.

Conversing with the world as early as 1968, Aberje conducted the first scientific survey in the field of company and institutional communications, which was first published in issue 29 of the Getulio Vargas Foundation business and economics magazine and was studied and documented by Professor Weiss of the Sorbonne University a year later. Only seven years after our founding, before the great internationalization movement of Brazilian companies, we brought Gary D. Ortmann, then International Manager of Caterpillar, to Brazil. In the early 1990s, we held the 1st International Corporate Communication Encounter. In 1992, in line with sustainability, we held one of the preparatory events for ECO 92, Green Press, a conference on media, the environment and development. Also at the beginning of the decade, inspired by diversity and cultural richness, we created the 1st Business Communication Encounter for Portuguese Speaking Countries and started our partnership with the Portuguese Association of Business Communication (PACE), Portugal. In the late 1990s, we held the First International Congress of Communication, History and Memory, which explored the interfaces among those areas.
In 2005 we started our activities alongside the GRI and in 2007 became the first organization in the world to start the certification process with the organization for courses in the area. In 2006, in partnership with Syracuse University, we started the International Corporate Communication Course, which has graduated several hundred of the top communication directors in the country. In 2008, we began an intense series of International Programs on Government Relations.

And since 2009 we have participated continuously in major international congresses and conferences, strengthening relations and broadening the channels of communication exchange between Brazil and the various continents. As a result, in 2009, we expanded our prize with an international version to reward the best academic work done about the Brazilian scenario.

In 2010, with the intention of bringing Brazilian corporate communications to large global networks, we created Brazilian Corporate Communications Day, which has already had two editions held in New York, one in London and six more scheduled for this year in Germany, Argentina, Chile, England, Italy and Portugal. In 2011, we joined the board of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, representing Latin America.

Since our founding, hundreds of international events have been held. With each initiative, we bring to the global community the reality and practices of companies that have led the race for changes that have positioned Brazil on a new level: that of the sixth global economy.

We bring leaders who inspire change to a new scenario where corporations have to deal flexibly with different cultures and demands (a scenario to which Brazilians communicators are already accustomed). And with each initiative we reinforce our vision of being the center of reference in producing and disseminating the knowledge and practices of communication and relationships, inspiring organizations in their management strategies and our mission as the Brazilian Global Association.

Today, we have partnerships with leading associations, networks, organizations and academia from around the world. We produce and collaborate in creating benchmark content for an integrated world based on communication that is full of meaning, able to redeem dialogue and re-signify the symbolic exchanges between peoples and cultures. And, as we learn in Brazil, overcoming prejudices and cultural barriers, beginning with the mixing and creation of shared meaning in a complex and fragmented world. Starting from our history, we have combated views that feed xenophobia, terrorism, and discrimination based on race, gender, sexual conduct and socioeconomic status. For us there are no foreigners and we are radicals for an inclusive view.

With this brief overview, and surrounded by the major communicators in the world, I invite all the participants to reflect on this:

What should be tomorrow’s business narratives?