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Nortel’s Ambitious P.R. Campaign
By Mark Evans | October 24, 2006
There are lots of fascinating things about Nortel but most recently, it has been interesting to see how the company has unleased an ambitious public relations campaign featuring many of its senior executives. Whether it’s chief technology officer John Roese talking about the need for more bandwidth, or chief strategy officer George Riedel speculating about acquisitions or CEO Mike Zafirovski speaking yesterday about how “the stars are aligning for Nortel to come back very strong”, there’s a definite theme happening. This approach compares with Zafirovski’s predecessors, Bill Owens, who was clearly uncomfortable talking to the high-tech media, and Frank Dunn, who found his distain for the media difficult to hide. With most of the company’s problem (accounting scandal, class-action lawsuits, layoffs, etc.) now behind it, clearly Nortel believes the time is right to start talking the talking (we’ll see if the company can walk the walk with better results). Zafirovski, who has been a keynote machine recently, was in Montreal yesterday offering some optimism about the future. “I do believe as 2006 winds down, this will show a nice improvement over 2005,” he said, adding he’s looking to the growth of video over the Internet to provide new opportunities.
Topics: Executive Suite |