The last members’ meeting of the Public Relations Network took place in Mexico City. Veit Mathauer, Managing Director of the German agency Sympra and Chairman of the network, has captured his impressions of the meeting in the following blog post:

I spent last week in Mexico City at the members’ meeting of our international agency association Public Relations Network (PRN). Here are a few impressions.

Uber works perfectly here. I’m standing at the airport terminal, enter where I want to go in the app and find out that Isaak will be picking me up at Puerta 8 in three minutes in his brown Nissan V-Drive. I can see the car approaching me on the map. The price to my Airbnb is fixed from the outset, the car is spotlessly clean. I’m not worried that the driver might take me to a dubious neighborhood, and I can tip him in the app… My first Uber ride was years ago, I’m still thrilled and wonder why we still don’t have this service in Germany.

The personal meetings of the agency owners are a special feature of our network. Twice a year, we meet at the location of one of our partner agencies, which puts together an attractive program each time: Sometimes it’s a public conference (e.g. Hong Kong 2018 and New Delhi 2019); othertimes,  it’s various workshops or presentations by company representatives. Despite the packed agenda, there is always enough time for exchange and discussion, possibly continuing over dinner or later at the bar.

Another thing: free WiFi works everywhere. Lightning-fast in Airbnb and hotels, in every restaurant, every shopping mall and in large areas of the city center.

At the meeting organized by our Mexican colleague Héctor Lira, from the agency f1rstcomm, the focus was on AI. Vicente Aguilar, a development engineer at Google, gave us a look inside the crystal ball of AI. Héctor introduced us to his app, which he developed for PR agencies based on ChatGPT and which is now also in use at Sympra. With the participants on site and those who joined the Member Meeting virtually, we discussed who is already using which AI tools for which tasks: “knowledge transfer” is a constant topic in our network.

Mexico City is a fascinating boomtown. Entire new districts have been built in recent years, with chic 20, 30 or 40-storey business skyscrapers. At the same time, Mexico City is a city that is very traditional – as can be seen from the countless old commercial buildings and palaces made of lava stone, the many cafés, restaurants and museums. A city in which I feel absolutely safe, at least in the metro, in the historic old town and in the districts of Roma, Condesa and Polanco.

Is it worth the effort for this agency network, to travel to the members’ meetings and coordinate with the many partners? Unreservedly: yes. Of course, the commitment is great, especially because I have been the honorary chairman of this network for several years and therefore have a few special tasks. But we benefit from our network – and above all our clients, to whom we can offer PR support in practically all relevant markets around the world and who also demand it. We regularly receive orders from our partner agencies whose clients we support in Germany. And we have a network where information can be obtained quickly at any time (without having to request a quote straight away), which operates on a lean basis (the members of the Board act on a voluntary basis) and which is available to our clients ad hoc in the event of a crisis. The next member meeting will take place in Toronto – I’m already looking forward to it!