Edward Dixon brings more than 22 years of corporate
communications and public relations experience with global brands to his
role as managing director of Porter Novelli Singapore with
responsibility for Porter Novelli’s southern Asia network (ASEAN, ANZ
and India). Ed’s success at managing international programs is rooted in
a perspective developed while working and living in the U.S., Europe
and Asia. In Singapore, his team manages clients including Gillette,
Hewlett-Packard and the Singapore government – many of which require a
world-class strategic approach that integrates relevant local insights
to ensure brand stories resonate in Asian markets. Ed’s experience in
corporate communications, consumer branding, digital PR, employee
communications and CSR comes from stints at Porter Novelli New York,
where he guided globally focused client teams for Hewlett-Packard, the
Financial Times, McAfee Security, Bank of America and Timberland. Ed
also spent 14 years in-house, as vice president of global communications
at MasterCard International and as public affairs officer for
Citibank’s Global Consumer Bank. He holds a master’s degree in public
communications from Fordham University. Passionate about how technology
impacts and improves consumers’ lives, Ed blogs on travel technology.
He’s a master scuba diver, a published photographer and a longtime
volunteer for Operation Smile, a global nonprofit that provides
reconstructive surgery to children born with facial deformities. He’s an
avid traveler who has visited more than 70 countries on six continents,
and in February 2010 will take part in a research expedition to
Antarctica to document the impact global warming has on the flora and
fauna of the continent.
“There is no true ‘global
communications strategy,'” says Ed. “Brands will succeed on a global
scale only if they communicate in a way that creates relevant dialogues
at the regional, country, city, village and individual level. There is
much to learn from the targeted communications strategies that social
media tools like Twitter have helped create. High-tech or low-tech, it’s
imperative for brands to understand cultural nuance and develop
impactful conversations with their audiences, whether they are next-door
or 9,000 miles away.”