Maxim Behar's Blog

In his weekly column "Max's Column" for TBmagazine, Maxim Behar comments on the insurgence of fake news on social media and the responsibility of the consumer to educate and inform themselves, rather than putting blame on the platforms.

"In a year or two all social media is going to shut down, they���re just all full of nonsense," exclaimed a solid gentleman on a brandy or two last night. A whole mass of intellectuals around him, however, approvingly nodded.

So ��� now Facebook is to blame because its full of fake news.�� First ��� from the beginning days, when it was created, sometime in February 2004, Facebook has grown to be the freest media to date, all of this simply because everyone and anyone owns that medium and can write whatever they want on it.

The same thing happened to all the other social media that - by the way - I never called "networks", because the word itself imposes restrictions that practically do not exist.

And of course, that hides risks.

But we all know that it is not freedom that is to blame, but our inability to use it. Social media should not be criticized, nor those who pour nonsense into them, but rather us if we can't cope. I have always said ��� hypothetically you can buy a journalist, media or publisher, but quite specifically you cannot buy any social media, never mind Facebook.

And let's not scapegoat Facebook or the other media, but rather educate oneself on what and how to read and write. Not only will this be easier and more feasible, but it will also be more honourable.

Maxim Behar tells the story of his meeting with Shimon Peres, one of the most influential figures of modern times who has held the most important political roles in Israel as President, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. This is a man who not only loved the Bulgarian people, but also praised them for the good example they set in some of the worst times for Bulgarian Jews. This is a story with valuable lessons and messages that Behar shares in his author series "Priceless Lessons" for BGLOBAL magazine.


"Come on, you..." - Shimon Peres, the man who constantly showed optimism...
The Israeli who uttered this phrase from the podium of the Sofia Synagogue loved Bulgaria, and not only because of the date March 10, 1943...


The top floor, of what was then the Japanese hotel in Sofia, long before it became a fancy restaurant, was a big meeting hall, and it felt rather strange to have only twenty people in that huge and almost empty hall.

Solomon Passy, who was then, as well as of now, the President of the iconic Atlantic Club of Bulgaria, paced with his hands clasped behind his back and only stoked our impatience.

It was worth it, though.

Shimon Peres was not only then Israel's foreign minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate,

but also a legendary figure,

one of those who managed to "put together" the puzzle so skillfully that the world trembled in the hope that this would be forever. He walked in cheerfully, shook hands with each one individually, asked at length who was what, and said "Thank you, thank you..." to each person.

At first, we took it as a show of politeness, but when plates of croissants and toast "landed" near us, Perez didn't touch any of them, but just stood up straight and once again said loud and clear in pure Bulgarian "Thank you!", and continued in English:

- Bulgaria is the country that saved our brothers and sisters and did not send them to the death camps in 1943, to be precise - on March 10��� Trains left here empty, and we will never forget this historic moment, but just on the contrary - we will remind the whole world of it constantly. And that is what you Bulgarians did together and that is how you went down in history forever...

Political speeches at business breakfasts are all too rare, but even this element in Perez's brief emotional speech could not be considered political.

The truth about the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews

in the tumultuous days of World War II, this whole unique assemblage of parliament, king, church, professional organizations, and public opinion, despite the tumultuous debates over the years about who ultimately prevailed for this courageous decision, is indeed something historic. Sadly, and I hear this all too often traveling the world, the truth is still too little known, too little told and studied. And if we leave the arguing to the historians, we ultimately have to look at what ultimately happened.

Over the years there have been repeated encounters with Shimon Peres,

undoubtedly the most prominent modern politician

of a very young country which, since its inception, has been practically at war, sometimes with its neighbors and all too often within itself.

We met in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, at conferences in Washington and New York when in 2011 I participated in a Solidarity Mission to Israel with David Harris and other prominent politicians from the American Jewish Committee���

And whenever I shook hands with Peres again and again and reminded him of who I was and where I was from, he invariably held my hand longer and said, in a pronunciation quite good for an Israeli, "Thank you!"

I expected the same to happen during

his last visit to Bulgaria, now as president,

when he entered the long-awaited meeting in the Sofia Synagogue, looked at the front row where we were lined up together with Solomon Passy, the representative of the Jewish organization Shalom Robert Jerassi, the economist Emil Kahlo, and other friends, raised his hand in greeting and to the great surprise of the packed hall suddenly said:

- Come on, you! Thank you! (in Bulgarian)
��
Of course, we burst into laughter mixed with surprise, and then Perez, with his wide good-natured smile, explained:

- When I was young, we used to go every week to watch the Maccabi games from Yafo, a district of Tel Aviv populated mainly by Bulgarians. In fact, Bulgarians brought football to Israel and Maccabi, and that was the strongest team in the country - we all admired it. And because the crowd in the stadium was mostly Bulgarian, and the team was mainly your countrymen, we mostly heard them encouraging the players with this very phrase "Come on, you...". We didn't know what it meant, we just assumed it was something good, something motivating, and we shout it together with our Bulgarian friends very loudly...
��
��The hall in the beautiful Sofia Synagogue fell silent, even a paper noise would be heard when Perez added:

- And I'll tell you again: thank you, Bulgaria, to your people. You have set an example to the world, this example we all remember, and it is your sacred duty to tell it to everyone, in every corner it should be known.���

Years have passed since then, but many years have also passed since 1943.

Wonderful artists like my friend from California - Ed Gaffney, who made a documentary about that dramatic year 1943, like Emil Kahlo, who wrote an interesting screenplay, and the colorful George Ganchev did the same, both no longer among the living, tried to tell this incredible story artistically.

But still, not only all of us in Bulgaria, but also the world is waiting for someone to make a feature film about the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews, but such a film that will win its Oscar, if not in Hollywood, at least by the audience, to become a bestseller and that is why you have my "Come on, you!", so let's hope it will happen.

I'm sure that Shimon Peres would be very happy too.��

The world famous PR specialist Maxim Behar was one of the expert speakers at the PRO.PR International Conference in Slovenia, organized by Aprirori World under the theme "Rejuvenate public relations, rejuvenate yourself". Over the last 18 years, the Conference has been gathering some of the top public relations experts from all over the world and have successfully connected over 3400 professionals in the industry.

Behar joined the conference online and talked in front of a large audience of communications leaders about the global PR revolution and how the leaders succeed in the fast-changing industry. "The most important change in our industry we have to remember is that now we are not only consultants, but decision-makers," he highlighted in the beginning of his influential speech.

You can watch the full video recording of Behar's speech here.

Maxim Behar writes about his meeting with Baron Daniel Janssen, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Belgian industrial group Solvay, Chairman of the Council of the European Round Table and award winner for his great contribution to the development of bilateral relations between Bulgaria and Belgium. A meeting initiated by the Baron himself, which unfolds a new beginning for a strong friendship and an even stronger expansion of business cooperation with Bulgaria. It is a story with priceless memories that remain for a long time in Behar's life and now he shares in his author series "Priceless Lessons" for BGLOBAL magazine.


Baron Janssen or just "Mr. Solvay"

One of the first multimillion investments in Bulgaria showed the road, which we should follow, but quite often over the years there have been unexpected and unnecessary turns on this road.

There were no more than two or three of us in my company at the time, but - of course - the first person to be hired in any company at the time was the secretary. In many places today, this word is more than offensive, because the far more corporate "assistant" denounced this old-fashioned position. Anyway, I was returning from a trip to my small office in the center of Sofia, when the secretary told me, somehow even carelessly... "Well, Baron Janssen is looking for you, he requested you call him back."

In those years, someone looking for you from abroad was an event, never mind that someone being a whole baron��� now that was something.

I dialed the phone, written on a small piece of paper, and on the other side a secretary or assistant, as you want to call her, picked up the phone. She told me that she will transfer the call to him immediately, but before she did, I asked the logical question:"Who is Baron Janssen?"

There was about a minute of silence, and then an answer, with a slightly indignant and questioning tone of light falsetto: "Mr. Behar, how is it possible that Baron Janssen knows who you are, and you do not know who he is..." I had no answer, it came to me later.

And so, it began.

The next day I was at the airport, from where we took the Baron's private plane to Varna (Bulgaria), and in an hour, we were almost incognito around the smoky soda fence of the soda ash plant that Baron Janssen���s world corporation Solvay wanted to buy. We had lunch in the very fashionable restaurant for its time in Grand Hotel Varna on Golden Sands and the Baron began straight away without any courtesies:
- Maxim, you were recommended to me by my friends as an honest and respectable person. And we, at Solvay, are like that. We are here not only to buy production, but also to change it completely, to bring - sorry for the expression - Europe in Bulgaria and vice versa. We will create a model so that other investors can follow our footsteps...

Indeed, the years were such that our country itself was divided - whether to sell to foreign companies or to try to do the impossible ourselves through the so-called mass privatization.

But even for the uneducated, it was clear that if it were possible for a radiator plant, for example, for a world chemical producer such as the Devnya plant, it would simply mean a slow but sure death. And when only two years later the baron and I toured the already completely renovated part of the factory, where they had invested nearly $200 million, my friend and head of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce, Bozhidar Danev, leaned slightly into my ear and whispered: "Max, just imagine if this was privatized by the workers, what a ruin it would be���... Bozhidar left this world too early, but he was one of the people who really understood economics and investments.

The Baron was so enthusiastic about Bulgaria that only months later he started inviting world renown businesspeople every other week and presenting our country to them in a light that even the most professional advertising experts could not achieve. At that time, he headed the European Round Table of Industrialists, often called the Ministry of Business of the European Union, and so here appeared world famous business names, which we had only read about in the Wall Street Journal and The Economist. They studied how to invest in Bulgaria and felt its increasing proximity to European markets.

His affection for Bulgaria was so strong that at the opening ceremony of the renovated plant he managed to persuade the then Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dean to be present and give a speech in freezing negative twenty degrees weather conditions and he got so ill that a day or two later during a live broadcast, a Belgian journalist asked Prime Minister Dean why he lost his voice, and the answer was:
- It was worth losing it, and I'm not sorry. I saw a wonderful and huge Belgian investment in a country that has a great future, and we will constantly lobby for it to become a member of the European Union as soon as possible.

And just like that Bulgaria was full of investors who admired our country and really fought hard for it to quickly return to the big European family. This happened, although it took us down a very winding and uncertain path.

Just then I was present at a debate among the Bulgarian management of the soda ash plant as to the right pronounciation of the Baron's name.

One of the directors quickly resolved the dispute:
- We will call him Janssen, even Yasen (meaning ���clear��� in Bulgarian), because it is clear to me - he is just an honest man and loves Bulgaria. This is enough.���

This is how people in Bulgaria sometimes refer to each other, not by their names, but by their actions. And Baron Daniel Janssen knows this very well.

The world-renowned PR expert Maxim Behar was re-elected as a member of the Board of the Bulgarian Business Leaders Forum (BBLF), officially inaugurated by the former President of Bulgaria Petar Stoyanov and HRH The Prince of Wales in 1998. The Forum now unites more than 120 leading Bulgarian and foreign companies and is part of the International Business Leaders Forum.

Behar was one of the founders of the Forum and a member of the Board since 1997. He served as its Chairman for two terms from 2001 to 2007 and then Vice-Chairman for two more terms. Maxim Behar is also an Honorary Member of the BBLF, formally announced in 2007 for his outstanding contribution in establishing the Forum as a leading organisation in the field of ethical business and corporate social responsibility.

The communications expert was re-elected to the Board during the BFBL's Annual General Meeting, which was was voted on by the senior executive of more than 35 leading BBLF member companies. The attendees were greeted by the BBLF Chair Levon Hampartzoumian and the Executive Director George Ruitchev, and a special guest of the event was Tim Buissere, Head of Trade & Investment in the Department of International Trade at the British Embassy in Sofia, who highlighted the long-standing partnership with the Forum.

In his weekly column "Max's Column" for TBmagazine, Maxim Behar shares his views on the rising criticism of the PR profession and practice in Bulgaria. How it has been used as political slander and how Bulgarian society blindly accepts these accusations.

���Hey, forget about this guy, he's just doing PR...���. We have been hearing this phrase for years. Lately, however, it is mostly uttered by politicians when they want to say that someone is doing nothing or what he is doing is just a bubble full of air. And somehow, those who do not know what is behind this strange abbreviation, and it is written in Latin, have started to perceive it just like that.

Well, yes! Why not? One political party says to another one - you're just doing PR and that automatically means that said party is lying.

There is hardly a bigger fallacy in our modern, increasingly English-Saxon dialect of the Bulgarian language and it would take a very good effort to disprove it.

Public Relations, extremely ineptly translated years ago in Bulgaria as ���public relations���, is in fact solely and exclusively the business of truth, which it makes available to us through its specific tools.

This is the most accurate short definition of this business that I have been spreading for years - telling the truth so that it is understood.

And while someone still thinks they can hire a PR company to ���fix��� their image or make them go from bad to good or from incompetent to professional, it's still good to know that even that doesn't happen ���by the pound���.

Each project is a case by case for everyone and for each individual client. Only one thing unites all these projects and clients. It���s all about the truth.

In his weekly column "Max's Column" for TBmagazine, Maxim Behar shares his opinion as an expert, observer and Bulgarian who looks at the young generation with confidence.


Because the generations have started to "spin" too fast we are all racing to give them some letter to characterize them - Gen (Z), (M) Millennial, X, Y and more, and I even wrote a book on Generation F years ago, but that is now gone.

And now I know that all the managers who read these lines will agree with me that a new and unknown generation is coming into our companies, born both of the pandemic because many of them returned from different countries, driven right out of it, but also of another rather important fact. ��

This is the first generation, probably for at least half a century, that has never experienced any difficulty, not a single crisis, stress or even a small problem. It is free from the feeling of "fear", it wants to achieve a lot in a short time and less effort. This is wonderful because I have always thought that it is this combination that will pull the world forward, save us time and effort, make us innovative and ultimately make us a faster part of the European and global market. ��

But exactly this market holds this difficult to answer question - it is now so stagnant, so competitive and absolutely unpredictable that we simply - at this stage - rule out this combination and have to replace it with another - very innovative, hard and consistent, and most importantly, result-oriented work. ��

And if we are going to name this great generation after him, it is more than clear. Generation B, like Bulgaria. There is no other more appropriate word, and we are all looking at it right now...

Maxim Behar was awarded the Best PR Professional in Europe at a special live ceremony in London of the prestigious international competition PRWeek Global Awards 2022. The Awards are organized by the most prominent media outlet about public communicationsin the world PRWeek and the winners are selected by proven experts from the industry globally.

Behar is recognized the Best PR Professional in Europe for the second time. The first award was presented to him during a special online ceremony in 2020.

Apart from being an experienced international PR expert and former President of the most influential PR organization in the world ICCO, Maxim Behar is the current International Growth Chair of the organization. He was also elected Advisory Board Member of one of the most influential European universities ENGAGE.EU. Behar is also the author of one of the best PR books at the moment ��� ���The Global PR Revolution���. Initially published in the USA, the book achieved an incredible success and in the period of 2 weeks it was the best-selling read on Amazon in the categories Public Relations, Sales Marketing and Career Advice. Maxim Behar is the only Bulgarian to be inducted in the ICCO PR Wall of Fame.

"Being a PR professional is an award itself, and being the best in Europe is a huge honour and recognition. I am extremely happy and grateful to receive such a prestigious award for a second time and regret that I was unable to receive it in person due to the launch of one of our important PR projects in Bulgaria. The level of success that this award demands is another evidence of the hard work that my team and I put in to grow the industry in our country and deliver excellent results with each of our many projects,��� commented Maxim Behar, CEO of M3 Communications Group, Inc.

The Awarding Ceremony was live for the first time in two years of virtual events, which made it even more exciting for the participants and the organizers.

Detailed information about the competition and the winners can be found here.

The Bulgarian PR expert Maxim Behar presented our country at an international forum on Media Freedom in the age of Tech Disruption. The forum was organized by the European political foundation - European Liberal Forum (ELF) and held at the Royal Library of Belgium.

During his lecture, Behar talked about the fast transition of traditional methods to digitised processes, disinformation, fake news and propaganda that are poisoning media now more than ever.

The forum was attended by many MEPs, media experts, politicians and journalists, including the Executive Director of the European Liberal Forum, Daniel Kaddik. Behar's presentation was moderated by former Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and current ELF representative Zinaida Zlatanova.

"We can no longer talk about technological changes, but about a real revolution in the media, and what we see as fake news is a tsunami that is flooding the world," Behar said. However, social media is the only alternative to the increasingly suppressed freedom of speech in many countries. Surely we will find a way to recognize fake news and distinguish the real news, and that will be the next big step in creating a more trustworthy media environment."

A few months ago, the European Liberal Forum invited Maxim Behar to give a lecture on Modern Leadership at the Royal Palace of Vrana in the presence of His Majesty King Simeon II of Bulgaria and many politicians and businessmen as the first event of the Forum's pan-European Think Aloud initiative. The lecture can be viewed here.

Maxim Behar in the eighth edition of Almanach 2022 of the leading Bulgarian TBMagazine on the special project "Managers Share - successful case studies in Bulgarian business".

In the following article the world renowned PR Expert Maxim Behar shares with you what is the new sexy in business today. How we managed to shift our perspective on making business? How has Covid-19 affected the way we manage ourselves and our work as well as why might you be a new type of leader without knowing it.

About th�� "sexy" things in business and something else...

I'll make the disclaimer right away ��� we���re going to talk about business. And about nothing else. Everyone is free to think what they want and interpret it as they know it. It's like we're on Facebook.

However, life is practically outside of social media, especially when it comes to business. And today, currently, in 2022, a business without interesting, attractive and what we often colloquially call "sexy" stuff is worth nothing.

"Business as usual",

or "business as it is" was something we could hear too often in the last years and somehow we involuntarily shrugged our shoulders as a justification for our constant busyness, or because we were too focused on profits and other things. Well, profits are important, we can���t argue with that. Exactly 20 years ago, I wrote Bulgaria's first ���Standard of Business Ethics���; many of you, readers will recall that the ten tenets, circulated lightning-fast from hand to hand and office to office across the country. I took it days later, after it was ready, to present it to Prince Charles in London, and when he was curiously reading it point by point in the splendid hall at St. James's Palace he suddenly asked me, "And what do you think business ethics is...?" I did not hesitate for a second in answering, for I had already worked out the definition:

to make profits transparently...

Yeep. Business as usual. Profits are important, but they are not the only thing. If we make them transparently it is already a guarantee that we make them with integrity.

And as weird as it sounds now, integrity really is the first super attractive aspect of business, because it actually gives us the limitless creativity to do whatever we do, but to always benefit people and improve our lives. ��

I've thought in recent years that my business - Public Relations - was the most dynamic in the world, but the pandemic has actually brought us other surprises. Doing business in general has become so "entangled" and the criteria have changed so much, that there is no longer even the tiniest most little detail that is boring, static or traditional. Somewhere in the beginning of this century, just getting used to the rise of the free Bulgarian market, American partners explained to me how after the rise of a market

in business it won���t always be a ���smooth sail���.

I argued furiously with them. What crises? We are already free, there is competition, freedom of speech, of trade, of prices...
In recent months I heard from them again, they were no longer standing with their feet held high on their desks somewhere on the 28th floor of a Manhattan office building, but rather being kept under quarantine in their houses and in slightly shaky voices explaining to me how what is happening now, during the pandemic has nothing to do with normal business crises, but is something more, much more... They are right. That's why it's not just the communications business that's terribly dynamic anymore, it's everything else in the world. And that's why everything new, that���s coming out every day should not only be new but "sexy", or at least that's how we have to present it to make an impression.

One of the most important things is without a doubt the total change in leadership.

You know well how it was before - directors, deputies, heads of departments, deputy heads... titles, business cards, posts, long signatures. However, the pandemic, working from home, or wherever else we happen to be, has "melted" all these now unnecessary obstacles and now, I say it with conviction, everyone is...a leader.�� In their place, with their projects, with their colleagues, with their clients. And if that's not "sexy" in business ��� I don���t know what is. Everyone's responsibilities have changed, wherever they are and whatever position they have in the team. Modern communications, even more so modern media, which everyone now manages easily and without inhibitions, but also with a lot of mistakes, have given this very opportunity to even the newcomer in any business to make important decisions and have contacts with the customer.

Naturally - this has its risks, but it also has its advantages.

The other super attractive side of this modern and ever-changing day-to-day business is without a doubt the opportunity for people to become experts in "all-ecology".

Simultaneously with the rise of social media and mass online information, modern executives, and not only them, suddenly decided that they understand everything and with just fifteen minutes on Google they can provide a quality opinion on any subject.�� And here I don't even mean the homespun know-it-alls, who in front of our eyes suddenly went from football experts to vaccine coryph��es and then week later they already understood international relations... Rather I mean those managers who understand everything all the time because they have read something on as they call it ���Uncle Google���.

Public relations, marketing, legal advice, anything as long as we have something to buy and sell, to get into the Chinese market right away...

And anything else you can think of... they understand everything.

Of course, it's also clear to the cats on our street now that in the end, besides basic communication, photo swapping and bragging, social media has brought the world a lot. A lot of knowledge and new ideas. And the good thing is that hundreds of millions of fresh personas got into the business quickly, made great profits, and learned exactly how to do this from social media. That's why I'm not so much against "all-ecology", as long as of course its��� followers don't try to impose their opinions peremptorily.

Yet let me also emphasize on the most attractive aspect of the new business conditions

��- the endless opportunity for innovation. Never in all its history has the world had such an overwhelming need for new things every day, every hour, every minute even, in order for participants in the incredible game called "competition" to succeed more and more.

Now, as I often call it, even put it as the title of one of my best-selling books in the U.S. and around the world. The Global PR Revolution really requires great heroes to use this information in a way that competes even with themselves. Incredible personalities like Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and several hundred other business geniuses do just that, and quite successfully I may add - they come up with something great and without even waiting for the competition to beat them to it, they immediately "upgrade" it, and in such a way that

It's hard for anyone to reach them.

It is this incredible race, increasingly including honest, transparent and ethical techniques, that has brought the "sexy" elements into modern business, made it accessible, clear and possible, giving you that opportunity to succeed without a dollar in your pocket because the information is accessible and communication is quick and easy.

The rest are details. They are up to us, the ones who get excited, no pun intended, about doing good business. And by nobody else.