Secret PR Seminar Meets 50th Time

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PR Seminar, a secretive spinoff of the National Association of Manufacturers, held its 50th annual meeting on June 6-9 of this year. "You have entered a very elite circle, you are the cream of the crop of the PR world," one of its members said in 1979. Not a word of the proceedings is supposed to escape although the O'Dwyer Co. has covered the event with varying degrees of completeness since 1970. In its heyday, PR Seminar brought together the PR heads of virtually every top 25 Fortune 500 company. Its secrecy, exclusivity and other rituals are "bonding techniques" through which Seminar participants "mimic the social lives of the corporate elite whom they serve."