This week I’ve started having a look at Corporate PR, which is a welcome relief from tackling sheaves of incomprehensible numbers on a daily basis. It’s a slightly different challenge, as –since this is a new client – we have to decide on their whole strategy. Hence it’s more creative than the pure financial side of things.
We started out with an initial brainstorming meeting, just to share ideas before the client arrives to talk to us in a few weeks time. Bit of a change from what I expect from 'groupwork'. It only took us about 15mins of very concise thinking and we had a basic strategy beaten out.
It’s fascinating working with people with a lot more experience and knowledge of the sector – everyone came to the table clued in on the company, with some ideas already thought out, and since everyone there knew exactly how the sector worked, there wasn’t any arguing over the pros and cons which can stretch any decision-making session to several hours long.
Just having something to say certainly isn’t enough here – it has to be new, relevant, interesting and well thought-out and expressed. Meetings are by no means a chance to sit back and chat things over over tea – there’s some serious brainpower involved!
A bit of theory as well, to add to the general marveling at how efficient the whole process was. When trying to get press coverage for a company, there are three lines you can take:
Make news:
Publish accounts, launch a new product etc.
Create news:
You’ll see lots of companies conducting studies, thus getting their names in the paper and building up a reputation as respected authorities. For example, Sony might commission a report on trends in the electronic gaming industry, or something similar. This seems to come under the title of Thought Leadership.
Exploit news:
This is when a company gets coverage by commenting on other news items, for example the head of a financial services firm might comment to the press on current market conditions. There’s nothing newsworthy necessarily going on in the firm, but it makes the most of outside opportunities to get itself noticed.
The next step in the whole process is brainstorming with the company representative, so over the next week we need to collect together questions and ideas, and do quite a bit of background work on the sector.
FT Today - Opec (The organisation of petroleum exporting countries) have set a new $60-a-barrel minimum price for oil. Think a low oil price is a good thing? Read this ft article from last week
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