Accelerate Grads '06

A new spin on things?

People are suspicious creatures, and will jump on anything that makes a brand appear untrustworthy. Take, for example, Wal-Mart's fake blog of last year, and its efforts to infiltrate its comments into the blogosphere (here). Dishonesty is a dangerous thing when almost anyone can now jump online and become a reporter. Honesty that is becoming the key to success in PR. And look at the success of those brands which market themselves on this value, for example Dove's 'real beauty' campaign.

Have a look at this recent article on Culturefeed. Here's an excerpt:

"As consumers become more aware of the messages targeted at them, they are increasingly searching for ways to regain control of their lives and their minds by downsizing and through a do-it-yourself culture. The question is, how will your brand communicate to these new consumers? How can you market without marketing? How can you help people simplify their lives, while maintaing loyalty to your brand?"

Consumers want control and are increasingly sceptical about marketing messages. The answer, as I see it, is honesty. Not just in the stories you present about your clients or the way you present them, but in offering the consumer something of value, whether it be a product, insight, experience, or relationship.

This applies across the board: if we expect people to interact with our brands, whether they are consumers, journalists or investors, we will be infinitely more successful if we can offer something of real value, a message, experience or story they choose to interact with.

I'm not sure this is such a recent trend, either. Just one which is being execerbated by social media. And as far as I can see, it's a real opportunity to improve the quality of our work and carry on coming up with worthwhile, creative strategies and ideas for clients. Is this new, or has it always been the mark of good PR?

War of the ... youtube videos?

Crisis communications is something every company should consider. Assessing the risks a company is likely to be exposed to is the first step, followed by training in how to handle potential crises if they ever arise.

However, just like the rest of the marketing landscape, the field of crisis communications is constantly changing, and new threats can quickly materialise. Take, for example, Oxfam's recent youtube video campaign against Starbucks. The coffee giant has responded in kind, gaining immediate access to the audience targetted by Oxfam, and refusing to let a medium often seen as suspicious and dangerously uncontrollable be used as a weapon against it. The comments posted by viewers suggest this was a good move: Starbucks have managed to reject any suggestion that they are a faceless corporate, by engaging on a personal level with their audience. I guess it's the online equivalent of calling round interesting parties to explain the situation. Anyway, the debate still rages, so go and have a look here and see what you think.

If you're interested in crisis communications, keep an eye on Crisisblogger,

Making News...

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

The "glamorous" world of reporting

Perhaps not so glamorous after all. For those of you wanting to know what you actually do all day as a PR exec, let me tell you of one of the many horrors we encounter... COMPANY REPORTS!

Depending on where their shares are listed, companies report on their financial status either 2 or 4 times a year. Unless you're listed in the US (if you've picked up an ft recently you might have heard of SOX, which seems to be the bane of everyone's lives at the moment), you report twice a year. However, America hates PR execs so has decided to do it 4 times.

Anyway, this basically involves several days of extreme busyness. The night before, a late night is usually had by all as the press release is finalised and set up to be sent out the next morning. Then comes the joyous 6.30 start the next day to make sure all goes smoothly.

Thankfully, I had the luxury of a lie-in and made it in at 7. Not being in charge can often be a very good thing. The day then involves getting to the analyst presentation (through London traffic), straining every muscle you own lugging huge boxes of paperwork around, then frantically scribbling down analyst questions (which you don't understand anyway), only to discover later that you seem to have rediscovered linear b.

The management then call the press and go off on an investor roadshow, but we return to the office (in pouring rain, still with the 7 ton boxes) to phone picture desks, try and place stories, and decipher our own scribbles. A few days later, we'll call round the analysts (scary suited people who know way too much about numbers) and ask them for their analysis of the company's results.

So, less swanning around than anticipated, more hard physical labour. And rain. Not entirely glamorous, I'm afraid, but an interesting chance to see the financial side of a company's workings, and begin to understand how it determines its strategy.

-Rowan

We are living in Financial Times

And where better to get a crash course than Gavin Anderson, financial and corporate PR firm? Welcome to the murky world of 'corporate', domain of suited executives wielding black briefcases full of annual reports. Thankfully, not quite as scary as it seems. This is the place to learn about market cap, CAGR, debt, equity and other financial flights of fancy.

Gavin Anderson is the first port of call this year. Corporate Reputation Management, as it's known, isn't actually all financial, and throughout the 15 months will involve (so I'm told) public affairs, recruitment and basically anything that helps a company communicate with press, employees, government, investors and other stakeholders apart from the consumer (if that's what you're interested in, go see Sophie about Consumer Relationship Management, the other crm).

It's also the stream where you very quickly learn to tackle the pink pages of the paper. It may not seem very fair to throw an English student straight into finance, but it's a fascinating way to find out how the business world functions. Hopefully, as i go along, I'll try and explain some of the basics here as I go. But seriously: an interest in working with data, and in finding out how systems and structures work, is much more important for this job than an intimate knowledge of finance - that (i hope) can be gathered as you go.

Today's FT: Starbucks are thinking of selling their packaged coffee in UK supermarkets.

Keep track of: the steel industry. Have a look at what Arcelor Mittal, Severstal and Tata Steel are doing. One of the most interesting things about this job is finding out about industries you'd never really considered before...

Any queries, etc, comment away!

*Rowan

Coming soon to a blog near you:

-No FT, no comment

-Russian fruit and other exciting research tales

-The glamorous world of reporting

-Amazing acronyms 001 - AIM