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IT IS hard when you cannot pay your own public relations (PR) agency to say nice things about you - or at least your parent company.
Anybody who has been following Finweek’s new section called “The SPECtacle” would have noticed that communications agency Fleishmann-Hillard recently cracked a mention after one of their PR agents slated their client’s parent company on micro-blogging service Twitter.
It is probably a bit career limiting to refer to your client as having a “fraudulent” parent, even if you believe it in your personal capacity.
Having kicked off my career as a financial journalist just before the global financial crisis, I have always been intrigued by the fascinating and sometimes convoluted relationship between journalists, external PR consultants and internal communications teams.
Every few months I sit down with a couple of asset managers and spend time trying to understand how financial services businesses make use of various media tools, including Twitter and Facebook, to put messages into the market.
One theme which keeps repeating itself is that there is a very low level of participation in and ultimately understanding of the financial services industries.
Many journalists don’t participate in the stockmarket but are expected to develop investment copy to guide the industry and retail participants. Obviously there is the question of bias and investment integrity, but if you don’t know or understand what you are looking at then it is hard to ask the right questions.
Similarly, PR practitioners are there to punt the latest and greatest investment products or trends and yet when you scrape beneath the surface and ask them if they have actually used the products they punt to journalists, you are normally met with an embarrassed silence.
I remember sitting at a lunch with an insurance company where the communications person raced through the script trying to sell me all the benefits. When I turned around and asked if she made use of the insurance product she admitted she couldn’t afford it and in fact had her policy with a cheaper competitor. Awkward moment.
On the other end of the spectrum I had a discussion with somebody at Investec Asset Management and she was able to tell me what was happening in one of their funds because she has invested her daughter's university policy in it, so she has a vested interest in understanding the people and the fund constituents.
This basic financial “interest” is critical in a country where industry statistics suggest that the overall savings rate is somewhere near 0%.
Financial media require people who are not only curious but make use of the products and services to make sure they are not simply regurgitating what the communications machine says.
- Fin24.com
Anybody who has been following Finweek’s new section called “The SPECtacle” would have noticed that communications agency Fleishmann-Hillard recently cracked a mention after one of their PR agents slated their client’s parent company on micro-blogging service Twitter.
It is probably a bit career limiting to refer to your client as having a “fraudulent” parent, even if you believe it in your personal capacity.
Having kicked off my career as a financial journalist just before the global financial crisis, I have always been intrigued by the fascinating and sometimes convoluted relationship between journalists, external PR consultants and internal communications teams.
Every few months I sit down with a couple of asset managers and spend time trying to understand how financial services businesses make use of various media tools, including Twitter and Facebook, to put messages into the market.
One theme which keeps repeating itself is that there is a very low level of participation in and ultimately understanding of the financial services industries.
Many journalists don’t participate in the stockmarket but are expected to develop investment copy to guide the industry and retail participants. Obviously there is the question of bias and investment integrity, but if you don’t know or understand what you are looking at then it is hard to ask the right questions.
Similarly, PR practitioners are there to punt the latest and greatest investment products or trends and yet when you scrape beneath the surface and ask them if they have actually used the products they punt to journalists, you are normally met with an embarrassed silence.
I remember sitting at a lunch with an insurance company where the communications person raced through the script trying to sell me all the benefits. When I turned around and asked if she made use of the insurance product she admitted she couldn’t afford it and in fact had her policy with a cheaper competitor. Awkward moment.
On the other end of the spectrum I had a discussion with somebody at Investec Asset Management and she was able to tell me what was happening in one of their funds because she has invested her daughter's university policy in it, so she has a vested interest in understanding the people and the fund constituents.
This basic financial “interest” is critical in a country where industry statistics suggest that the overall savings rate is somewhere near 0%.
Financial media require people who are not only curious but make use of the products and services to make sure they are not simply regurgitating what the communications machine says.
- Fin24.com
