Financial Communications - 5 Ways to Give a Public Voice to Private Companies
Here are 5 things that a private company should consider doing to generate better business news stories and improve their financial communications:
We’ve written extensively in the past about the radical changes that have transformed the world of communications, and about how companies should be generating and broadcasting their own content in order to maintain more control over the message. This is all true, but there is no doubt that well informed, positive stories written by journalists and broadcasters are still very powerful drivers of positive reputation. We believe that media relations are an important part of every company’s communications strategy – it’s just it isn’t the only option available.
Here are five things that a private company should consider doing to generate better business news stories and improve their financial communications:
- Behave like a public company. This means releasing results and trading updates to the market. It is amazing how much media interest well written and well distributed press releases will generate. And it means encouraging your CEO to put themselves forward as the natural ambassador for the company with the media for profile interviews and making sure they are properly trained to do this important job
- Take advantage of the fact that you are not a public company. Your listed peer group are terribly constrained about what they can and can’t say to the media, and when. Fears about inadvertently releasing price sensitive information and incurring the wrath of regulators mean that public companies are often loath to put their heads above the parapet unless it is around formal results days and trading updates. This means that there is a gap in the news agenda that can be filled by private companies who are much freer to comment on current trading and current industry trends. The John Lewis Partnership has been doing this very successfully for years.
- Be alert to the news agenda and position your company to be helpful. Budget days are a classic example of this, with scores of journalists desperately trying to trawl around the business world to find companies that are prepared to comment on the likely effects of the chancellor’s latest pronouncements. Most quoted companies are unwilling to do this – so, if you’re a private company and you call up the business desks and offer yourselves to be the spokespeople for the industry you will be welcomed with open arms. To do this, you need to be prepared, and have statements drafted and ready to be signed off once the budget is announced – speed is everything.
- Understand what is newsworthy and what isn’t. It’s important to understand that journalists do not write stories to do any company a favour. They produce stories because they believe that there is something new to talk about that their readers and listeners need to know and will be interested in. Learning to position news effectively is a key to success – so, for example, a new factory opening is not that interesting, the creation of a couple of hundred new jobs is very interesting indeed.
- Understand the power of the exclusive. A well thought out, topical story with a clear news angle sold to one news outlet as an exclusive has much more chance of being written than a generalised press release. A story sold in to fill gaps in the Sunday papers for example, or even better in Monday’s edition of the dailies is a sure-fire winner.