The recent PR evaluation survey conducted by Broadgate Mainland and the Financial Services Forum confirmed many views and opinions which we probably had already. On the one hand, in house PR and marketing people like using AVEs to justify effective use of their budgets to senior management, but on the other they felt it was misleading analysis. Also, the content is often considered more important than the medium.
But beneath all the statistics there was also an underlying theme of risk management, which although it may have come as no great revelation, was surprising in its force. In-house marketing and PR departments seem reluctant to engage with media where there is a high risk reward ratio, especially when their senior management are the spokespeople involved.
Traditional quality newspaper titles like the FT, Times, Sunday Times, Daily and Sunday Telegraph are far and away the favoured media choices for promoting senior executives. Is that because they offer greater penetration of the financial product buying British public or are they less risky to deal with than The Daily Mail or Mail on Sunday or social media which scored 27% and 0% respectively compared to the FT’s 82%? And our survey sample did not include companies solely targeting HNWs.
33% of marketers stated that not appearing in social media is important – no revolution here!
When it came to social media, 11% of PRs and 33% of marketers stated that not appearing in social media are the most important measurements of social media and online PR influence for their organisation. No revolution expected here!
I can understand that PRs and marketers don’t want to upset their boss by getting them involved in a negative story and that they have become more risk averse as a result of the banking crisis. But don’t you think that senior management expect their communications professionals to advise them on the best media to reach their target audience given the latest readership and research figures and to recommend tactics to generate positive coverage? Risk management is about managing risk not avoiding it.
Maybe for our next survey we shall ask senior executives to take part to compare responses with their in-house communications advisers. It could make interesting reading.
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