The New PR - Communications In Marketing Financial Services

"Let me give you my golden rules round PR," Mr. X said to the young University Y-graduate joining his staff."Tell them nothing until you absolutely need to. Never volunteer any thought about us and our business.""The only good information about our bank is no news.""The press... those flaky consumerists, the politicians, they're all on the market to have us. They are the enemy. The less they learn about us, the less likely they're to select us.""What do you want to see in the newspapers? I'll let you know. We desire to see only what we create in pr announcements. No more, no less. We wish them to come quickly to our new bank department openings and take a photograph of the mayor and the boss lowering the ribbon.""You don't need to find out something about banking in this task, my dear fellow."( James H. Donnelly, Leonard Berry, Johnson Thompson "Marketing financial planner. A Strategic Vision" )I could not argue more. In this report I am likely to deal with managing communications through planning and I will begin by wearing down this style into its component factors which are normal facts:1.Communications must certanly be managed: structured, structured, given purpose and administered with considerable results at heart. Communications is part of an organization's reaction to marketplace events: to changes in the prime rate and the like. At the same time, communications is definitely an offensive weapon for developing new business, stimulating bank people to offer, and creating positive firm identity or "image" with clients, area viewpoint makers, and the financial organization's staff. Not often a lot of this happens; it must be designed to happen. It must certanly be maintained on a continuing basis.2.Good communications management is effected through well conceived and structured planning strategies. The company for example might need to be viewed as a caring, progressive, modern and community-oriented financial organization. Communications entails giving an attic to this concept, pointing out the right course and helping it work smoothly.3."Communications" is really a more practical name the "PR" - "Public Relations" or "Public Affairs." Sadly, PR connotes working almost entirely with the media? And particularly with the print media. From the perspective of a lot of Mr. Xs used in this location that "bank PR" is inactive if not reactive, aesthetic if not of debateable purpose, protective if not obstacle making, and frugal in the sense that its major intent s to announce the good news loud and distinct and to stonewall the terrible news.4.The Media remain important. Nevertheless they are no more essential to a financial institution in this time and age than consumer advocates, regulatory authorities, internals auditors, academics, financial specialists, neighborhood management groups, and therefore a number of other that are element of a army of 'Publics" associated with making decisions that influence the efficiency of financial institutions worldwide."Banks today not only must be sensitive to a growing galaxy of social issues...but also must manage to state their positions clearly, crisply and well. Banks today, for example, must certanly be ready to respond to media inquiries on equal employment techniques, honest credit techniques, pc privacy and the like. They also have the opportunity to capitalize on these activities as a method of increasing their image."-"Marketing Financial Services. A Strategic Vision""We have satisfied the Enemy... and he's us.Today "Bank-house" is made of Glass."Today "bank-house" is made of glass. Financial establishment managers work under ever-closer scrutiny. Banking - the financial services organization - lives in a house made from glass as a result of discontinuity and disruption. For these same factors and also because their many publics are more questing, more challenging and less truthful - more insistent - lenders have become the "black hat boys." Financial establishment supervisors have a home in pebble mausoleums surrounded by fantasy and mystique.Defensive strategies just will not work anymore. The "credibility gap" that's at the heart of the financial industry's impression problem came about mainly because for an inactive PR situation. The space may be bridged and credibility drastically restored, but only through activist communications anchored.There is another and well recognized side with this coin. It's what folks think about brokers separately, perhaps not the businesses that financial managers benefit, but as a class the managers group. What folks understand about bankers influences their ideas of the organization itself."Bankers are made in stereotypes as being somewhat tough, glass-eyed, insensitive, establishing kinds who wear dark suits, remain at great mahogany tables. Rather, I can point out quickly a great number of brokers who are generous, knowledge, warm and outgoing fellows." -Norwood T. "Red" Pope "American Banker" column.Still, perceived photos remain area of the "we would be the enemy" syndrome complicating financial establishment communications activities. There is a perception of what a lender is a more routine fact. The concern that has to often face a manager - PR manager in bank - is working with both the perception surrounding an picture and the perception surrounding the folks who handle it. If the supervisor should work to debunk financial institution stereotypes as part of improving communications runs between the company and its many publics, the concurrent process is to humanize management of the bank.PR communicator in BankThe financial institution communicator is the organization's "eyes and ears" for "testing and sensing" the environment, for understanding the new value of the 21st consumers' needs and requirements and transmitting them to management. More than this, the guiding principle is the communicator's responsibility for assuring and actualizing management's reaction to that.In an era of change, deregulation, consumerism, the Public Relations skilled must always be described as a thorn in management's part. The communicator gets the specific work to be nuisance, invoking straightforward in the conversation between bank and its public. She or he provides two masters: the communicator can be an advocate of the establishment clearly; but no less, the communicator is a client advocate. He or She is the corporate hair-shirt person an actually irritating organizational conscience.In this potential, the Public Relations or communications professional cannot be a rare visitor to the executive suite. His project involves - speaking up, educating and counseling and this involves knowledge a as knowledge of a bank industry. The why of it all, is the visible evidence that in the growing potential a financial institution's real public image can have a line to it - a measurable money line.