CorpComms Magazine

The old adage that it is bad news that sells newspapers never seems truer than in a recession. As Angus Maitland, chairman of financial PR firm Maitland Consultancy puts it: 'The UK press does tend to be biased towards bad news rather than good news. People find it more interesting to read about a bank failing than someone increasing their sales. It's human nature.'

So is it possible to get positive coverage in a recession and, if so, what are the tricks of doing so at times when, according to Jonathan Thornton, head of corporate communications at tin can and plastics manufacturer Rexam, a temptation for many is simply not to bother?

He says: 'Because of the journalistic attitude of focusing on the negative, the tendency is to keep one's head down because even positive news is often turned into bad news. Papers don't seem to want to cover good news. They just want bad news.

'In addition, companies are very, very wary of putting out good news stories because things change and they might be hit by a crisis and then they are going to look pretty exposed when they have just said that everything is going well. They're just setting themselves up to be knocked down.'

Creativity and relationships matter

Despite this, however, communicators say there are ways of getting coverage of positive news if public relations professional think creatively about the issue. 'I do think that this is a huge problem,' says Phil Hall, the former editor of News of the World and Hello! who is now chairman of public relations agency PHA Media. 'There's so much negativity around but corporate communications people have to be able to raise their game and to come up with very interesting good news stories. Too often I hear corporate communications people saying This is what we want in the paper, but it's completely bland. You need to come up with something that has real substance to it.'

Hall has put his advice into practice by pitching stories for a botox clinic client, highlighting that the recession is leading to an influx of business from people determined to look their best to compete in a more competitive economic climate. Another recent PHA campaign, for maternity wear client Blooming Marvellous, involved the firm emailing 25,000 customers to ask them to nominate their best stories about mothers. Both campaigns, he says, received lots of coverage.

Sharon Francis, managing director at media training agency Media First, says communicators need trusted relationships with key journalists and the ability to spot stories that will appeal to news desks. 'If public relations communicators have a good relationship with journalists, they should be able to position a good news story,' she says. 'And any news story, in order to make it into a newspaper, has to have the 'so what' factor. If it's good enough, it doesn't need to be negative.'

She also believes that old-fashioned case studies are still irresistible to newspaper editors. 'Every hospital unit or public sector utility is going to have a good story with a case study,' she adds. 'That's what makes stories attractive to newspapers.'

James Henderson, managing director at financial PR agency Pelham Public Relations, says one only has to look at the publicity given to low-cost retailers like Primark, Top Shop and internet retailer As Seen On Screen in articles about what to buy in the credit crunch to see how positive coverage can be had in a recessionary environment.

Tony Carlisle, director at financial PR agency Citigate Dewe Rogerson, agrees, advising that corporate communicators need to think beyond the narrow confines of what boosts shareholder value. An example, he says, was the news story towards the end of last year that the Daw Mill coal mine

on the Lancashire/Yorkshire border was producing three million tonnes of coal a year - the best production of any UK mine. 'It didn't make any difference at all to the company's financial result,' he says, 'but it is a positive news story for the company and it is the truth. It's all about coming up with something that will provide people with a bit of cheer.'

Equally, companies can take positive action to improve life for their customers in the economic downturn.

'There are people in serious need,' says Carlisle. 'If power companies, for example, were seen to be making real efforts to help them, there would be a huge amount of traction in that and an enormous amount of public sympathy.'

There are also pitfalls to beware, however, and the first is that bad news must also not be avoided in the efforts to enhance corporate reputations.

Andrew Caesar-Gordon, managing director at Electric Airwaves, says: 'Newspapers have to write about job losses and profit warnings and these need to be communicated clearly by corporate communications professions.'

Rexam's Thornton agrees. 'It's about being very straight and very truthful and trying not to spin anything,' he says. 'If there's bad news, you have to tell it how it is.'

Caesar-Gordon says this also provides a platform to articulate positive messages, pointing out there's a particular opportunity for organisations that haven't previously engaged with the media but may now be able to build relationships with journalists by offering up experts to comment on business events.

Going the extra mile

Warwick Partington, managing director of communications skills training consultancy Media Training Masterclasses, says some organisations can gain by enhancing their reputations as problem-solvers in difficult times, pointing to the way the Financial Services Compensation Scheme dealt with the collapse of the UK savings accounts of Icelandic banks. 'It communicated in a way that was clear and easy to understand that account holders were able to retrieve their money in a simple and painless way, up to a certain limit,' he says:

'The first trick is to make sure that you have effective communicators. Then you have to make sure that you create credible messages. You've got to sit down and work out if what you need to get across and how you can support them in a memorable way. The age of spin is over. It is essential that you are delivering what you are delivering in a way that has accountability, integrity, truth and openness because I think the public is very tired of people trying to spin good news when there is none.'

Of course, the opposite of this is also true and Maitland cites HSBC as a bank for whom it has been possible to get positive coverage in the credit crunch because its performance has been better than many rivals. But there are caveats to this.

'If someone who has been underperforming for a while then does well, the media is usually very responsible about that and gives it coverage because it is a good news story,' says Maitland. 'But if you have always done well, although you may have just increased your profits for the 15th consecutive year, it is not necessarily going to be seen as a good news story. You have to be doing something different.'

Henderson also believes that communicating well in a recession has to begin with developing a business strategy for tough times. 'If you just announce that you have been impacted by the recession and you don't have a plan B, you're going to get slaughtered in the press,' he says. 'Companies have to move very quickly from just adapting to the recession to actually having a business model for a recession. It's a strategy problem but it's also a communications problem. You have to get your message across. If you want to change things, you have to get across what your strategy for the recession is. You can't just say you're well positioned for the upturn when it comes. I don't think that a lot of companies have moved quickly enough.'

It seems that companies need a plan for difficult times and to put it into action.

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