CorpComms Magazine

'Financial PR hasn't moved on with technology in 20 years,' sighs James Henderson, managing director at Pelham Bell Pottinger. That statement will not make Henderson popular within his industry, but speak privately to most senior figures and they will admit as much.

It is only really in the past year or so that most financial PR agencies have made efforts to track modern digital media, such as online campaigning and monitoring blogs and Twitter, to ensure that their clients' messages are effectively reaching investors, analysts and journalists. The rise of social media has been simply too great to ignore.

As one in-house communicator at a major investment bank puts it: 'Finally, financial PRs have started embracing digital technology, not just paid lip service to it. More shareholders read the Financial Times' [online business column] Alphaville by 6am than most newspapers later in the morning.'

A comprehensive digital media strategy can be broken down into three key parts: campaigning, monitoring, and engagement.

Campaigning

Arguably, using digital media for campaigning purposes is where financial PRs have been quickest to adapt and have, at times, been hugely effective. For example, Financial Dynamics (FD) was asked by mining client Carnegie Minerals to set up a Facebook and web campaign to help its employee, Charlie Northfield, who had been locked up with murderers and drug dealers on spurious charges in Gambia.

In February 2008, FD managing director Billy Clegg launched the sites, which gained support from the likes of Northfield's old school friends and became the place for regional media - Northfield was from Plymouth - to pick up stories on the case. 'It helped put pressure on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to take his case seriously,' argues Clegg. As a result, Northfield was able to get bail and moved into house arrest, a more comfortable location that helped facilitate his escape six months later.

A more typical case study of financial campaigning is the recent £11.9 billion takeover by US confectioner Kraft of Cadbury, the much-loved maker of Dairy Milk and Creme Eggs.

A British institution, the fear of an overseas buyer was such that even the usually free trade-endorsing business secretary Peter Mandelson warned that Kraft would face local opposition if it were looking simply to 'make a fast buck'.

Brunswick Group, Kraft's PR, looked to reassure Cadbury shareholders, unions and a sceptical media with what it termed a 'transactions site'. This microsite included fact sheets, media information and a video interview with the then little known Kraft chairman and chief executive Irene Rosenfeld.

The site had nearly 50,000 hits. 'It was a 'go to' point for investors and the media - we put up key messages alongside legal documentation,' explains Richard Jacques, partner at Brunswick.

Jacques says that these types of sites are becoming 'increasingly' intrinsic to its communications strategy for big deals.

Many of Brunswick's ideas developed at the times of brewing client InBev's $52 billion takeover of Budweiser producer Anheuser-Busch in 2008. Again, passions ran high as patriotic Americans were concerned about the culture of their favourite brewer after being taken over by a Belgian group.

InBev chef executive Carlos Brito put up a video every week in the run up to the deal being signed, giving 'sounds of reassurance' and turning the site into 'a real campaigning force' says Jacques, until the deal overturned political opposition.

Monitoring

Where financial agencies have been a little slower to catch up with the evolution of social media is in actually monitoring what is being said about their clients. Most of the more established firms are rectifying this with dedicated social media teams.

For example, Brunswick has ten people who spend their days looking at news feeds and wires, vital in an age where journalists like Sky News' Mark Kleinman and the BBC's Robert Peston are breaking many business stories in their blogs. If the client company wants a more dedicated service, Brunswick will outsource to smaller, specialist technology agencies.

Similarly, Tulchan Communications has three people who continually review digital media. Andrew Grant, the agency's founder, says that this service is particularly important to media clients, such as ITV. But he adds that the industry must sharpen up as online resources develop: 'Whatever it is that you are launching for a client, you need to have a very clear, comprehensive message as it gets carried everywhere so quickly. You've also got to have a system to monitor how that message is being reported.'

M:Communications went one step further. The firm bought a Swedish communications company called Hallvarsson & Halvarsson (H&H), which specialises in social media monitoring. Nick Miles, co-founder of M:, says that this helps the agency pitch for work with 'a full-scale strategy'. However, Miles adds that M: will only monitor social media if the work hits the expected profit margin of the agency, which is typically between 30 per cent and 40 per cent.

Tracking what is being said on the huge variety of formal and informal news sources online also helps agencies better prepare for the increasing breadth of press enquiries that are developing as a result. Andrew Dowler, senior managing director at FD, says that when French power group EdF bought his client, British Energy, for £12.5 billion in 2008, the borderless nature of online journalism meant that he was fielding calls from Germany to France, and not just his usual British press contacts.

'It used to be the case that we'd put a client in front of journalists until 6, maybe 7, o'clock [to hit print deadlines], but now something appears online and I'm getting a call at 11pm,' says Dowler. He estimates that 20 years ago financial PR fees were maybe 50 per cent lower in real terms than they are today, a reflection of the increased hours.

Engagement

As should be expected, younger agency PRs are generally using social media more directly than their older peers. Siobhra Murphy is an account executive at Bishopsgate Communications who previously worked at a digital design agency.

She re-pitches stories that have failed to get picked up through traditional press releases directly to journalists using Twitter. Murphy finds that these tweets get more attention than the emailed releases, which most business journalists tend to put into their 'trash' file.

She also points out that communicating through social media also helps her explain stories to reporters quickly. 'Journalists have a lot less time to investigate, meaning we have an improving relationship with them and have to make getting information to them more personal,' says Murphy.

Worryingly, though, a general lack of knowledge of libel laws means that many posters and bloggers will make defamatory comments about agencies' clients. Penrose Financial chief executive Gay Collins works closely with media and technology law firm Olswang to protect their clients' reputations.

'Often you do need the lawyers, who can take a pretty formal approach [to bloggers and forum administrators] and know how to get posts taken down,' Collins explains.

However, she also advises clients to keep calm when they see comments that they do not like, as engaging with some of the more fantastical bloggers almost validates their views. Denying them that access essentially wrecks their ambitions. 'I advise clients to not get overly concerned. What the blogger actually wants from you is to engage with them.'

Collins does advise clients to join relevant social media sites that can help the firms build links with potential investors and suppliers. For example, she gets pension funds to join Mallow Street, which describes itself as 'a targeted community' for the industry.

Pay-off

Financial PR is a lucrative business. Ultimately, the firms that have the most comprehensive social media strategies will be the ones that are the most sought after.

Nick Harvey, head of corporate finance at Ingenious Media, has been involved in several high profile mergers and acquisitions deals in the PR sector, such as the sale of financial PR agency Finsbury to marketing and advertising group WPP for more than £40 million in 2001.

He argues that the speed of reporting has meant that the public perception of a deal is set almost as soon as the story is broken, meaning that only the best prepared agencies will keep in control of the key messages.

'Those financial PRs that demonstrate understanding of technology will be the most valuable,' says Harvey. And that's one major incentive for financial PRs to finally catch up with the changes in digital media.

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