CorpComms Magazine

A decade ago, a typical day for a City reporter would start off with visits to one or more press conferences to hear a company's financial results, or perhaps an announcement about a new director's appointment. He or she would then return to the office to write up the stories, possibly diverting first for an extended lunch with contacts.

But a year ago, when Nationwide announced its significant merger with Portman Building Society, creating a combined entity worth £150 bn and triggering financial windfalls for Portman's 1.8 mn members - an event that, in previous years, would have seen journalists scurrying across town at a moment's notice - there was no press conference at all.

Today, the press conference has become synonymous with the crisis story. It is the method by which parents appeal for information about a lost child or a beleaguered company attempts to salvage relations with shareholders or customers fearful they might lose their life savings.

For more mundane matters, it seems journalists are now incredibly fussy about what they will leave the office for. As one well-known national newspaper journalist says frequently to any PR naïve enough to call to invite him to a breakfast conference: 'Why don't we make it half an hour earlier, and have a bath together?'

Time pressures are the main reason journalists no longer happily trot along to press conferences. These days most of the main papers have online editions to which all senior columnists and reporters must contribute blogs and webcasts. These part-time bloggers must then monitor comments posted by readers, as well as make appearances on internet TV, before they get round to filing any copy for the next day's paper. No one has time to attend anything that involves less than earth-shattering news.

Time to talk

'For years we held press conferences for everything: annual results, product launches, and so on,' recalls Alan Oliver, head of communications at Nationwide. 'We saw attendance decline, however, because journalists are under more time pressures and are increasingly choosy about what events they will attend. We don't do press conferences at all any more.'

Standard Life is one company that continued to hold press conferences until recently, mostly because the group went through a particularly gruelling period for two years from 2004. Nowadays the company would think twice before holding a press conference, says head of media relations Scott White - and the trend for new media expertise among newspaper journalists is part of the reason.

'Journalists do not have the time to attend,' White says. 'The days of the long lunch are long gone, and it is now very difficult for any individual to take two or three hours out of the day to go to a press conference.

'The problems we had in 2004, 2005 and 2006 meant we had to be able to look people in the eye and say, Ask us anything you want, so it was important to hold press conferences. We could hold them then because lots of journalists were terrified they would miss something, but for a typical results day now you wouldn't do it.'

Guarded questions

As journalist numbers have dwindled on newspapers and trade publications, so the pressure has stepped up on hacks to meet deadlines while also delivering the best scoops they can find. 'If a journalist has a real nugget of an angle, how likely is it that he or she will want to share it with other journalists by asking questions about it at a press conference?' asks White.

Oliver echoes this assessment. 'Reporters will come out for an exclusive interview, or to do a profile,' he notes. 'Journalists want their own questions and angles protected from others. When we used to do press conferences, the real lines of questioning would always come out in the one-to-one interviews afterwards.'

This is why the standard practice at Nationwide now is to do a press release for any announcement and follow up with a series of one-to-ones with journalists, either by telephone or in person. The group tailors this to journalists' needs. For example, when it announced a bancassurance tie-up with Legal & General in February this year, it held a telephone conference with wire reporters early in the morning, during which questions could be asked of the respective chief executives.

'This was fine for the wires, which just need to get all the facts out as quickly as possible, so I would probably do this again,' says Oliver. 'It is a fair and easy way to get information out to people for whom time is of the essence.'

Andrew Appleyard, co-manager of London-based PR agency Media Relations Management, takes his clients around newspaper and magazine offices to provide one-to-one time on the journalists' own terms. 'You only hold a press conference if you know you can get away with it,' he says. 'These days the business of making an announcement is so much more complicated. You have to narrow down the publications you want to cover and think very carefully about embargoes, now that all the papers have online editions and there are so many other online publications.

'Face-to-face interviews are still the most valuable way to get your message across - it is far better to get in front of someone and make eye contact - so clients must be willing to trawl around if necessary.'

This is what Hannily Pavey, director of City-based PR agency Lansons Communications, calls the 'mini press junket'. 'We line up the journalists in advance and then taxi the spokesperson around to talk to them all,' she explains. 'With news journalists having so much to cram into one day, this is often the only way to get their time.'

Lansons, along with various other PR consultancies, is also busy trying to develop more sophisticated ways to communicate with journalists, including the increasingly popular interactive press release, and even conducting online press briefings.

New media developments

The interactive press release is emailed to journalists and contains a click-through link to a website that can then provide any content you want the journalist to see. It could simply be more written information, or it could be, for example, a webcast by a director. Journalists can then request a one-to-one interview, or just ask more questions by telephone. This approach is fast becoming the norm, says Pavey, and has the potential for development.

Jamie Swinton, director of BrightTalk, a corporate television production company based in London and Edinburgh, has also produced interactive press releases for clients. He put one together to announce a joint venture between Peter Lehmann Wines and Enotria, the wine cellars group, which included a click-through link to a video interview with the chief executives of the two businesses.

Although he works primarily in the business-to-business arena, Swinton also hopes to develop his own 'e-symposium' concept - a web conference with the ability to span different timezones - for press relations purposes.

It may be some time before journalists become completely comfortable with web-based conferences, however. To date, Pavey has held online press briefings for trade press only. Lansons puts the client in front of a camera, and broadcasts him or her online. Journalists are able to log in at a preappointed time and ask questions over the internet to get real-time responses.

'We have struggled to get the national newspapers to take part in these, but they went down well with the trade press,' says Pavey. 'And the way things are moving, they could become more popular.'

Pavey says clients are already able to carry out online video conferences with analysts, and this is something that could easily be adapted for journalists in the future. Lansons uses corporate TV company Cantos to put its online conferences together.

Companies are still unsure about the use of video on the internet for making announcements, however. 'I could see Nationwide using web conferencing, but we haven't so far,' explains Oliver. 'It's not something I have wanted to do; I feel that both sides benefit from hearing the other side's voice. You can't really get across the emotion and passion behind an announcement if you are making it to a blank wall.'

Filming conferences live on the internet may still be a step too far for some, even if that is the general direction we are taking. But White says it is time for companies to seriously address the way in which they communicate announcements to the media.

'Journalists have gone through a big shift in the way they work,' he concludes, 'and the time has come for companies to adapt.'

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