CorpComms Magazine

This is not exactly a scientific analysis, but it seems that as US companies struggle to adapt to the volatile new world where clients, investors and reporters are easily spooked, sometimes with catastrophic effects, three communication strategies are emerging. The first is to go on the offensive, which makes a lot of sense. All of a sudden, that head of PR who you've never actually managed to speak to before, although you know their voice mail message off by heart, is phoning back and being really helpful. 

The second is defensive and usually takes the form of the flat denial. The What? Nope, not us tactic was deployed several weeks ago by Robert Steel, chief executive of Wachovia, one of the America's four biggest banks, when he told Jim Cramer on the CNBC show, Mad Money, that the bank 'had a great future as an independent company'. Until that is, when Citigroup bought the company's banking unit for $1 a share.

Most baffling, though, is the third response, which appears to be no response at all, even to clients. According to a report by research firm Corporate Insight on how top US finance firms have been communicating during the financial crisis, 60 per cent of companies surveyed did not even acknowledge there was a financial crisis on either their homepage or in emails to clients. It gives the impression of indifference or ignorance and neither are that great.

It's hard for communications professionals to absorb what is happening, much less frame a response, when market confidence can disappear so abruptly that a company can go from operational to bankrupt in the space of a few days. Or, as in the case of Washington Mutual, when the government swoops in to seize your assets and sells them to someone else overnight. But for those that aren't in that immediate predicament, please talk to us.

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