CorpComms Magazine

Barack Obama's Yes we can! will surely be the quote of last year. After his inauguration, the markets will no doubt be hoping that this sentiment holds true for his hopes of the huge TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Programme) capital injection into the US economy and those in the other economies around the world, including those of our very own Gordon Brown. With the gloom and doom in the City of London, with equity prices down between 25 and 95 per cent in previously solid sectors and waves of redundancies spreading out from banking and construction into other parts of the economy, we communicators will have to steel ourselves to be positive about the future...despite Robert Peston's daily revelations.

What is so evidently missing in the market at present is confidence. The sentiment is more No we can't! In fact, investors are looking for every reason not to invest, and at times over the last few months promoting clients has often felt like shouting against a very strong wind. Yes, companies and their management have been in a state of shock or disbelief as they have watched their hard-earned stock prices slump to pre-millennium levels in all too many cases. But the truth is that financial and corporate reporting must go on, and those same management teams are now coming to terms with a new market environment and looking to their plans for this year. For some this is going to bring the fear and pain of downsizing, restructuring and redundancies, for others (with cash and strong balance sheets) it will bring exciting opportunities for expansion and consolidation, despite a recessionary economy. Whilst we simply will not see the M&A fest and the IPO flow of the last few years, there is going to be plenty for communications professionals to do over the coming year.

Maybe the best way to look at it is to take a new broom to your company's positioning and investment pitch, not surprisingly with a bigger focus on credit-worthiness, cash flow and balance sheet backing. And, more than anything, we will have to counter the doom -mongers talking business down and, instead, help the market gradually regain its confidence with a robust refrain of Yes we can!  

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