Bankers need to think about their public reputation

January 18, 2010 at 10:18 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments
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With Bank profits (and associated bonuses) back in the news the public outcry is again becoming deafening. The Banks have (rightly or wrongly) become the scapegoat for the current recession, and the public anger has only been heightened by the billions of taxpayer’s money that has been used to bail the them out. The fact that, barely twelve months on, the Banks are already gearing up to pay employees bonuses of hundreds of thousands of pounds smacks of naivety, especially so close to an election.

The City of London contributes an enormous amount to Britain’s prosperity, and in a free market if our Banks are recruiting the best and making huge profits then those staff members should be rewarded for their expertise. However, the level of animosity currently held against bankers, coupled with the back drop of rising unemployment means the timing of their bonuses is pouring fuel on the fire. The biggest potential threat for the Banks and their remuneration strategy is becoming an election issue with Brown and Cameron trying to outdo each other to show who would come down hardest on the Banks – a popular vote winner at the moment. Far better for the Banks to understand their current reputation with the public and, at the very least, defer bonuses for a year while the heat is taken out of the topic and they are no longer a national news story. Continuing with their current policy of not seeming to care about their reputation could result in legislation being introduced that will impact on them for years to come.

Brown should look at cutting advertising before PR

December 16, 2009 at 1:43 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
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The government has announced it needs to make £650million efficiency savings from its marketing and management consultancy spend. We all know we’re in a financial mess, cuts need to be made and all who work in the public sector seem to be resigned to the inevitable.

However, why is it that whenever cuts in communications budgets are announced PR seems to take a bigger hit that advertising? Could it be, in possibly the biggest irony ever, that the profession of PR hasn’t been ‘PRing’ itself sufficiently, so that the decision makers don’t value it as much as advertising? Quite possibly. The other factors are that advertising is still so much easier to understand and grasp as a concept, coupled with the negative ‘political’ issues surrounding PR that still exist from the Peter Mandelson/Alistair Campbell ‘spin’ era.

The public doesn’t really understand PR, and what it does understand isn’t particularly positive. So saving taxpayers’ money by cutting PR is about as popular a spending cut as you can get. But PR is an essential element in the marketing mix to help central and local government to communicate the services it provides and the important role it plays.

Getting this communication right isn’t easy and does necessitate a degree of investment to do it effectively – but getting it wrong can have potentially disastrous consequences. It’s a job for the CIPR, PRCA and PR practitioners themselves to demonstrate how powerful PR can be, how cost-effective it is and continue to improve the image and standing of the profession.

Hopefully, come the next recession, PR will no longer be seen as the easy target for cuts.

 

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