Farr on PR: Don’t clamp down on the media, it rarely pays
Jezz Farr
Every now and again, large banks' management get it into their heads that it is a good idea to severely curb interaction with the media. They believe this will give them greater control over distribution of the institution's key strategic messages. They think it will reduce the risk of spokespeople going off-piste or saying something stupid. And they think it will stop journalists writing horrid stories.
They are, of course, entirely wrong.
I’ve watched it happen in my world of investment banking and trading. Sometimes it is a senior manager who clamps down on media activity because they think the press is against them. Or maybe it is a recently hired senior manager in the comms department trying to impress their new masters with their firm grip on message management.
Whatever the reason, there are a few fundamentals these short-sighted individuals fail to grasp, sometimes with consequences that come back to haunt them. One is so obvious I shouldn’t have to flag it. The first people outside the bank to hear of a media clampdown is, er, the media.
Instinctively, journalists first will be irritated and second wonder why a bank is going to such lengths to keep the media out. Is something going on? Let’s take a closer look, etc.
Another factor people seem to overlook is the pesky presence of internal comms. Banks don't stop communicating with staff even if they feel they can do so with the press. So internal memos are sent out and, blow me down, some of these messages get leaked to the press.
But above all, no matter how hard a firm tries to lock the doors to the media, people will still talk. Information will continue to flow. You can check work emails and phones all you like, you won’t find much. Yet some stories will keep appearing.
Losing out
Where banks tend to lose out more is with trade media, such as IFR. Certain of the trade press look to have regular, high-touch and ongoing relationships with bankers and traders. IFR writes about transactions. It needs to speak with people all the time about those deals.
When I was at HSBC, one misguided very senior individual decided to drastically limit media engagement in the firm’s investment banking business. Not only that, we in the comms team had to seek explicit approval before even the few employees who were allowed to speak had a conversation with a journalist. It was a nightmare.
Nevertheless, one or two experienced bankers continued to speak to the press on the quiet, without the senior manager’s knowledge. I knew who they were and considered them safe pairs of hands. That is, all conversations were background and off the record, and not so much about HSBC itself but about activity elsewhere in the market. I didn’t let on.
The damage was more on what you could call the “flow” side of media engagement. No longer were people in DCM or ECM allowed to chat with IFR and other media outlets that covered markets. In the past, even after the introduction of rules that required bankers to be accompanied by PRs when meeting journalists, the teams in DCM and ECM were given the freedom to speak unchaperoned. It was just practical – I would have had to hire two people to cover the day-to-day media engagement for just those busy desks, and that wasn’t going to happen given HSBC's budgets at the time.
Under the new rules, just the head of ECM and head of DCM could speak with the media, and only after approval. This was no good – either they would be on a plane travelling somewhere, or they would not be close enough to the deal to fully understand the details.
Filling the vacuum
The senior manager didn’t seem to mind. He felt he was masterminding what the media heard about his business. It didn’t occur to him that bankers at other firms would continue to talk to the press about the very deals in which HSBC was participating. That these bankers filled the vacuum left by HSBC. That they spoke about HSBC-led deals. They gave colour and context while HSBC remained silent. And you can bet your bottom dollar it wasn’t all in the best interests of HSBC.
Naturally, these restrictive media rules bred resentment internally. Not only was the bank missing a trick, we all thought, but bankers were irritated by the loss of agency. They were being treated like schoolchildren by a senior manager wielding job and bonus threats like an old-school headmaster with his cane.
There are always going to be leaks but much of the time people act appropriately with the media. Once bankers understand the rules of the game, they largely speak accordingly. Certainly, the teams in DCM and ECM were masters of the craft. I can’t think of one time they caused serious problems for the comms team. They knew their stuff.
So to be told they must stop engaging with journalists, and then to see rivals getting more airtime in the press, was galling. And it certainly didn’t help HSBC’s participation with the many awards activities that were deemed by many, including me, to be important.
Things at HSBC reverted to normal only after the senior individual left the firm. Yet banks continue trying to limit media engagement. Citigroup has only recently relented and allowed IFR to speak again with its senior people without comms people being present.
I’m all for some level of oversight when it comes to speaking with the press. People need to be properly trained and prepared. They should understand the risks and pitfalls. And also, with certain titles or individual journalists, they may require chaperoning.
But much better to view those whose roles lend themselves to speaking with the press as ambassadors for the bank rather than liabilities. Better to see media engagement as an opportunity, not a danger. There will always be some with their own agendas but we PRs are quick to spot them and root them out. Otherwise, let’s allow people to do what they very much like doing – speaking about their businesses, speaking about their markets and, above all, stealing a march on their competitors.