Yesterday (10 March) I was with one of my clients, Justin Basini from ALLOW, at the BBC. We had interviews with Radio 4 on the You & Yours consumer programme and then immediately after with Radio 5 Live on the Gabby Logan programme. Doing radio is exhilarating and a lot of fun! We felt the interviews went really well and within a few hours we could already see the impact on visitors to the ALLOW website and in new membership sign-ups.
BBC Broadcasting House visitor pass
Justin Basini, ALLOW
My definitions of news
In my opinion, there are two main types of news (from a PR point of view) – hard news and soft news. Hard news is when something is actually happening and soft news is when you ‘create’ something.
Both of these types of news can be divided into external (or industry) and internal (or company).
Here are some examples:
Hard/ External news – the FSA fines a broker for a data breach; a bank suffers an ATM robbery; an insurance company wins an award; the financial ombudsman publishes a list of most complained about institutions.
Hard/ Internal news – one building society takes over another; a credit card provider launches a new product; an insurance company signs a distribution deal with a supermarket.
Soft/ External news – a mortgage broker comments on the Bank of England’s interest rate decision; a credit card company says that it will voluntarily change its literature in the face of criticism from the Treasury Select committee; a lender donates money to an emergency charity appeal.
Soft/ Internal news – a fund manager announces the anniversary of the launch of a fund; a loan provider issues a survey around Mothering Sunday; a bank releases stats on the most popular time of day that people log-on to their online banking service.
You’ll notice that the first category you have no control over, other than how you react to the situation (or crisis). The second category is all about planning, but at least you saw it coming. The third one is about spotting an opportunity and reacting quickly. The fourth category is the one where it can go wrong. There’s too much temptation to overfill this category when there’s not enough going on in categories 1 – 3.
If you’re a company that provides a product which has become commoditised and you are in the middle of the pack when it comes to price and service then all you’ve really got is category 4. This is when you start spending loads of money on surveys.
But wait! It doesn’t have to be like that. There is actually some very, very good content in category 4 – just look at the Nationwide Building Society House Price Index. So surveys are not necessarily bad. They just need careful planning and good placement.
The other option is to move out of category 4 and into category 3. That means being really savvy about piggybacking, which is quite an art. More on that here.
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