Financial Communications [National Conference 2018 Session Recap]
Session: The Fast-Paced World of Financial Communications
Speakers: Kris Cole, Associate Vice President of Prosek Partners
Recap: As someone who is not a finance person and can barely do her taxes, I went to the financial communications session. Conference is the time to learn new things so I figured, why not? Cole started off the session defining public relations versus advertising. Public relations is a third-party credibility.
Public relations is very different in the financial sector. In this session, we talked mainly about mergers and acquisitions due to audience interests. The biggest public relations challenge is articulating consistent messages to all of your stakeholders. This includes shareholders, employees, the public and more. The communication needs to be consistent and accurate to all.
Financial public relations fun fact: Press releases used to be seven to eight pages long until Amazon bought Whole Foods, then it went down to four paragraphs.
Takeaways:
- If you don’t tell your story, someone else will. Control the narrative.
- Get in front of the issue, not the camera.
- The best way to mitigate damage is through positive communication. I found the issue and I fixed it.
- You need paid, earned and owned media to be successful.
- The best way to kill a story is to give another one.
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Elizabeth Frenaye is a senior studying public relations and strategic communications, with a focus in event management, as well as international studies at American University. For her chapter of PRSSA, she is the service director and in charge of the Bateman Competition. Follow her on Twitter @eliiizardbeth and connect with her on LinkedIn.
