In-house or consultancy?

There is a healthy obsession among public relations people to debate fruitlessly the relative merits of in-house or consultancy public relations people. Without doubt financial public relations is an area where professional knowledge and skills are needed by even the smallest quoted company in one form or another.

The complexity and regulation in financial communication make it particularly important that there is someone around with the knowledge of both the company and the financial markets. Whether this expertise comes from in-house or consultancy is completely irrelevant. What does matter is the access that the adviser has to the top management of the company and the breadth of understanding they have of the interlinked City audiences of financial media, brokers, banks and securities houses and share-earning institutions.

It is important to remember that the key description is ‘adviser’. It is an even bigger mistake in financial public relations than the rest of the communications industry for the communication experts to get between a company and its audiences. As well as being an adviser we may occasionally be an intermediary, but it is important to remember that the message is that of a company and its management, and that ‘good’ public relations programmes are those that are effective, not those that are noticeable.