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Anne Gregory

Corporate public relations

  1. The twin areas of corporate and financial communication are, in most people’s view, inseparable. Corporate public relations and financial public relations are not merely close bedfellows, they are Siamese twins sharing the same vital activities.

  2. Corporate public relations is usually defined as the reputation of the entire company, although more often it is the reputation of the head of a company rather than the entire body. It is not that the reputation of some obscure subsidiary cannot affect the much larger corporate body, more that the corporate reputation should be robust enough to cope with the ups and downs of individual parts. Corporate public relations is all about enabling a company to succeed and success cannot always be defined in simplistic financial terms.

  3. The extremely high corporate reputation of British Airways in the UK, Europe and the US is based on several key factors: the contentment of its passengers with the quality of its product; the admiration of investors for its management; the financial performance of the company; and the strength of its share price. At different times the relative importance of these factors may vary a little but they are all essential.

  4. Those who doubt the importance now given to corporate public relations by the key players in the City need only to consider the example of British Gas. A much respected City commentator, writing in The Times about British Gas following an acrimonious annual general meeting in June 1995, concluded: ‘The failure, as institutions perceive it, is not strategy but public relations. Fund managers have given the Board a few clear pointers about how this might be addressed.’

  5. It is one of life’s universal truths – along with the fact that nobody thinks they are a bad driver – that most people, whatever their profession, regard themselves as a public relations expert. Fund managers giving companies tips on their public relations will probably be relieved to hear that public relations people seldom seek to give advice on fund management.