For Communication Director: 'In the wake of the by now reknown accounting scandals of the past few years, financial communications at publicly quoted companies has become leading for all communications disciplines, both in timing and content. The rules and regulations brought forward by Sarbanes Oxley remind us of the ISO Certification process management approach, only now it is risk management that is at stake, not quality management. At the same time, corporate stakeholders and in particular the investment community require more and more information and transparancy on the company's performance and its governance. This provides, more than ever, a challenge for the cooperation and alignment between corporate communications and investor relations, in particular in media relations and internal communications.'   

Koenraad van Hasselt
Director Corporate Communications
KPN Royal Dutch Telecom

Question to Frank Koster, General Manager of Corporate Communications and Affairs for the ING Group: 

“In the light of financial crises hitting the headlines over the last six months – Northern Rock in the UK, the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, Société Génerale in France – how did financial companies such as ING adapt to the turbulence?”

The turbulence in recent months has certainly applied tight pressure on financial institutions to communicate the impact of the crises on their business performance and financial results. ING is fortunate to have a very limited exposure to troubled asset classes. Thanks to our business profile and risk management, we’ve been able to shield ourselves from the direct impact of the credit crisis.  

But in an environment where many financial institutions are being lumped together – and there was even a period where banks wouldn’t lend to other banks anymore – the presumption of innocence disappeared and the credibility of the whole financial industry was at stake. The burden was clearly on us to communicate our exposure to all of our stakeholders and we aimed to do so in an thorough and consistent manner.

In November 2007, ING released its third quarter results which showed a very limited exposure to asset classes under pressure. However, the results came at a time of heightened skepticism in the market about the accuracy of the results of financial services companies because of the complex nature of the credit crisis. Between November and the release of the fourth quarter results in February 2008, market sentiment towards financial services companies considerably worsened and share prices came under major pressure.  

At a few points in the month leading up to the fourth quarter results, there was much market speculation about ING’s risk exposure. In response to queries from analysts and journalists, they were directed to information in ING’s third quarter results, which said there was limited impact on ING’s results from the market turbulence.

ING’s response was to opt for full and extensive disclosure in its fourth quarter results and not be pressured into making an interim statement before then, which could have appeared defensive. It was also decided that ING chairman Michel Tilmant would take the company’s message of financial stability direct to a large international audience of analysts and journalists by holding press and analyst conferences in London, instead of at the company’s head office in Amsterdam. In his words, he wanted to “look the analysts in the eye”.

ING’s fourth results were generally very well received and the market showed it believed our message by marking the share price up after the publication of the figures. This disciplined communications strategy was successful.

Click here for a slightly ridiculous video by Robert Scoble.

Microsoft is in hot water with the European Commission over competition laws again. In 2004, the Commission ruled that their dominant market position was being abused in order to maintain a near-monopoly over operating systems (OS), and Microsoft had to disclose interface code (allowing production of interoperable programs), provide their OS without the ubiquitous Windows Media Player, and pay €500 million in fines.

         But on January 14^th the EU Commission – unsatisfied with Microsoft’s attempts to rectify the problems – launched two new antitrust suits. The Court of First Instance upheld judgements requiring dominant companies to disclose interoperability information, and complaints from Opera and ECIS led the Commission to examine how interoperable their Office Open XML suite is, and whether new technologies used in Internet Explorer hinder transparency of interface protocols.

         After several years of attempts to comply with regulations, it seems that Microsoft – as dominant OS manufacturer worldwide – is still loath to relinquish its near-monopoly. But in view of the EU Commission’s slow progress towards final judgements on the issue, who can blame Microsoft for sticking to an as-yet highly successful business model?

D. Le Ray

SPAM and the SPAMaholics (or robots) who send it are and always have been nothing short of a plague of annoyance, so using it as an actual PR tactic to spread information or gain attention must -clearly- be done with great care… or else you end up with a charming blog post like this one from WIRED magazine’s Editor-in-CHief which begins:

“I’ve had it. I get more than 300 emails a day and my problem isn’t spam (Cloudmark Desktop solves that nicely), it’s PR people. Lazy flacks send press releases to the Editor in Chief of WIRED because they can’t be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they’re pitching…”

FULL POST HERE

-PJT 

Just in from the Wall Street Journal HERE

-PJT

A tragic tale ripped straight out of Yahoo! News:

“The Federal Communications Commission is proposing a $4,000 fine against Comcast Corp. for airing a pitch for a sleep aid without telling viewers that the spot was financed by the maker of the product.

The fine was in response to a complaint by the Center for Media and Democracy, a media watchdog group, which said it marks the first time a company has been sanctioned for airing a “video news release,” a type of programming it dubs “fake news.”

A video news release is a sponsored public relations video that mimics actual news reports. Such programs are common in broadcasting and are usually offered to news shows for free.”

The Center for Media and Democracy states on their site:

“The FCC’s action against Comcast is precedent setting. It firmly rejects the public relations industry’s argument that no disclosure is needed if television stations are not paid to air VNRs. Hopefully, the FCC will soon address the nearly 140 other undisclosed VNR broadcasts that were documented in CMD’s two reports, ‘Fake TV News‘ and ‘Still Not the News.’” 

-PJT

Last week the University of Florida police tased a student at a John Kerry event. Some thoughts on the matter can be found here at PR Newser, and the video of the tasing can be found HERE, or blurrier HERE, or (best view?) HERE.

-PJT

Why pay for news when you can just let the advertisers pick up the tab?

As of midnight Sept 19, 2007 the NY TImes has stopped charging for  its Times Select and archived content:

“In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.

‘But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,’ said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site”One would also hope that this will also mean the beginning of the end of paid content online once and for all- afterall, why pay for somthing when you can get it elsewhere for free? It would be ideal if the move by the NYT pressured other pay content sites (the few remaining) into following suit. Is there an issue of quality being lost when something is “free”? Perhaps, but how much of a difference are we really talking-? Many important paid-for articles are copy-pasted into other blogs anyhow.

And will we have to see MORE online ads at nytimes.com? Perhaps- most likely… oh well.

FULL ARTICLE IN NYT HERE

-PJT 

“By and large, heads of companies and their communications departments, representing various degrees of bigness, ignore blogs…” BUT “If bloggers can effect the ratings of stocks, sway investors from buying or selling, or even drive money into the private sector, then they’re worth some attention and bridge-building.”

Full post HERE at Cheezhead. Cheezhead author Joel Cheesman, president of HRSEO and Oaseo, is one of the most widely-read bloggers on emerging recruitment issues in the world.

-PJT