If it bleeds, it leads

Your PR efforts should be focused, objective-driven and free of vanity.

Mar 12, 2023

📸 First, flashback to last October when I recommended B-Corp status as a way for financial brands to demonstrate their green credentials. This week, top advice firms talked to Citywire about why B Corp is worth the effort.

👉🏻 Now, read on to learn why:

① You don’t actually want to be on the front page of a tier 1 news outlet.

② An effective PR programme needs clear objectives.

③ Once you’ve banked $250k, it’s time to diversify your banking relationships.

④ Payment incumbents won't go gentle into that good night.

⑤ Twitter’s most likely competitor was born of…Twitter.

⑥ Reorganisation advisers can’t agree on reorganisations.

⑦ We’re entering ‘the breakage phase’.

What's new

JPMorgan and Jes Staley were on the front page of the FT this week.

Jes Staley. Source: The Financial Times, 9 March 2023

In short:

“JPMorgan Chase is suing Jes Staley, a former top executive, in an attempt to make him liable for any penalties the US bank might have to pay if it is found to have facilitated Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking crimes.”
“Staley, a 66-year-old American, got to know Epstein while managing his money at JPMorgan, where he worked for more than 30 years until 2013 — the same year that the bank terminated its relationship with Epstein. Staley became chief executive of Barclays in 2015 but resigned six years later following a regulatory investigation in the UK into the way he characterised his relationship with Epstein.”
“Brad Edwards, a lawyer for Jane Doe, said the complaint against Staley was JPMorgan ‘attempting to deflect’ blame. ‘Every top executive knew exactly who Jeffrey Epstein was and chose to keep him because he was making them money and money was more important than the women being abused,’ he said.”

Why it matters

Don’t worry, I’m not going to ruin your breakfast by discussing the horror of Epstein’s crimes nor Staly’s - at best - monumental errors of judgement; nor am I suggesting this story is the result of a PR campaign gone wrong - clearly no one involved sought the attention of the press. But it matters because it demonstrates that actually, despite the old saying, there absolutely is such a thing as bad publicity.

Epstein deserves our contempt. Indeed, I’d argue Staly doesn’t warrant any sympathy either. But not only does the reputation of JPMorgan’s institutional judgement suffer a severe blow here, so too do all of its “top executives”. Even Barclays gets dragged into the mess by association. No one comes out of this story well.

① I’ve often been asked by CEOs, “can you get us (they mean ‘me’) on the front page of the FT?” and I’ll tell you now what I’ve always told them: you don’t really want to be on the front page of the FT. Why? Because of the old adage ‘if it bleeds, it leads’. There isn’t a news outlet in the world that wouldn’t prioritise bad news over good. The more salacious, violent or scandalous, the better. You hire a good PR agency to keep you off the front page and nestled in the far friendlier inner pages instead.

What to do about it

Take action

② I’m not suggesting you should avoid tier 1 news outlets - quite the opposite, earned media remains the most effective way to build trust with your audience - but you absolutely should be clear about the objectives of your PR programme. Talk to your agency this week and satisfy yourself that:

You have a clear plan for your PR efforts: ‘Building buzz’ isn't a clear objective. Agree instead how the earned coverage you’re aiming to achieve will support your commercial efforts - and time it accordingly.
Your audience is identified: If you’re not specific about who it is you want to reach, there is little chance you’ll manage to reach them.
You know what they read: Since you’re an IMTW subscriber, I’d venture your target audience might well read the FT. But they may not. Your PR efforts could be more effective if you focused them on specialist titles.
You have a newsworthy message to articulate: Does your agency understand exactly what you want to convey? Securing comment in news articles is relatively straightforward, the real knack is aligning them with your brand’s narrative and making that story worthy reporting on.
You’re not chasing vanity metrics: If you tell your agency you want the front page of the Journal, they will burn through all the hours you pay them for trying to secure that for you. They might even succeed. But, other than a lovely thing to frame and hang in your office, will that coverage bring you closer to your commercial goals?

Get help

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Top stories

The other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

Silicon Valley Bank shutdown leaves start-ups anxious about their funds

③ Once you’ve got a quarter of a million dollars in the bank, it’s time to diversify your banking relationships.

Source: The Financial Times, 10 March 2023

“Silicon Valley start-ups are scrambling to pay staff and identify sources of back-up funding after regulators stepped in and shut down Silicon Valley Bank on Friday morning, stranding deposits that serve as the lifeblood of many early-stage technology companies. The bank was the 16th largest in the US and a central part of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, serving roughly half of all venture fund-backed technology start-ups and many of their investors.”
“Deposits of up to $250,000 are federally insured but the majority of SVB clients fall outside that threshold. The bank reported at the end of last year that $151bn of its $173bn in total domestic deposits was uninsured. The FDIC said clients will get access to insured deposits by Monday morning, while uninsured depositors will get an advanced dividend and a receivership certificate for anything above that sum.”
“SVB’s central position in the tech ecosystem will be hard to transfer. As well as holding deposits, the lender underwrites tech IPOs, bankrolls entrepreneurs’ pet projects and hosts regular events in California. Deposit holders were hoping for the bank to be bought out of receivership and for a new owner to reopen accounts and resume lending. One VC said it was fielding calls from nervous start-up founders who wanted advice on how to communicate the payroll issue to employees and feared they would have to start laying people off if no buyer for SVB could be found in the next few days.”

TECHNOLOGY

Swift to develop beta version of experimental CBDC connector

④ Payment incumbents won't go gentle into that good night.

“Interbank co-operative Swift is reporting strong support from central and commercial banks after sandbox testing of an experimental method for interlinking central bank digital currencies with existing fiat infrastructures.”
“The co-operative published the findings of a 12-week period of sandbox testing, in which almost 5,000 transactions were simulated between two different blockchain networks and with existing fiat-based payment systems.”
“Sandbox participants included the Banque de France, the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Intesa Sanpaolo, NatWest, Royal Bank of Canada, SMBC, Société Générale, Standard Chartered and UBS.”

MEDIA & MARKETING

Bluesky, the decentralized social network

⑤ Twitter’s most likely competitor was born of…Twitter.

“Back in 2019, Jack Dorsey created a new project at Twitter to imagine a new social network under a decentralised structure. The initiative operated independently of Twitter, despite being funded by Twitter. Under the hood, Bluesky is based on the AT protocol. AT is similar to ActivityPub, the decentralised protocol that powers Mastodon.”
“The app looks extremely familiar to Twitter, but as a really alpha version. There are three different tabs for the timeline, search, and notifications. There’s also a side menu with quick access to the user profile and app settings. The interactions are also very similar to Twitter’s, which comes as no surprise since Bluesky was created as a side project of Twitter. The timeline is displayed in chronological order and you can reply, repost, quote, or like other users’ posts.”
“Bluesky has a clear advantage over Mastodon right now, which is people’s enthusiasm about a new social network exclusively for invited members. It reminds me of Clubhouse in its early days, where everyone wanted to join the platform just because you had to have an invitation – and those who had one felt cool about it. Of course, this won’t make Bluesky successful, but it will help the platform gain attention from mainstream people. And undeniably, Bluesky seems less complicated than Mastodon for users who are not into tech.”

WILDCARD

Deloitte boss rebuts EY’s case for splitting up

⑥ Reorganisation advisers can’t agree on reorganisations.

Source: The Financial Times, 9 March 2023

“In a video posted on Deloitte’s website, Joe Ucuzoglu said the firm had considered separating its audit and consulting businesses, as EY hopes to, and had even spoken to bankers about doing so. The conclusion, he said, was ‘not even a close call’ and the idea that EY’s plan could be a ‘road map’ for the profession, as the firm suggested, was wrong.”
“Ucuzoglu’s opposite number at EY, Carmine Di Sibio, has said audit and consulting would grow more quickly as separate entities, freed from conflict-of-interest rules that limit what services can be sold to audit clients. Regulators are increasingly challenging the multidisciplinary model, supporters of the split argue.”
“Ucuzoglu disagreed. ‘I speak to a lot of regulators and not one has ever suggested to me or encouraged me in any way that we go down a path of structural separation . . . In fact, I have received quite a few questions from regulators recently, with their concerns about how the separation transaction would work’. Deloitte’s path, he said, would be to ‘keep nurturing’ the firm, ‘not tearing it apart’.”

Off cuts

The stories that almost made this week’s newsletter.

The last word

⑦ Robert Armstrong on the implications of the SVB failure:

Source: The Financial Times, 11 March 2023

“At the end of every central bank rate-increase cycle, there comes a phase where things in the financial system begin to break. These breakages, minor or major, erode the confidence of investors and consumers, increasing the odds of recessions. The failure of SVB does not herald another 2008, but it does mark the beginning of the breakage phase.”

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Wishing you a productive week,