Many organisations steer away from being too political. This can stem from wanting to avoid alienating potential customers or having a risk-averse senior management or PR team. If that’s you, you’ve come to the right place.
The problem is that politics plays a big role in everyone’s lives. Even those who claim not to be interested in politics will have a view on potholes, the Winter Fuel Allowance or interest rates if you’re chatting over a pint on a Friday night. In general, if an issue affects the money in people’s back pockets, they start to show an interest. And the same is true in business. Of course, large corporates generally pay attention to political changes anyway but even small businesses will sit up and listen if potential changes affect the day-to-day running of their business and their balance sheet.
To some extent, whether an organisation decides to dip its toes into the political waters depends on its definition of PR. If PR is deemed to be just a press office function, sending out press releases about products and services, then addressing the political issues of the day can be a big step.
For most, PR is about reaching stakeholders, improving awareness and increasing share-of-voice, and doing that while only navel-gazing is a tough gig and almost impossible without engaging in topics at a deeper level.
We also need to consider the media and journalists in this discussion, as often they are the middle (wo)man and the route to reaching your target audience. Contrary to the belief of some organisations, journalists were not put on this earth to copy and paste press releases: most want to get under the bonnet of the stories and add their own take on things, and so much prefer opinions and thought pieces to PR-puff. Therefore, tapping into the issues of the day, many of which will be quasi-, if not directly political, can win brownie points with the press as well as keeping you front of mind with your target audience too.
So how can an organisation tap into this rich PR seam for its benefit? When you’re new to this, the key is to have an opinion without having an opinion…
1. Maintain neutrality
As above, it’s important not to alienate your audience but sometimes, by having an opinion, you can win more friends and influence more people than by sitting on the fence. If however, that doesn’t sit well with your organisation you can still get involved without aligning to a particular party or policy. Finding a good balance of positives and negatives in any given policy or governmental change of direction will mean you’re still politically neutral but at least involved in the debate. If you don’t offer any opinion, regardless of how neutral it is, you can be pretty sure that one of your competitors will and you’ll be squeezed out of the debate and any ensuing press coverage.
2. Education, education, education
Similar to the first point on maintaining neutrality, another way to get involved in a political debate is to educate your audience about the consequences of political change. This will always be welcomed by the media too who may not have the time, resources or knowledge to do a deep delve into every topic. Engaging with a political topic isn’t always about making the news pages: a well-written thought leadership piece, demonstrating knowledge and expertise is worth its weight in gold.
3. Follow my leader
Many trade bodies and organisations campaign on behalf of their members and so they tend to be reasonably political. It can be helpful to follow their lead. By doing so, your organisation will rarely be out of sync with the general opinion in an industry but you appear to be getting involved.
4. Follow the herd
If you’re out of kilter with your trade body or they aren’t particularly active, you can seek the opinion of your target audience, the general public, or your existing customer base, via a survey or poll. By communicating the collective voice of a group of people, you can align your organisation to the political agenda without having to have much of a view yourself. Few can argue with the power of the people in a democracy, even if their views are unpopular with politicians.
5. Create an inner circle
Seek the opinion of other businesses, clients and respected industry leaders by hosting a roundtable. By being a host and not a participant, your role is to elicit the views of others which means you can remain on the political fence. Invitations can be extended to the press to either partake in the roundtable themselves or simply report on the discussion. Alternatively, this can be shared afterwards via social media, blog posts and press releases in order to have more control over the message.
6. Comment on white papers
When a new policy is being explored, it is usually (but not always) in conjunction with the industry that it will affect. This is when the government issues a White Paper – a statement of policy with legislative changes – which may be debated before a new Bill is introduced. Some White Papers invite general comment and often there is an additional consultation paper which includes specific questions. Responses are treated confidentially by the government but an organisation can share its involvement by ‘welcoming reform’ without needing to get into too much nitty-gritty.
7. Case in point
Individual case studies (both B2B and B2C) can also help an organisation navigate the political waters without having to do it themselves. By finding a reasonably outspoken individual or business customer, an organisation can be aligned with an issue in a piece of editorial about a relevant topic but without needing to say too much themselves.
You don’t need to have a grand public affairs department to use politics to benefit your PR. It can however take a while for any organisation to get into the habit of looking for the right sort of opportunities but once you do, you’ll see so many possibilities, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do this earlier. As above, you don’t need to get on a soap box to be successful – activity can be planned, controlled and non-controversial. You’ll be rewarded with not only more coverage but also a better quality of coverage and improved long-term relationships with journalists.
