Talking with the press is important, but most effective is enlisting and empowering employees to say, “Here’s what our bank is doing.”

 

• How to avoid the “parameter trap” 

• One Midwestern bank “gets it”

The spectacle of the CEOs of the country’s biggest banks summoned by Congress for a public inquisition can make even the most confident bankers shy away from stepping into the glare of the media spotlight just now.

But speaking out—not just in reaction to media questions, where you may have no choice, but proactively—is vitally important for the future of the industry.

People all over the country, from all walks of life—almost everyone, literally—are talking about the economy, banks ,and the financial crisis. How could they not be? They are scared and angry. The media are feeding the public’s fear and anger with negative banking stories. And Congress is angry.

If there was ever a time to get your story out, now is that time. Not just CEOs need to speak up, but all bank employees. Otherwise only the bad news circulates and feeds on itself.

In a well-attended workshop at ABA’s National Conference for Community Bankers in February, communications expert Merrie Spaeth, a former director of media relations in the Reagan White House, and founder and principal of Spaeth Communications (www.spaethcom.com), Dallas, counseled bankers on how to counter the negative headlines and get the word out about how vital banking is and the good news about their own institutions.

“People tend to think of communication as a soft skill,” she said, “when in fact it is a strategic skill.”

“Let me tell you what my bank is doing”
Most banks—indeed most companies—put the bulk of their communications efforts into what Spaeth calls the formal network—one of three types of communications networks. There are countless examples: advertisements, annual reports, newsletters, brochures, websites, and statement stuffers.

With the second of the three networks—the media—banks tend to be reactive, responding to queries. In the current environment, bankers could be forgiven for being reluctant to deal with the mainstream media, whom they perceive as hostile and biased. Nevertheless, Spaeth said you have to deal with the press because your customers view it as more credible, even though they will also say they don’t like the press. The media certainly are not telling your story, she said, so you have to reach out to banking and business reporters; send letters to the editor; send an op-ed piece; share customer anecdotes with TV stations. Don’t expect a lot of ink or air time as a result—only one of every ten things you send out gets attention, said Spaeth. But it’s important to do it to help keep your bank top of mind.

Most important of the three communications networks is what Spaeth calls informal networks. These are personal encounters—one-on-one, or in a group, such as a speech to the Rotary Club. In other words, all the ways you and your employees talk to people. These informal encounters are very powerful because they are perceived as being more real than formal communications. New channels of communication—primarily web-based—offer many new opportunities for informal communication, Spaeth noted.

The key to unlocking the power of the informal network is to have all employees embrace it, because they all have encounters with customers, friends, and family where banking topics come up, especially now. Such conversations have great impact because they’re coming from a real person.

“You want the bank’s employees to feel this is an opportunity to say, ‘Let me tell you what my bank is doing’,” said Spaeth. For them to want to do that, they have to feel empowered—meaning, have enough information to talk about and have had some training. (She doesn’t advocate having the rank-and-file speak with reporters, however.)

“People talk about where they work,” said Spaeth. “They just don’t see themselves as part of an effort to reach out to customers and members of the community. Even if they do, they don’t know what to say because the bank has never empowered them, or given them basic communication training other than sales training.”

To tap this potential, companies have to institutionalize it, which very few companies do. Spaeth’s firm helps companies through this process, with something it calls the Ambassador Program—turning employees and even customers into ambassadors for the bank. It’s a cultural change that takes time, and Spaeth suggests starting with a voluntary group of people—internal champions. But, she also said, “You’ve got to have fire at the top.” Here, community banks have an edge. What typically happens at big institutions, said Spaeth, is that such programs “quickly get pushed down the organization to HR or Communications, and the ‘C Suite’ gets back to ‘real business.’ Then, of course everybody instantly understands that the program is not important.”

The mentality you’re looking for is typified by that of Mary Kay representatives, said Spaeth. They want to tell you about the company’s cosmetic products—“they think they’re doing you a favor.” This attitude used to be more common in banking, she said. “We need to get back to that mentality,” and apply it to informal communications, not just sales efforts.

 

Say it in stories
Spaeth uses numerous video clips to make points in her training sessions to illustrate both good and bad communications. One she used in her ABA conference session shows a harried executive from a health insurance company taking questions at a customer meeting it convened after acquiring another carrier. He looks like he doesn’t want to be there, talks in a condescending manner, and keeps repeating jargon in answer to a problem regarding coverage.

In a meeting like this, said Spaeth, you should expect that every person present is going to tell her friends and family what she heard and felt. In this case, it won’t be good.

What the executive should have said to the disgruntled customer was: “I’m sorry. I promise to look into it. Someone will call you tomorrow. Would that be all right with you?” The customer is likely to say yes, said Spaeth.

“What word will that customer use when speaking with her friends later?” Spaeth asked the bankers at the conference: “Promise.”

“Even if the company calls and says simply, ‘We’re still looking into it,’ they have redefined expectations without changing the facts, because they understand how people hear things.”

Spaeth also emphasized the importance of recognizing “good” words and “bad” words. Bad words drive out good words, she said, so you never want to repeat them in responding to a question or comment.

Good words and phrases in a banking context include: “healthy,” “strong,” “making loans,” “reaching out to people,”  “experienced,” “relationship,” “trust.”

“These are all things that represent banking at its best,” said Spaeth, “and which already show up in your advertising and brochures. You want those words coming out of people’s mouths.” Of course, a bank’s actions and/or condition must agree with the words.

Bad words include: “bailout,” “foreclosure,” “fail,” “greedy,” “bonus.”

If you plan to use statistics in any communication, said Spaeth, ask yourself, “What do the numbers mean to the people you’re speaking to? Try and compare it with something meaningful to them.”

Spaeth also recommends avoiding starting off with long explanations. That’s one reason she doesn’t like the term “message,” because messages tend to be wordy. She prefers “headline,” which means the same thing to everybody. A good headline is short and grabs your attention. The most powerful headlines, in the context of speaking to a bank’s audience, make a claim, for example: “We care about our customers.”

You have to be able to prove that claim with relevant facts, said Spaeth, but facts alone are not enough. “You need examples, anecdotes, stories.” Not necessarily the story of your bank, she said, but about the people behind it—customers and employees. Anecdotes and stories make the headlines real. BJ

 

 

 

The red light on the camera pops on and the reporter leans in and asks: “Can you guarantee that no new loans will be delinquent?”

Most people, faced with that type of question, succumb to what Merrie Spaeth calls, “the trap of terminal honesty.” They’ll answer with something like this: “No, I can’t guarantee that.”

“That may be true,” said Spaeth, a communications strategist, who spoke at a recent ABA conference, “but it conjures up the picture that you make bad loans. You can be truthful, she said, but still impact what people hear. “Wouldn’t it be just as true to answer the question this way: ‘I wish I could. But what I can guarantee is that we are very close to our customers. In fact we see most of our business customers once a week.’?

“‘Guarantee’ is a very powerful word,” said Spaeth. “In this case the questioner has attached it to the subject of loans, but there’s nothing to prevent you from pulling out the word and attaching it to a topic of your own.”

The lesson is, don’t just accept the parameters of the question as posed by a reporter or by anyone. To avoid doing that, said Spaeth, don’t think of a giving an answer, but a response.

“Start with an acknowledgement that you heard the question (“I wish I could” in the example above)—a short, truthful phrase that says, ‘I heard you,’ but is not your answer. People sometimes try to build their case at the beginning,” she continued, “but that risks having people think you are ignoring the question.”

Here are some other tips from Merrie Spaeth for dealing with questions from the press or a customer:
• In preparation for an interview, or for any important communication opportunity, remember, the first question to ask yourself is, “Who is my audience?” Next, go through the exercise of thinking, “What are my good words, my anchor words?” You cannot do that too many times. Then ask, “What are my headlines?”

• You are in control. If you’re asked to answer “true” or “false” to a series of questions, you don’t have to answer that way as long as you convey that you’re listening. You should use a substitute phrase. Some examples: “It’s not that simple”; “Let me put that in perspective.”

 

• Always tell the truth. (If for no other reason, in a pinch you can remember it.)

 

• Make your most important point at the beginning.

 

• If there is something you can’t discuss, the response, “It’s not appropriate for me to discuss that,” while not perfect, is better than, “No comment.”

 

• When being interviewed on camera, learn to “look through the camera,” meaning, see the person on the other side—your audience. Be conversational. If it sounds like you’re reading something, you’re dead.

 

• Hostile reporters are irrelevant—they are not your audience. Just remember not to mimic their language or facial expressions. The real audience is on the other side of them.

 

• Every senior bank executive should be able to handle basic questions regarding things like safety and soundness, willingness to lend, community involvement without even thinking.

 

• Target your message. Instead of saying, “We lend to small business,” say something like this: “We have customers who turned a hobby into a business. This may be a good moment to follow a dream, and we will try to help you.” Anybody who has been thinking about that will hear that and listen. BJ

 

 

 

Last fall, when the reporters were just going ape over the financial crisis, I was the only banker talking to anyone at that time here [in Columbia, Mo.]. None of the other banks would even return their calls because it was a negative story. I was just the opposite—taking phone calls, doing interviews, being on TV The main message I got across was that Boone County National Bank was in great shape. Did I get a lot of free advertising out of that? You bet.”

Meet Mary Wilkerson, vice-president of marketing for the $1 billion-asset Boone County National, and an example par excellence of how and why banks must speak out publicly in this difficult time—and how it pays off.

“To the general public,” she says, “a bank is a bank, and there is definitely this attitude that all bankers are bad guys.”

 

People will acknowledge that an individual banker they know is not a bad person, she says, but overall there is “definitely a sense of betrayal.”

That’s why banks that are doing well or holding their own have to be more proactive with their media outreach, more engaged in their marketplace, says Wilkerson.

“To me, as a public relations person, one of the worst mistakes you can make when times are difficult is to stop doing marketing, stop doing public relations.” She maintains that in tough times if you continue to advertise, continue doing good things in the community, and “make a commitment to positive messaging,” you will gain market share.

Normal advertising, she means, not the kind that trumpets, “We’re safe and sound.”

“The more you say, ‘we’re safe, we’re safe’,” says Wilkerson, the more people will ask themselves, ‘Why are they telling me they’re safe? My philosophy is you behave the way you always behaved only a little bit more.”

Crawling with journalists
Columbia, Mo., population 100,000, is a journalistic hotbed way out of proportion to its size. The town is home to the University of Missouri’s Columbia School of Journalism, two daily newspapers, three TV stations, and numerous radio stations.

Wilkerson loves it.

“I know these folks. I reach out to them, take them to lunch, send them emails.” But most important to the journalist crowd, she is very responsive. “It can be a real pain in the butt,” says the eminently quotable Wilkerson, “but if I get a call, I’m going to be as responsive as possible. They know they can rely on me.”

That access helps support the bank’s policy that no employee outside the marketing department speaks with the media. The bank gives them easy ways to refer reporters to Marketing.

Being comfortable dealing with the press takes training and lots of experience. “You really have to practice,” says Wilkerson.

One of the things she has learned is that, “It doesn’t matter what they ask you. What matters is what you answer. One of the mistakes people make in interviews is that they get very defensive when someone asks a tough question.”

“I always go into these interviews armed with what message I want to get across,” says Wilkerson. She’s not evasive—quite the contrary. “I try hard to be direct in my answers. But if the question has a foregone conclusion to it, I’m not going to answer it that way.”

Employees as advocates
Having a media-savvy marketing department is only half the story of Boone County National Bank’s communications efforts. The bank also periodically trains all its employees in how to respond to questions from customers or others. The initial training was done by Spaeth Communications, Dallas.

“We want everybody, whether it’s a teller or a courier, who might encounter a customer to be well-armed with good information,” says Wilkerson. “You don’t know when a customer contact can happen—it can be in the grocery checkout lane.”

When the financial crisis hit the press late last summer, the bank made sure its people had quick and easy responses to the most common questions people were likely to ask. Being in a complex business, says Wilkerson, bankers have a tendency to over-explain. Brevity is key.

As part of the bank’s outreach effort, its chief financial officer has conducted seminars for local organizations and even for some businesses to explain the financial crisis.

“Any opportunity we have to get out in front of community groups and talk about the situation and alleviate people’s fears, positions us as someone who’s reliable, who knows what to do during this difficult time,” says Wilkerson.

If the news is bad…
For banks that are having serious issues, Wilkerson strongly recommends using a communications professional to work on the proper messaging, which is a lot more subtle and difficult.

Every bank has bad news to report sometimes, however. In that case you have to be truthful about it, says Wilkerson. Yet there are ways to be sure the message isn’t taken the wrong way.

As an example, if she were asked about whether the bank has called any loans, she might respond this way:

“Unfortunately, by law I can’t discuss any specific customer information, but I can tell you that when we are in a situation to call a loan, we have used everything possible in our tool kit to keep from having to do that. We really like to work with our customers to avoid a situation like that.”

The message puts the bank in a good light—and also happens to be the truth. BJ

 

The electronic version of this article available at: http://lb.ec2.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/sb/ababj0409/index.php?startid=18

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