Industry organisations – always a challenge

Industry organisations that engage in public relations campaigns are some of the most challenging to work for. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t interesting. In fact some of the best, most intelligent, and astute, clients I have worked for have sat around the table at industry organisations.

The challenge with industry organisations is that almost everything is a compromise. More often than not, an industry gets together because its product is out-of-favour or faces issues. And more often than not, they don’t really have the budget to challenge or change the sentiment.

This is borne out by several of the industries I worked for over the years – milk, bread and sugar within the food sector. And coal. 

The same issues arose when I also worked for financial sector organsiations, such as Visa. There wasn’t necessarily a crisis, but there were questions as to what role the card should be playing generically as opposed to the individual card issuers.

The task is always to work cooperatively for the greater good of the industry. However, the market leader at the table is constantly asking himself/herself whether the money being spent for the ‘greater good’ would be better spent directly promoting his/her brand.

In fact, the hidden agenda of any public relations campaign for an industry organisation is to ensure that all the members can see a benefit for their organisation from the work being done.

One of my earliest industry involvements was on behalf of New Zealand’s milk industry – a co-operative venture involving farmers, milk stations and milk vendors (a prehistoric breed that is almost extinct!).

This, initially, had an external focus to help arrest the decline in milk sales, for which we mounted a large range of initiatives from educational programs aimed at schoolchildren, to promotional efforts, such as ‘International Milk Day’. However, the milk industry soon came under Government pressure and a good deal of the PR focus shifted to fighting a rearguard action against this threat.

Industry groups often provide significant PR advantages. Because you are talking on behalf of an industry or product the opportunities for media exposure are often considerably better than if you are trying to promote a single brand. There are also more opportunities to do more pure educational work.

The Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys of Australia (IPTA) is one industry group that comes from a different perspective. My previous agency worked for this client for over five years and it’s a classic case of where an industry organisation can genuinely provide more profile than individual members are capable of doing.

This is especially so with the advent of websites; we, at Network Australia, completely revamped IPTA’s website and highly search optimised the site and its content to help it be found by both media and inventors when researching with major search engines.

Industry organisations are always challenging. But never dull!