Why Budget Day is your biggest opportunity

You might have thought that Budget Day on 26th November is a day to sit back, digest Rachel Reeves’ announcements, read the industry analysis and start working out the implications. A communication plan might be on your radar, or might not.  Think again. This is an opportunity for some PR wins that raise your profile, enhance your reputation, position you as a thought leader and lay the foundations for great media relationships.

In media organisations, planning for Budget Day has already begun.  They will be lining up the usual experts for quick analysis, but they also know that the general public want to hear from ordinary people like themselves alongside reaction from key industry leaders. Broadcasters and newspapers (who have an increasingly important online following and who are influencers in their own right) are looking for places to go and people to speak to.  This is where you come in. 

If the Budget is likely to have implications for your specific industry, can you provide immediate reaction? It’s important not to over-think this. The amount of effort required is more likely to amount to one line than one page.  And if you don’t expect your industry to be affected, you can bet it will affect the household budgets of your staff.  Who are the chatty employees who would be happy to talk about this?

I hear you wondering what’s in it for you. This all sounds like a lot of effort when you’re already snowed under, so why bother?  The first reason is that you don’t want to fall into the biggest trap that most organisations fall into, no matter how big or small: they only connect with journalists when they need the media, not when the media needs them.  Don’t wait until you’ve got a crisis on your hands before reaching out to journalists and expecting them to trust you.  Don’t expect them to put your acquisition announcement at the top of their running order if they’ve never heard from you before. Media relationships are like business relationships: journalists do more for the contacts they know and trust. So Budget Day is the day to ‘pay it forward’ and start building that trust.

Secondly, don’t underestimate the messages you can convey in a short soundbite. Can you react in your capacity as the Chief Executive of a “fast-growing” company?  Make sure you take the opportunity to describe your business in glowing terms. If you are putting forward an employee, are they a great ambassador for what you do? The right interviewee, with an exciting background in shot, can do wonders for your brand profile, reputation and even recruitment.  At the very least, you’re getting your brand name onto media platforms with huge reach and influence, on a day when audiences will be high.

So, how do you do all this?  The most time-efficient and effective way is to work with a PR professional with great media contacts (what, you mean us??).  But there’s nothing to stop you reaching out to a journalist whose work you respect. Tell them what you might be able to offer and don’t worry, this is not a pledge written in stone, you are opening negotiations. Set out some basic Ts&Cs but be prepared to compromise, and if it starts to look like it’s not a good opportunity, feel free to decline.  

A final word of advice. Budget Day is probably not the day to plan the big launch of something unrelated to the economy.  Neither is it the day to ‘bury bad news’.  The former won’t get any coverage.  The latter will be noticed and will come back to bite you later.