Public Relations Companies Aligning Wall Street with Main Street

What’s the distance between Wall Street and Main Street? In the eyes of some that distance could be insurmountable. However, financial services companies are recognizing the need to bridge that great divide and regain the confidence and trust of those who live and work on Main Street. Financial services firms are once again increasing their marketing communications budgets – much to the delight of public relations companies everywhere. Why? A couple of reasons. First, they need to rebuild their credibility and regain the trust of their customer base. This is particularly heartening to those of us at public relations companies, most notably to those of us engaged in financial services relations. Public relations companies have long understood how to build and sustain beneficial and trustful relationships. Once might say that it is a specialty of public relations companies. During the financial crisis, many financial firms have pared back their budgets for communications, severely impacting the performance of public relations companies everywhere from Main Street to Wall Street. However, they overlooked the customer… There are probably many customers who have become disaffected with their existing firms and are looking for new relationships as old loyalties have been dissipated by the financial scandals. Financial services firms have come to the realization that an increase in budgets for Public Relations Companies may be worthwhile given the opportunity to attract some of these “shoppers.” Studies have demonstrated over the years that companies who increase their marketing budgets during times of economic stress emerge even stronger when conditions improve. Most likely the opposite is also true in that those companies who decrease their budgets have more ground to make up and suffer a loss of standing within the eyes of their customers. We believe that firms are coming to grips with the fact that they need to do something to stay in the game. We are beginning to see financial services organizations increase their commitments to public relations companies.