HOW ARE NZ PR COMPANIES COPING WITH HARD ECONOMIC TIMES?

So, I am officially stranded in New Zealand. My British passport expired last month and my NZ residency visa thingy ran out of juice today. So yeah, you won't be seeing the back of this blogger anytime soon (or at least not until I can scrape together enough pennies to buy my right to leave the country and come back again!) Not that I mind too much. I love this place.

Anyway, back to the topic in hand! I have been having quite a few interesting conversations with fellow PR people recently about how they are handling the current economic dip that this country is going through.

You would think that PR would feel the trickle down effect from struggling Kiwi businesses but this is not what I have been hearing. One woman I spoke to at the last PRiNZ event I attended says that her consultancy is busier than ever. At Intermediary, business is booming and our clients are seeing positive results on their bottom lines (especially our invoice discounting client, for obvious reasons!)

Could this be because New Zealand business owners are recognising that an increased PR, marketing and advertising effort when times are hard can be of huge benefit?

This attitude would make perfect sense. During past recessions, the companies that combined advertising and PR are the ones that survived and prospered. Some companies, such as Disney, HP and Microsoft were even founded during recessionary periods and have gone on to become some of the world's most successful enterprises. Why? Because while other companies were cutting back and sticking their heads in the sand, Bill Gates and Mr Disney were taking full advantage of the situation and were putting agressive advertising, marketing and PR campaigns in place.

In the UK, they have taken things to the next level and the term, 'Recession PR' has been coined. Ogilvy UK is developing a package of offerings aimed at companies hit by the credit crunch. Meanwhile, Brighter Group is creating a credit-crunch PR solution called Brighter Lite for ‘overstretched in-house departments’.

Ogilvy’s package of crisis comms, change management and corporate comms will be offered to markets facing high levels of consolidation such as banking and finance, travel and online retail.

Brighter Lite is offering a menu of basic PR services from which clients can pick for a set fee, instead of hiring new staff or buying subscriptions to research and monitoring services.

The moral to this story, for both PR consultants and NZ businesses, is to avoid dwelling on the doom and gloom of the credit crunch and start getting your creative juices flowing- think about the opportunities that are available and take action. People will still be buying products and companies still need PR- the approach just has to be slightly different.

There is a silver lining to every recessionary cloud.