A development today from the Department of Message Control, one that makes me slightly uneasy.
Santander had results out today and they seemed pretty strong.
There was a good performance in Europe, though they flagged a “modest” increase in customer loan arrears in the UK and a slump at the US car loan business.
So far, so routine.
The results were accompanied by an interview on Santander’s website with Ana Botin, the big cheese
The interview was conducted by James Harding, the former Times editor who now runs Tortoise
Well, we’ve all got to make a living and something about stones and glass houses springs to mind.
Still, what did we learn from Ms Botin?
That 2023 was a record year, with “record profits, delivered the right way”.
She just wants to thank her amazing colleagues as they pursue “sustainable growth”.
“No other bank in the world has what we have. We are confident we are going to deliver in 2024.”
Thanks for that.
There is nothing particularly wrong, or indeed surprising, in large companies seeking to control the message they put out in this way.
They’ve got a website and a Youtube subscription, I guess they might as well use it.
Santander notes that it does still hold briefings with hacks fairly regularly. Fair enough.
But the intent here, and Santander isn’t the worst offender, is to bypass traditional interrogation by hacks who might be a right pain in the elbow
The big tech companies aren’t great for this. Often they don’t even acknowledge emails from hacks.
The risk is that there is a kickback from hacks who find this stuff annoying. Who resent the on-message corporate interview so much they decide to have a real dart at the company concerned, when they might otherwise have been happy with a 10-minute chat with the CEO.
Don’t these things also cut out external PRs, to an extent, and make the whole process an internal comms exercise?
In which case, most of you shouldn’t like it any more than I do.
