The role of PR in saving the world

This week the big central banks – the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England – made big news by doing almost nothing.

They aren’t moving interest rates any time soon. They may ease back on quantitative easing a little sooner than anticipated, but otherwise, everybody stay calm.

What does this have to do with PR? Nearly everything.

Markets and analysts are looking for small mis-steps, tiny tweaks to wording that they think indicate a bigger change of heart than the banks intend to signal.

If they are in reality more spooked by inflation, say, than they are letting on

Billions of pounds, dollars, yen and the rest will shift in a nanosecond if enough people think the banks have lost control of their own message.

So the key issue was not what they did, or that they did very little, but how they communicated what they did not do and are not going to do.

That’s understood in much of the commentary. This issue is not what happened, it is how the bankers described their (non) actions.

How the banks steer us through Covid and towards a new prosperity is a huge issue, perhaps the biggest there is this side of climate change.

And the most important factor in how they get there will be good public relations.

That’s how important you lot are.

Don’t screw it up.