Branding and Marketing gif
b) The company plans to use the publicity as leverage in order to garner more publicity. By sending out the invitation for interviews, the company is hoping that they will have the op- portunity to give interviews in which it can promote products and its reputation some more.
The second type of press release is the one that is sent out generally, to syndicating websites, online news portals, print pub- lications and to anyone else who will have it. This does not vary too much from the business 2 business model. For instance, a recent example is that of the press release that AmBank Group sent out, announcing it had won four awards at the Triple A Islamic Finance Awards 2010.
A further example of how quick a turnaround there is between the receipt of the award at the ceremony and the issuing of the press release is the recent International Takaful Awards 2010 in London. These took place on Wednesday 14th July and by the 19th there were already several companies with press releases out, announcing the awards they had won during the glamorous ceremo- ny at Jumeirah Carlton Tower. These Islamic financial organisations include:
Press Releases
There are so many award ceremonies in Is- lamic finance and so many categories within each set of awards that it is difficult for the everyday consumer of news to keep track of who won what. How does a company ensure it gets the publicity that is such a bonus from winning an award? The most direct way is through a press release. This tells you easily who, what, where. What better publicity than to quickly be able to disseminate informa- tion to a wide audience that your organisa- tion has been voted the best at something?
There are two types of press releases: busi- ness release and press release. The busi- ness release as the name suggests is B2B, meaning the company send it out to other businesses, including publications. One re- cent business release was from Volaw Trust & Corporate Services Limited. The short and to-the-point 313 word article announced that the company had been awarded the Best Islamic Administrator/Trustee Award in the Islamic Finance Awards at the recent Sukuk Summit held in London on 9th and 10th June 2010. The press release was also very quick to point out that The Sukuk Sum- mit Awards panel of judges is “made up of respected industry experts from across the
GCC, Europe and the South East Asia who are responsible for nominating those institu- tions and individuals that they deem to have attained outstanding achievements, suc- cess and excellence over the 12 months”.
Of course, there’s then the all-important quote from a figurehead at the company. In this case, the quote comes from Trevor Nor- man, Volaw’s Director of Islamic Finance and Funds Group. “It is a great honour to re- ceive this award which has previously been presented to multi-national companies such as Deutsche Bank and CIMB Islamic Bank, Malaysia. The award recognises the work my team has done in structuring and adminis- tering Islamic capital markets products for more than 15 years”.
Perhaps most crucial of all is the by-line at the bottom of the press release, inviting the journalist to contact the relevant person at an external PR agency for interviews or me- dia enquiries.
This signifies two things:
a) The company deployed a Public Relations Company to issue the statement, meaning that it is serious about using this award as publicity leverage.
• Standard & Poor’s • Noor Takaful • Takaful Ikhlas Bhd • eTiQa Insurance • Nexus • Takaful Re
Let us now take a look at the general struc- ture of these press releases. As they were put out so soon after the event, they don’t go into much detail, but again get across the main points of who, what, when and where- all essential in getting across the main PR message of the award victory.
Living up to the name
Once you’ve alerted the world to your award win, it’s important to follow up by proving that your product, service or leader was worth the win. This will often lead to Islamic financial institutions issuing new product ranges, innovations or other news for the media, hot on the heels of an award win. As there is obviously as yet a limited number of Islamic finance institutions in the world, the same organisations tend to win the same awards year after year if they maintain, or improve upon, their excellent standards. Or at the very least, a company that came first last year will finish as runner-up in the cat- egory the year after, or vice versa.
For instance, in the Islamic Finance News Awards Poll, Kuwait Finance House won the ‘Best Overall Islamic Bank’ category in 2007
2010 October Global Islamic Finance 69
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