team are now focused on ‘building a purpose-led bank which is facing into the future’. But changing their approach required


a new strategy for the team, which is responsible for the group’s seven brands. The first step was to recognise and focus on its strengths. ‘Because of the company we are, the relationships we have with journalists are incredibly important to us. Our approach was always to be open and engaging, so they knew exactly why we were making the losses, paying the fines and what we were doing to put things right,’ says Turner. ‘We focused on being the best in the industry so that our messages would always be heard.’ Such an ambition is no mean feat. In 2018, for


example, RBS was the subject of 14,000 stories. Its media relations team engaged with more than 350 journalists across consumer, national, regional and trade publications, handling on average 90 enquiries a week. The vast majority of its coverage - 97 per cent - was deemed either neutral or positive. The team also recognised the importance of


consistency in messaging. ‘It is quite easy when you are a company with lots of different types of customers to lose the message that you are trying to achieve,’ explains Turner. ‘It was very important to have an absolutely consistent message whether we were engaging with stakeholders, the media or internally. And our message was that we were a simpler, safer, customer-focused bank based here in the UK.’ He adds: ‘There is a change in mentality as well.


There is an appeal in getting drawn to the trenches, and having that fight-to-fight, which is great, and it can feel great to get through each issue, but what you lose from that is what you can achieve in the long-term.’ While recognising these


strengths, Turner and his team also understood that they needed new skills and relationships if they were to pivot from reactive to proactive. This required ‘an agency refresh’ and a new internal structure.


CorpComms | February/March 2020 31


All of us can relate to that 10 o’clock at night fear when you’re refreshing Twitter to see the front pages of the newspapers


Blue Rubicon, now rebranded as


Teneo, was appointed. ‘We felt that they were great at campaigning. We were very good at reputation management and financial communications, but what we needed was that help to become proactive in campaigning. We approached the new agency relationship as a partnership. We used the relationship to up-skill as a team, to learn new techniques, whether that was in the use of data, use of social media or use of social influencers,’ says Turner.


‘And when I talk about up-skilling the team, I started with myself. I had built a career on fighting in the trenches, that is what I loved, but for me personally it took a long time to embark on that journey and think about how we can make a real long-term difference and how we get traction, not just internally but externally for customers.’ The other piece involved structural changes. ‘There


is a tendency for media and corporate affairs teams to go off in one direction and for brand and marketing to go in another. We set out to really join as a team, so that we were all on the same page and looking to achieve the same things,’ he adds. ‘This took time.’ Initially, the focus was about ‘getting in the same room as marketing teams and the business when conversations were being held about where we should spend our money’, says Turner. ‘The next step was to get around the table. And the final stage was leading the conversation about where our campaigns should be landing, the audiences, the messages, the focus - that was a real journey for us.’ Closer collaboration between the two departments


was backed by the bosses. ‘There was a clear direction from the leadership that this is the way we are going to


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