TJ Walker interviews Bill Bongiorno, founder of Blue Chip PR, about financial public relations. Bongiorno says private money managers are his typical clients, and that earnings reports and seasonal themes work best as news hooks. He advises building video, podcasts, and blogs to become an influencer in the space.
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Welcome to PR Spotlight, the show that profiles the leading public relations practitioners in the world.
If you are a publicist or a PR practitioner for a movie star or a celebrity or a world famous athlete, that's pretty easy. All you have to do is pick up the phone and look at your email. You're bombarded with media clamoring for interviews with your client. But what about if you have clients in the financial sphere? Asset managers, mutual fund managers, hedge fund managers? Most reporters are not beating down the door to interview your clients. Our next guest, Bill Bongiorno, has been in the financial public relations space for decades, has gotten countless clients on cnbc, Bloomberg in the Wall Street Journal, you name it. And he's here to share with us some insights on what's difficult, interesting and challenging with financial PR. Bill, thanks for joining us.
My pleasure, T.J. bill, how did you.
Get into this niche in the first place? Very few people when they are 12 years old say, I want to grow up to be a financial public relations expert.
Well, that's true. I kind of fell into it out of college. I was an editor at PR Newswire for a and wanted to get into the PR side of the business and joined a small public relations firm on Madison Avenue that specialized in working with financial advisors and mutual funds. And I just kind of fell in love with the whole mystique of money management and strategy and really what was involved. And I saw an opportunity to do something good and help people with their financial futures by having experts share their tips and knowledge with them. So hopefully they can do it on their own or invest through certain mutual funds and financial advisors.
So what's a typical client for you and what exactly do you do for them?
A typical client is a private money manager that is looking to get some visibility for their business, build some credibility, showcase their expertise in what they do for their clients, helping them with their financial future and how they invest. And it's really telling the story of what's going on in the markets, what people need to know. The markets are always changing. They're open every day and there's always earnings, there's always news in the financial industry. So it's really getting clients to be part of that news as sources, sharing their knowledge with the investing public and really building their credibility with the public so that hopefully when the time comes, when they do need help, they'll call on that financial expert to help them invest for their future.
What are the tools you found to be most successful from financial clients? If you're a politician, you're Running for governor, you hold a press conference for your big announcement, and all the media sort of have to come. What sort of news hooks do you find generate the most attention for your clients?
Well, there's always earnings that are coming out. So the financial media is always covering earnings of companies. So if a financial advisor has invested in that company or really has a lot of knowledge of the company, an analyst, the media always wants to talk to those people. The times of year is a good news hook. You know, people talk about the Santa Claus rally. We've got Halloween coming up. People say, should you be scared of stocks? Because typically in the past, we've had some major corrections in October. So that's kind of a fun way to get clients some leg in the door at some media outlets, those kind of news hooks.
Bill, a lot of our listeners are PR practitioners, some of them in general, firms that cover a lot of different categories. They may work with restaurants and entertainers and politicians, and they might be thinking, hey, finance, I could do that too. What's different about doing financial pr? Because I have a little of that background myself, and I remember the first time trying to pitch someone at cnbc and they're asking me, okay, what's the market cap of your client? What are the assets under management? I'll get back to you on that. Walk our audience through some of the particulars that are just different about financial pr.
Well, I think even though you're a PR practitioner and you're not a financial advisor, you still need to really understand money and the markets and the lingo. There's still a lingo in the financial world, as you mentioned. If it's market cap, you know, PE ratios, you mentioned some of this stuff to other PR people or the public, and you just kind of, you know, gets people going to get some Z's. They're going to just go to sleep.
The eyes glaze over. Because, let's face it, many PR people come from journalism and people go into journalism because they think, oh, I'm not a business person. I don't want to do math and go to business school.
Right, right, exactly. So you really have to have an interest in it, an acumen for investing. You have to understand markets. And it's gotten more complicated as, as the years have gone by with ETFs and just a lot of different financial products that are available. Derivatives. I mean, you mentioned derivatives to people, you know, what's that? So, you know, it's very different than other PR where you may be doing events where it's Some, you know, more softer PR feel good stuff. This is more hard news. You don't want to call a journalist on the morning of the unemployment rate numbers coming out. If you're not calling him with a source that's going to tell him something different about that. What does it mean? You don't want to be calling a reporter, financial reporter, about a really soft, non newsy story and a client that's going to talk about something that really isn't going to be in the news today. So it's a little different than what I'd call kind of softer, softer PR with regards to, you know, hard news.
We're speaking to Bill Bongiorno, who is the president and founder of Blue Chip pr. You can find more information about them at their website, blue chippr.com that will be in the show notes as well. Bill, If I asked 100 different financial public relations experts, who's the best financial communicator in the world today? I think pretty much all of them, most of them would say, would say Warren Buffett. But if I asked them to name the second best, I don't know who they would say. It would probably be a lot of different names. Who stands out to you beyond Warren Buffett is just an excellent financial communicator.
Well, it's interesting because we live in this, this age now of a lot of different communication sources, whether it's social media or podcasts. Josh Brown comes to my mind. He's a regular on CNBC and he's really built a following on Twitter. Last I saw, he had way over 100,000 followers on Twitter.
And for our people unfamiliar with him, is he an analyst, a financial manager? What does he do?
Well, he works with Barry Ritholtz and he is a financial money manager. He's kind of become a media darling, certainly over the last year or two. And he's really built a huge following. I mean, when you're watching CNBC and these other anchors are saying, I wonder what Josh Brown would think of this. You know, he's the top thinker in the industry.
That's when you're officially a thought leader. People are publicly wondering what you're thinking.
Right.
Anyone else stand out for you?
He's really the one that comes to mind.
Other tips that you have for financial communicators, for asset managers who perhaps haven't done a lot of PR in the past but are now thinking about doing it, what do you think they need to do differently? How can they prepare to get more leverage and more benefit from their PR efforts, whether they're using blue chip PR or any other financial PR firm, I.
Think it's really building a knowledge base. I think it's doing your own videos, your own podcast, building content. People in the financial industry say cash is king, but I think in the PR industry and the communications industry these days, I think people would say content is king. So I would tell financial clients to. And we can work with them as well, aside from traditional media, but doing video production, podcasts, blogging, social media, that they should really build their content, create a following, become an influencer. I think we kind of maybe are working our way in a different way than we used to work. Where the mainstream media was it, it was the only source. That's where everybody went to for their information. Obviously we live in a different world now where we have social media, we have websites, we have blogging, podcasts. Video is huge with YouTube and Vimeo. It's an opportunity for, I believe, people in the financial industry and companies to showcase their knowledge, build their credibility by building content and show their value so that they do have a following and the media will come to them or when they approach the media, the mainstream media, to be expert sources and guests and be interviewed, they will already have that content to show just how knowledgeable they are and the value that they bring.
The firm is blue chip pr. Our special guest today, Bill Bongiorno. Thanks so much for joining us. You can reach out to him on Twitter bluechip pr. Thanks again, Bill.
Thank you tj. Have a great day.
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