Keeping house away from home

Penrose's Andy Fleming gives his Dos and Don'ts for organising communications around a conference.

A sure way to gauge the importance of an industry conference is to monitor how many organisations piggybank the event to publicise their own surveys, policy statements or other announcements.

On this basis, the National Association of Pension Funds' Annual Conference in Manchester this week is clearly a big event. Pensions surveys have emerged this week from PensionsDCisions/FT Business, Aon, Hewitt and the FSA, as well as the NAPF itself.

In addition, Work and Pensions Secretary, Yvette Cooper, briefed the FT ahead of her speech at the conference on Thursday, and Mike Taylor of the London Pension Fund Authority did the same for his speech today.

From a pensions PR point of view, the NAPF Conference is one of maybe two or three major events in the calendar where a sizeable chunk of the pensions media are gathered in the same place at the same time. Since such opportunities are few and far between, it's hardly surprising so many pensions stories have been pumped out this week.

Behind all this activity lies an enormous amount of hard work on the part of Mark Brooks and Ruth Wharram, the NAPF's PR team. I should declare an interest here. As one of Mark's predecessors, I spent a number of NAPF conferences in the slightly unreal atmosphere of the conference press room, distributing press releases and presentations, arranging interviews or press briefings, drinking too much coffee and smoking too many cigarettes (in the days when you could still do so indoors).

Not to mention a range of ancilliary tasks, some of which arguably go above and beyond the call of duty. Whether trying to find a bowl of water for David Blunkett's guide dog; fending off stroppy venue security guards intent on ejecting late-running hacks long after other conference-goers have left; seeking out suitable backdrops for on-the-spot TV interviews, or simply supplying black coffee, bacon sandwiches and headache pills to journalists with colossal hangovers.

Some of this probably isn't in the job description, but clearly does the trick as far as NAPF is concerned. A very unscientific straw poll of conference-attending journalists reveals a few handy Do's and Don't's to help ensure successful press coverage of your event:

Do provide a good-sized and well-resourced press room, preferably with plenty of computer points.

Do offer a strong programme of senior industry speakers with newsworthy opinions, not just a bunch of anonymous people trying to flog stuff.

Do try to get speakers up to the press room after they've made their presentations. Better still, try and make a separate room available for anyone wishing to hold a one-to-one conversation.

Do try and ensure copies of speeches and presentations are available for journalists to check against. If you can provide actual transcripts you will acquire saint-like status.

Don't chuck journalists out when they're up against deadlines – we all have bad days

Don't hand out rubbish sales-y material to hacks – they're not interested.

Do try and get out with journalists for a drink or a meal afterwards – especially if you've got a corporate credit card.

All these may seem pretty obvious, especially given how grim the last year or two have been for conference and events organisers, with punters and journalists understandably picky about which events they can afford to attend. But it's surprising how many events fail to tick one or more of these boxes. Sure, if journalists have gone to the trouble and expense of attending, they'll probably have to write something anyway to justify it. But if it's rubbish, they probably won't come back. As the NAPF has proved year after year, and again this week, it's worth doing well.

Andy Fleming is an Associate Director in the institutional team at Penrose Financial and can be reached at +44 (0)20 7786 4823 or andrewf@penrose.co.uk.