Tales from the PR wars (2)

By Andrew Salmon

In the first installment of this two-parter, I finished by asking why Korean companies are so media-shy ― notably, foreign media-shy. Let me attempt to answer this.

One reason may be a "never-acknowledge-negatives" approach to PR. Every company has skeletons in its closet, and PR departments try to keep them hidden. Fair enough. But once these skeletons have been exposed, it seems pointless to deny their existence. Yet it happens.

Case in point: Some months ago, a leading international business magazine I contribute to was interested in a local company with a major international project pending. Alas! Just as interview arrangements were underway with the company's management, its parent conglomerate was engulfed in a financial scandal.

The PR contact asked me whether I could conduct the interview without mentioning this (!). The scandal was only peripheral to the story I was preparing, but had already been broken in the news.

After swallowing my astonishment at this request, I explained to the young lady that while my story would not focus on the scandal, as a reporter, it would be supremely unprofessional to ignore it completely. I suggested, however, that this provided a good opportunity for the company to tell their side of the story.

I did not hear back from them.

A further issue may be "follow the leader." It is no secret that the chairman of Korea's top conglomerate is an intensely private man. Why so? Rumors allege that he was once compromised after speaking off-the-record to an unscrupulous journalist, who broke that sacred bond and reported his words. Or perhaps he is, personally, just a man of few words.

Regardless of the reason for his quirk, other chairmen ― even youthful chairmen of recently established companies ― seem to be consciously following the lead of Korea's leading businessman.

Another issue is perhaps non-familiarity. Many Korean firms' PR departments are staffed by ex-reporters from local press with little or no experience with international media, and who rarely speak English. When they get requests from international media, their response is "no."

After all, to grant access would be outside their comfort zone; why make work for themselves; and (horror) what happens if the foreign hack asks a tricky question?

Then there is the issue of control. It is an open secret in Korean media that chaebol wield huge advertising budgets, which they leverage to influence coverage. They do not (as far as I know) possess similar control over foreign media. Regrettably, this situation is not just the fault of companies; media play the game, too. A final war story.

Some years ago, a major chaebol was in a proxy battle with a Middle East-based investment fund. That fund invited a business reporter from a top-tier Korean daily to fly to the Middle East and interview the fund's top management, so that their voice could be heard in Korea.

The reporter was flown to the Middle East, first class, and accommodated at a luxury hotel at the fund's expense. At his first meal after landing, he ordered a bottle of wine costing thousands of dollars. After the interviews, the hosts funded his visit to an exclusive golf course.

The reporter returned home. Weeks passed. No story appeared. The fund made enquiries. No response. Eventually, the chairman of the conglomerate in the proxy fight appeared in a puff piece on the front of the newspaper.

It transpired that the reporter had contacted the company, told them he had interviewed its sworn enemy, and suggested they increase their ad budget ― to the tune of 1 billion won ― and grant him a chairman's interview in return for not publishing the fund's interviews. They did; the reporter, having engineered this deal, was subsequently promoted.

So a combination of risk aversion, benchmarking, parochialism and plain dodgy practice has constructed an international PR wall. This is bad news for Korean companies, who do most of their business abroad and whose investors are increasingly global.

I write for the world's leading business magazine and have lost count of the number of positive business stories I could have written if I had been granted access. It's not just me. I have never interviewed the chairman of a leading chaebol and Seoul correspondents in the world's top two business newspapers tell me they have had no luck, either.

This is bad branding. International business figures like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett effectively leveraged media relations, but no Korean firm boasts an iconic leader with credibility, respect and visibility in global markets.

Today, Korea's polity is increasingly transparent: Presidents and Ministers grant interviews and hold press conferences. This policy of openness has not yet infiltrated the business sphere. An information wall surrounds Korea's corporate leaders, to the detriment of their companies and investors ― not to mention you, the news reader.

Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.