PR for trade associations, for a sector

01/ Trade association public relations

You speak for the sector, not one firm.

The Trade Association Forum describes its own purpose as promoting “the role of effective trade associations to government, industry and the wider public” (Trade Association Forum). Those are the three audiences of trade body PR.

The difference from company PR is who you answer to. Every line has to hold for the large member and the small one, and for members who compete with each other.

That makes trade association PR slower to sign off and more credible once it lands. A journalist quoting a trade body is quoting a sector.

02/ Data releases from member surveys

Your members’ data is the story.

The strongest asset a trade body has is information nobody else can publish: the state of the sector, measured across its members.

A quarterly survey of conditions, a skills gap report or an annual sector census gives journalists a recurring reason to call.

The CMA accepts that businesses may share recent data on “capacities, sales or cost of inputs” with a trade association “to create aggregated market-wide statistics”, provided individualised information is not disclosed back to competitors (CMA, sustainability agreements guidance).

So the release publishes the aggregate. It never lets a reader identify one member’s figures.

03/ Competition law and trade body PR

What the CMA says not to publish.

The CMA’s guidance is short and direct. Among the things a trade association should not do: “issue formal or informal pricing or output recommendations to members” and “publish messages suggesting that lower prices means lower quality” (CMA guidance for trade associations).

Competitively sensitive information “covers any non-public strategic information about a business’s commercial policy”, including future pricing and output plans; historical information is “far less likely” to be sensitive, particularly when no individual business can be identified (same source).

This is not theoretical. In 2016 the CMA fined five model agencies and their trade association more than £1.5 million; the association had circulated email alerts that helped share commercially sensitive information and urged members to reject customers’ prices (CMA blog, 6 March 2018).

A press release is a publication. Run it through the test opposite.

04/ Spokespeople for a trade body

A bench of members, briefed and named.

Journalists want someone who runs a business in the sector, not only the chief executive of the association.

Build a bench by topic and region, brief each spokesperson on the agreed position, and agree in writing when they speak for the association and when for their own firm.

The same accuracy bar applies to them as to the press: IPSO-regulated publications must distinguish “comment, conjecture and fact” (IPSO Editors’ Code, clause 1). Spokespeople should know which one they are giving. Media training for membership organisations covers the drill.

05/ Sector campaigns

Campaign for the sector, never on price.

A sector campaign makes a public case: for skills funding, against a regulation, for consumer trust in accredited firms.

The safe ground is standards, safety, skills and policy. The ground the CMA warns about is prices, output and restrictions on members competing.

Where a campaign asks for a change in law, it is public affairs as much as PR; plan it with public affairs for trade associations. The CIPR’s lobbying standard asks that lobbyists “tell you who they are and whom they represent” (CIPR Code of Conduct).

06/ How we deliver trade association PR

Sector stories, measured honestly.

We run communications and PR for trade associations with our specialist PR partner. We bring the membership strategy and the content plan; our partner brings press office craft and media contacts.

We set goals first and report outcomes, not advertising value equivalents, which AMEC states “are not the value of communication” (AMEC, Barcelona Principles 3.0).

See the wider approach in PR for membership organisations, and how content supports it in content marketing for trade associations. For the full marketing service, see trade association marketing.