FINANCE | BANKS

The banking sector has emerged as the leading private sector industry in external communications, a corporate publicity index report has revealed.

The report released by BrainChild advertising last week, says banking collected 33% of the share of print and electronic media publicity, and spent sh14.2b in advertising Value Equipment (AVE).

The evaluation research was conducted for a period of one year, between September 2015 and October 2016.

"We evaluated the most active banks out of the 24, and Stanbic emerged at the top. However, overall, the industry scored the most points out of the six industries that were evaluated for visibility in media," said Walter Wafula, the business unit head at BrainChild.

He said the report was compiled after realising the existing gap in public relations, at most organisations in the country, as most lack the culture of measuring their work against public perception.

He said the key image drivers in the evaluation included cases of litigation and scandal, corporate social responsibility and business partnerships.

"The index is a scorecard for the performance of corporations that invest in sharpening their reputation through external and internal communications in addition to stakeholders' engagements. Banks seem to be doing so well in this area," Wafula said.

Throughout 2016, most banks aggressively engaged the media while forging partnerships with telecom companies to increase their foot print and grow savings.

The Uganda Bankers' Association said it will ride on the back of mobile money and other financial technologies to extend their services to the hard to reach areas, increase savings and financial inclusion.

According to the report, banking was closely followed by the telecom industry with 28% share of media advertising and publicity.

The industry, which consists approximately ten companies, spent sh10b to boost its image in the media, although three telecoms dominated the media space.

The soft drinks industry came third at 14% media visibility share and sh5b expenditure, followed by Airlines 11%, downstream and upstream oil at 9% and 3% respectively, while insurance topped the bottom at 2%.

"Insurance needs to up its game to be able to entrench and create more awareness to the public. This is the only way through which they can improve their communication," Wafula said.

Cynthia Mpanga, president of Public Relations Association of Uganda (PRAU) said identifying the gap through the report will help bridge the glaring and worrying gap in PR.

"This will help different sectors work in a smarter way to improve productivity within companies. I am confident that it will also help many PR practitioners to embrace evidence based communication which calls for setting smart objectives, measuring and evaluating the impact of their activities and communication to the public," Mpanga said.

Top performing brands per industry included Stanbic bank, MTN, Crown beverages limited, Tullow Uganda and National Insurance Corporation (NIC).

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