Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

While I'm not aware of research, per se, the number of spokespeople for one organization is often based on the size of the organization. (If your company has thousands, one person cannot always be available at all times.) There should, however, always be one main point person.

When employing one or more spokespeople, it is important to have an official set of messages and talking points about the organization. Everybody who is entrusted to communicate those messages should be well-versed with them and what they mean before they say a word to the media or public. If someone in the communications office does not know the answer to a media question, he/she should say so to the reporter, and get back to that reporter when they have the correct information.

Communication is important not only among people in a PR department of an organization, but throughout the company as well. That being said, don't have "too many cooks in the kitchen" because if the recipe is shared incorrectly, lots of people within the organization get burned.

You and your boss may not be as far apart on this as you think you are. (at least that's my hope!) My guess is that he's advocating multiple spokespeople but still run it through a central point person or department.

As Gail mentions above, it's hard for one person to be available all the time. Plus, for an organization with multiple facets, it's really tough for one person to be the expert on everything. They can be well-versed on many subjects, but too many subjects and their responses start to sound "canned."

However, he may not be suggesting that you give up control. What's always worked for me was to have multiple spokespeople but to have a very clear rule that everything runs through the communications department.

The communications department was not there to control the message as much as to make sure the message was clear and that the follow up was done. e.g.
- If a message wasn't resonating with multiple analysts or publications, they could take that back to marketing.
- Communications also did all the follow up like sending any links, tracking down other experts to answer any open questions, providing bios etc. "Experts" often hate to do the follow up since they are busy being experts.
- Communications also tracked the results of the communications.

Finally, I always recommend that spokespeople are trained by the experts. I'm not a PR person, but I have been a spokesperson for various companies for many years. One thing I've learned from the trainers is that my natural style, which works really well for when communicating with customers, doesn't always work well with the media. It was easy enough to tweak my style, but without the experts pointing it out, I may have never known.

Good luck!

Melissa

It sounds like you have the best example right there. :) I would use the problems you encountered as the exact reason why you should only have one person for the job.

Or you could just ask them to give you one example of any respected company that DIDN'T have just one person doing it.

Sometimes a media person just needs information. Make it easily available in the press area of your website with clear/dated contact information. And make sure all your management staff regularly read the media information so they know the "party line".