The Corporate Comms Opportunity: Using Broadcasting To Engage & Influence

In the 25 years I spent working first in commercial, then in BBC Radio News, I’ve seen firsthand the challenges corporate comms leaders face. Your task isn’t simple.

How do you communicate with a fragmented map of important stakeholders, and where do you invest your time to achieve your corporate comms goals? Whilst promoting and protecting the reputation of your brand is at the heart of public relations, the challenges and opportunities for corporate, financial, and public affairs PR leaders are varied and complex.

Whether you are coping with the demands of investor relations, protecting the business from damaging regulations or building an informed and highly engaged community (customers, members of trade bodies, employees) to drive advocacy, the opportunities for influence and engagement are huge.

Through our “always-on” newsroom, we see every day the opportunities for expert spokespeople to be part of the news agenda, but we also see how brands are not always prepared to embrace the opportunities that broadcasting gives across linear (TV, Radio) and social channels.

Our mission is to drive Impact through embracing the many waves of broadcasting. Take the examples below for some insight into the secret sauce of some of our most memorable corporate comms campaigns.

Policy Changes Bring Enormous Opportunities For Broadcast Coverage

Proposed policy change can present huge opportunities for brands to get their voices seen and heard in the news agenda – and not only that, but have an influence. With the right strategy, broadcast has the power to tip your issues into the court of public opinion, helping to shift the narrative and affect real-world change.

Take the 2024 Autumn Budget coverage of Toby Dicker from the Salon Employers Association. After careful strategic planning, including the curation of case studies who were directly affected, Broadcast Revolution secured Toby considerable coverage, commenting on the rise in employer national insurance contributions. Such was the impact of his powerful and emotional interviews on outlets like Sky News that his concerns were taken up by MPs in the House of Commons.

The UK Spirits Alliance has similarly leveraged broadcast to communicate the impact on businesses, people, and heritage industry should a potential rise in spirits duty come to pass. The likes of Times Radio focused on compelling commentary from the Scotch Whisky sector, with fears of distilleries having to close if any further financial pressures were applied on them.

Driving Reputation by Making Your People Go-To Experts

It is essential that broadcasters have access to expert opinion to give context and insight into the stories they are covering around the clock.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has been very effective at offering expert analysis both reactively and proactively. When Birmingham City Council declared itself effectively bankrupt, we were able to offer immediate reactive commentary from their public sector finance expert on BBC Radio 5live, Times Radio and Talk TV. Their proactive commentary on inflation and interest rate announcements has seen the ICAEW on both Sky News and BBC News in 2025.

When Ford announced the Fiesta was to be axed after almost fifty years in production, AutoTrader was immediately ready to offer insights on why this was happening. Autotrader’s editorial director was live on BBC Breakfast the next day with expert analysis and personal recollections that fed into the nostalgia being celebrated in coverage of the end of the line for a car that many of us grew up with.

An Integrated Approach to Winning the News Agenda

Broadcasters are under time pressure, so elevating your offer with bespoke b-roll – and indeed, any extra content that will make a news feature or social snippet shine – is one way to stand out.

Lloyds Bank used our own camera crew so they could appear in studio-quality for interviews focusing on their half-year results. Their CEO appeared in quick succession on Bloomberg, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, CNBC and Sky News, with the broadcasters and client reassured that the finished look and sound would be premium. With stakeholders highly invested in financial announcements such as these, high production values layered in top-quality coverage increases confidence.

Similarly, Fiat UK was interviewed on Sky News using our camera crew and our own pre-shot video to promote their new EVs. With resources tighter than ever in newsrooms, this sort of technical support is proving valuable.

Leading With Purpose

Corporate reputation doesn’t only rest on being able to comment on changes to balance sheets – value-driven stories have a place too. When Snap launched their Hidden Black Histories Snapchat lens, we asked Tukwini Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s granddaughter, to be the campaign ambassador.

She was the focus of the hero video – made by our own Broadcast Revolution studio team – which we revealed to the public on the 32nd anniversary of the former South African president’s release from Robben Island. Tukwini’s emotional storytelling stood out on the likes of ITV’s Good Morning Britain and Sky News.

Maximising Your Own Channels

The power to create your own broadcast-quality channels is a huge opportunity to connect deeply with highly engaged audiences. Some stories go beyond interviews or soundbites, and you may have audiences that are already invested.

For a topic as “meaty” as pharmaceutical innovation, the UCB ‘Hypothesise That’ podcast became a high-production, multi-camera channel to engage a high-value community of scientists and academics directly. In a similar way, Brightwell’s live podcast on the future of UK pensions created a new, authoritative forum to explore complex topics like fiduciary management and shifting policy.

With the Santander ‘Women and Investing’ livestream, a high-production internal event became a powerful tool, turning employees into a passionate “tribe of advocates.”

From making your CEO the first person producers call to creating high-quality in-house content that connects with key audiences and communicates complex messages clearly, the toolkit available to corporate PRs has never been smarter, or more specialised.

What’s really important, however, is what these tactics deliver. Greater trust, stronger reputation, deeper loyalty, the opportunity to steer conversations, and greater influence across fragmented stakeholder groups. By treating broadcast as an ecosystem that supports these core corporate outcomes, you will have the levers you need to make a precise, layered, and lasting impact.