Business case AFME

Corporate and Financial Communication
Positioning in Spain

The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) is the voice of all European capital markets, of which banks and institutions such as Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank and BME Bolsas y Mercado Españoles, among others, are members in Spain. This association has offices in Brussels, Frankfurt and London. It aims to support the corporate and investment banking industry in defending its interests before policymakers and other stakeholders, with a key objective: implementing the Capital Markets Union in Europe.

THE CHALLENGE:

AFME is a specialised association representing a little-known industry – corporate and investment banking – whose role in the economy is fundamental, as it finances the business fabric.

In Spain, AFME had an almost token public presence until 2017, with very specific actions and a limited impact. Our main challenge is strengthening AFME’s role on the Spanish financial map and turning the association into a clear reference point and a key opinion maker on capital markets and the sector.

THE STRATEGY:

ViewPoint Communication proposed to AFME, from the start of this collaboration, to broaden the scope of the dissemination of its work, ranging from very specific actions with the specialised media to disseminate this work with much greater ambition, to expand the impact with a much more widespread presence in all types of media and with more straight-forward messages of interest not only for very specialised audiences, but also for the more general public.

The first step in developing this strategy was to increase awareness of AFME, its functions, and why it is useful to society as a whole insofar as it facilitates business financing and access to capital markets.

We have combined better and broader dissemination of its reports, ad hoc interviews with AFME’s CEO and increased media attendance at the Annual Spanish Capital Markets Conference, in constant coordination with the association’s communication and institutional relations team.

OUR CONTRIBUTION:

We have developed a strategy based on three cornerstones to increase AFME’s visibility and reputation in the Spanish market:

Annual Spanish Capital Markets Conference

This is held annually, and our role begins with preparing the conference and supporting the search for media sponsors and speakers. We also coordinate all the media calls and the preparation of materials with the AFME team, facilitating access and interaction with the speakers. Finally, we disseminate the association's central messages through an official statement on the conference.

Interviews

We coordinate and manage interviews by the main Spanish media with AFME's President or CEO, achieving in-depth coverage of key industry and capital markets issues. These interviews are prepared in detail to combine AFME's interests with journalistic interests and have had a very significant qualitative result.

Reports

We publicise and disseminate AFME's messages in Spain based on the publication of its studies and reports on different topics related to EU capital markets. These reports can be annual (KPIs on European Markets) or one-off. To this end, we work on the before - preparation of content suitable for the Spanish market; the during -dissemination of this content among the media; and the after- press office monitoring, reporting and service.

Our tasks

The tasks developed during this period included the following actions:

Coordination at a European level with AFME
Design of ad hoc strategies
Organisation of conferences
Media calls
Media relations
Organisation of interviews
Preparation of communication materials
Responding to media requests for information
Monitoring and reporting

THE RESULTS:

Our collaboration with AFME has positioned the association as a benchmark in the Spanish market. Our value contribution to AFME is reflected in generating a relationship of trust and forging our role as its partner in Spain, combining the interests of a Europe-wide association in a specialised industry with the need to increase its visibility and reputation in the Spanish market.

The collaboration with ViewPoint has met AFME’s expectations of becoming an opinion maker in the Spanish market and backing the importance of its activity as an advocate of the corporate and investment banking industry and the need to advance the Capital Markets Union in Europe.