Positive Press for Collectors

What’s going on here?  In the short space of two weeks, two video segments appeared on TV that were — with all possible synonyms exhausted — sympathetic to the jobs debt collectors must do on a day-to-day basis.

Airwaves, printing presses, and the series of tubes that is the Internet have long been crammed full of negative publicity for the ARM industry.  Are we now seeing a shift in the way the media portrays collectors?  Or is this just an anomaly?  Or does it matter; should we just bask in the glow of the scant good press that comes our way?

On Friday, January 19th, ABC’s venerable news program 20/20 ran an hour-long special called “Flat Broke: Begging and Borrowing in America.”  The special included various video segments discussing everything from how to avoid going too far into debt to a segment on that newest of phenomena: cyberbegging.  Also included in the special was a segment by John Stossel that offered a “rare view on debt: not all collectors are bad guys.”

The segment highlighted the work done at Sunrise Credit Services, a collection agency in Farmingdale, New York.  It focused on the motivational techniques used by managers at the firm to keep collectors engaged in their job under the crushing weight of constant harassment and abuse at the hands of consumers.

Collectors being abused by consumers?  On network TV?  If that’s an odd thought, consider the next segment which aired on MSNBC’s “Your Business” program.

This segment focused on small business owners and their attempts to get paid by their customers.  Two businessmen in California enlisted the help of Credit Consulting Service of Salinas, California, and continue to use the collection agency to remind customers to pay.  While a little less laudatory than the 20/20 piece, this segment did lay out the basic argument collection agencies and industry proponents have been using for years: businesses of all types benefit from the work of collection agencies.

The opening paragraph’s wishful thinking aside, the media is hardly finished bashing collectors.  In fact, an accompanying web article to the 20/20 piece was titled, “Debt Collectors Gone Wild,” with content fitting what is suggested in the title.  And recently it was announced that the infamous Boston Globe series on debt collectors in Massachusetts had been nominated for a prestigious investigative journalism award (not a Pulitzer).  But is the positive stories mentioned above are becoming more commonplace, what is the cause, and can we expect more?

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It would make sense, on the surface, to credit industry organizations like ACA International and the Commercial Law League of America for getting the good word out.  After all, these associations have been trumpeting the virtues of the ARM industry for years, and have supplied much of the industry’s talking points in defending its actions: the ARM industry contributes more than you think to the economy; collectors actually help consumers; and collectors get abused just as often as those they call.  But it seems as though individual collection agencies are being more proactive in their public relations efforts. 

As the editor of a web site that reports on the ARM industry, I can say without any hesitation that the volume of positive press and “feel good” article submissions we receive from collection agencies has increased dramatically in the past year.  And theses submissions are not just coming from the agencies themselves; I’ve noticed a definite trend lately of professional PR firms sending them on the agencies’ behalf.  The more positive news we get out there, the more likely it is that a mainstream media outlet will pick up on it.  Do you think it’s a coincidence that Sunrise and CCS were interviewed for these stories?  Did ABC and MSNBC look in the Yellow Pages and randomly select these two firms?  Probably not.  The segment producers were most likely made aware of the firms through their PR efforts.

This is not to say the ARM industry is in total control of its own destiny when it comes to positive press; the media will always run what sells.  But with media saturation the way it is, and the preponderance of niche media (like insideARM), maybe the truth – or at least the whole story – is what will sell.

So maybe media outlets are finally getting around to balancing out the debt collector vs. consumer story.  Maybe producers are seeing fatigue among viewers for the same old “debt collectors are evil” story.  Or maybe the industry is finally targeting the right people in the right way to get our story out there.

Whatever the case may be, at least there are two recent examples that ARM professionals can point to and say, “that’s my industry, that’s what I do…and I’m very proud to it.”