PR: Investor & Government Relations

We already have explored Hillsong Church's media relations from the inside out, now it is time to go deeper. Normally is very hard to talk about investor relations when your subject is a church, but the Hillsong Church shows that they care about it. They provide on the church's website a financial charter to communicate about their finances. In this charter the organization is described as a non-profit organization governed by their board of directors, also informing that their annual record is audited and lodged with regulatory bodies every year and also mentioning the internal controls applied, always offering an open book policy allowing members/investors to analyze these annual financial records, promoting a two-way communication in order to have a positive corporate reputation.

Source:  http://myhillsong.com/financial-charter   

The Hillsong Church also shows a big concern about their government relations. Hillsong's website informs that their governance and policies are based on Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), principles of good corporate governance, best practice recommendation in addition to biblical values. In other words, the Hillsong Church is following all the government’s principles to have an organization with a good government relation.

As a non-profit organization Hillsong Church manages the business process producing an overall positive impact in society by specifying in the organization's website their ethical standard and values, conflicts of interest, recognizing and managing the risks, opting for a political impartiality and specially their responsibility to the community informing the church's privacy policy, donation policy and occupational health and safety. This way getting ready to manage the issues before they happen.

Source:http://myhillsong.com/corporate-goverance

Source:http://myhillsong.com/corporate-goverance

Hillsong Church has shown a good investors and governments relation so far, but there is always a place for improvement. Considering all the tools applied by the organization to work on these relationships, some extra tools would be useful to improve, for example the use some advanced tools (ex: road show, conference call, etc), the use of an agenda setting and specify better the organization crisis communication plan about how would be their response to a crisis and how to get recovered from it, always remembering to apply to most important strategies during a crises: be honest, be prompt, be constant, be accessible, be direct and always use multi-platforms to communicate.

For further information about Hillsong Church's investor relation and government relation visit the website: http://myhillsong.com

For last but not least, join Hillsong Church and World Vision's fight to help many desperate lives in Philippines. If you want to be part of this fight, click here to donate now. 

Source: https://hillsong.com/en/bwc/philippines

PR: Media Relations

The Hillsong Church when analyzed as a brand, as any other brand, uses some traditional media relations strategies, some of they are: PSA (public service announcement), events and some press releases posted on their website. And as a modern brand they also use some new media relations strategies, they have a very visual website and work very well interacting with their followers in the social media platforms, as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, blogs and Tumblr. In these platforms the brand has a good reputation, always promoting their products and doing a great job building relationships. The brand also interacts with their public through a chat in their website, as showed in the picture below:

Source: http://insome.wikispaces.com/Church

According to Jefferson Tanton at "Why Valuable Content" there are five vital things for a company to deliver a valuable content, they are: a spotlight, every company has to find a way to get found by customers/followers; a star quality, this is the way on organization can stand out among others; a buzz, so the brand can become popular; shelf life, so customer/followers always pick you when they have to look for some services again, or look to buy again; and a personality, so they will recognize you and trust your brand. And Hillsong meets all this branding steps making their brand very successful.
The media strategies employed by Hillsong Church fit the personality of the organization, showing their uniqueness, their openness, and their authenticity as mentioned by Barghava in his book "Personality not included" as a really important tool for a strong and powerful brand's signature. Making it easier for the organization to find a way to reach their target and offering their services or selling their products.
Even affirming that Hillsong Church employs successfully some media strategies to fit the brand's personality, the brand still has to work on some media relations strategies to improve their relationship with the media, for example I would suggest Hillsong to create an online newsroom providing the press releases, reports, financial data, RSS, historical data to attract the media to their organization, as mentioned by Breckenridge at "PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences" at his chapter 2 when he explains the importance of having a newsroom to attract the media and improving your communication with them, and making your brand stand out among others. Breckenridge affirms that a newsroom become a standard being beneficial for its users. So this, in my opinion, is the only missing step of Hillsong Church when we talk about media relation strategies.