Day: June 17, 2002

The industry analyst conundrum…
Let me state up front (and this IS important) that 98% of industry analysts I deal with and meet are highly knowedgable and professional individuals who have a very valuable insight into technology trends and market movement.

But what about the 2%? One of PR’s perennial problems was that all you traditionally needed to call yourself a PR consultant was a phone and a fax (now it’s a phone and a computer). Increasingly there are small boutique analyst firms opening up, and some of these firms are bringing the industry analyst market into disrepute.

Last week an ‘analyst’ from one of these firms told me “we don’t take vendor briefings unless the vendor is a subscriber”. Whoa! Hold on there. How can an “analyst” have a view of the market, more importantly how can they judge trends or proffer advice if they only talk with their clients?

It seems to me these tiny firms’ business plan reads something like: “Our goal is to write nice things about company’s who pay us money and to ignore, diss and bad-mouth their competitiors (unless they pay us money too)”

Is it time to blow the whistle on these people? [Comments ]

A PR blogger……..
Last Friday I happened onto a fellow PR blogger. Phil Gomes has a well written PR blog that’s definetly worth a visit and has been added to the links on the left.

I read much of his blog with a lot of interest, the only entry that bristled somewhat was his April 11 2002 piece (no permalinks) on why every company needs external PR counsel….I’ll return to that at a later date. However if you’re interested in PR definetely visit Phil’s blog regularly.

My daddy is bigger than yours…
I have held off writing this piece for quite some time, but now is as good a time as any. In a variety of online PR publications recently there have been a series of Big Agency versus Small Agency opinion pieces. These ‘articles’ aim to position smaller or larger (depending on the author) PR agencies as the best choice for companies for a range of spurious reasons.

The only clear take-away for me from these articles, is that any agency who participates will never get my business. Why? Well if a PR professional positions themselves so blatantly, supporting their argument with unsubstantiated generalizations they can’t be relied upon to promote my business intelligently. If this is their idea of thought-leadership be afriad…be very afraid.

So does size matter? Here’s my take. PR is at its core about people. Although agency elders often forget it, a PR firm lives and dies by its people. That’s it. When you extrapolate that out, whether you go with a large or small agency should at the end of the day come down to the people in the firm you’ll be working with. And that argument holds for international PR programs as well.

Over the past decade I have worked on the agency and in-house sides. In both capacities I have worked with single agency networks and a mix of different agencies. It’s clear that the most effective campaigns were not driven by the type of agency but by the people involved. Good people = Good campaigns….size doesn’t matter a jot, whether its big or small.

Flash Hall of Fame #7… Publicis….check out the most appalling navigation known to personkind..