Category: General

There is no doubt that choosing a PR firm is one of the single most important decisions a company can make.  Finding and selecting the right firm can make or break a company’s awareness and communication with their target audience and that’s one of the reasons it is so hard to get that decision right.

As a HR Director once put it to me: “How am I supposed to interview a PR guy?” The subtext of course being that if you can’t sell yourself how will you ever “sell” the company.

I’ve worked both sides of the fence.  I’ve put together comprehensive and creative client pitches only to discover after the fact that the client was only going through the motions and they had already made a decision.  I’ve hired, what I considered to be the best agency, only to discover they couldn’t deliver any of what they promised – even though we held up our side of the bargain. Of course I’ve had the corollaries of both of these scenarios as well!

This was prompted by a posting on Capulet’s weblog about a recent webinar on hiring the right PR firm. The seminar was put together by B.L. Ochman of I-PR fame.

From my experience of the process here are some top line thoughts:

 The first step is to make sure your firm is ready to retain an agency in terms of the costs involved and the time you will have to devote.

 Next create a comprehensive brief for all the PR agencies in the process.  The brief should include background on the company and its activities to date, as well as your expectations for the new agency.

 Make it very clear that only the people who will actually be working on the day-to-day account should attend the pitch.  You’d be amazed how often a pitch is loaded with stars you never see again.

 Ensure the agencies you invite have the skills you need for your company.

 The agencies should clearly demonstrate relevant experience in your market (or a closely related one) and working with firms your size.

 Ask for a clear explanation of both consulting and mechanical costs (i.e. courier, telephones etc.)

 Spend time discussing measurement.  How will you measure their success and vice versa.

 Ensure that you are comfortable working with this team.  It may be a clich�ut chemistry between the client and the agency can make or break an account

 Talk with references.  The pitching agency should offer to provide client references.  Ask to talk to previous clients!

 Be realistic.  One of the hardest challenges for agencies is a client with unrealistic expectations. PR takes time, don’t expect everything to happen overnight.

 Ensure you have adequate internal resources to devote to the agency.  There’s a lot of internal work required for a successful PR campaign.  It’s not just about retaining and agency and closing the door.

 If you are nervous about measurement, discuss Service Level Agreements (SLA)

Of course that’s not a definitive list but it’s a start.  Personally I believe creating a successful agency-client relationship is far tougher than any PR discipline.  Great PR partnerships are the result of expertise, hard work, investment and some luck.

Last week I read and finished an interesting business book.

Entitled “Experiment at Work: Explosions and Experiences at the Most Frightening Company on Earth“, the book is written by Andy Law, one of the founders of UK advertising agency St. Lukes [Warning: Horrendous Flash Website – one of the worst!].

Andy challenges the reader to look beyond traditional company culture and approaches to Human Resources, to a braver world where staff are appreciated and recognized as the key business resource.

He uses St. Lukes as a example, where amongst other things all the staff are not staff but co-owners (all with shares in the firm), no one has a dedicated computer, instead each account has a work area, where the company is constantly look and challenging for change.

That last paragraph does no justice to St. Luke’s, their approach is completely and fundamentally different to traditional companies.

It’s an interesting read.  I always think it’s a good thing to challenge your perceptions.  Though I did find the book raising more questions than answers, but maybe that was the point….

Anthony Parcero has posted some in-depth thinking on how PR and blogging can live together in harmony.

He fears that there is a danger that independent blogs will be replaced by a glut of corporate or marketing blogs and that as a result much of the value of blogging might be lost.

I am paraphrasing Anthony here, you should have a read of his posting.

For what’s it’s worth, I don’t think independent blogs will die.  I believe that marketing people have an inherent difficulty in (to lift a phrase from the Cluetrain) speaking with their audience via a conversation.

Just look at the recent attempts of marketers/PR people to influence bulletin boards.  The simple fact is that the most effective blogs are those written by knowledgeable people, who care about the subject.

As a result the most successful “corporate” blogs to date, are those written by experts in those companies, not puff pieces written by their marketing or PR folks.

Consumers will, in most cases, spot fluff.  That’s why blogs are so successful.  It’s self-regulating.  If you are relevant people will read.  If you’re simply pushing product messages with no value you will fail.

The quicker we all recognize this the better for all. 

So another week and another hands-on case study on the do’s and do not’s of blog relations.

While I was swanning around outside the office, a new interesting blog relations initiative hit the HTML.

It seems a PR person acting on behalf of Sun Microsystems targeted a number of bloggers to see if they might be interested in a Sun executive (more about that later) guesting on their blog.

Among the bloggers targeted were: Mitch Kapor (Creator of Lotus 1-2-3 and founder of the OSA Foundation), Dan Gillmor (San Jose Mercury News),  Hiawatha Bray (Boston Globe) and Jon Udell (Infoworld).  There were clearly many more but these are the ones we know at this point.

Well on the upside, Sun’s PR is looking at how blogs can influence, however the downside includes some useful PR lessons.

 First of all well done to Sun on identifying the potential of blogs for communicating with your audience.

 Negative marks however for spamming a wide range of well known media-related bloggers with the same message

 Further negative marks for pitching a “guest column” on the blogs in question when clearly those blogs don’t do “guest columns”

So what are the takeaways? Here’s a few immediate ones that come to mind. (Phil Gomes has covered this very well).

 Know your target. Don’t pitch for a “guest column” on a blog where they clearly don’t have “guest columns”. Read the blog, get an understanding for the author.

 Know your media.  If you pitch bloggers be aware that other bloggers may find out.  Therefore widespread mail merges posing as targeted pitches do not work One-to-One marketing does not necessarily mean an effective mail merge.

 You are in the water.  As soon as you begin to pitch bloggers, there is a definite chance that your pitch (not your client) will be publicized. I was once told not to put anything in an e-mail I wouldn’t be happy to see re-produced in court or sent on a postcard. Your pitches should be similiarly defendable.

 Learn.  Mistakes are fine as long as you learn from them and improve the next time.

 Experiment.  If your client is willing to put the time aside to “guest” on another blog, and if they have good relevant thoughts.  Why not help them get their own blog up and running?  In my experience that’s one of the very best ways to reach A-list bloggers.

 

By the way, I’m not being holier than thou here. I think it’s great Sun’s PR folks are using blogs for PR.  If you are not, you should be thinking about it and learning from the experience of others.

By the way from reading the posts (above) concerning this pitch, the Sun Executive is readily identifiable. You got to love Google.

Apologies that postings have continued to be slow.  The continuing volume of virus e-mails has put a lot of strain on working on the road, so things should return to normal on Monday.

Earlier in the week, Marc Snyder was in touch regarding Delahaye’s Media Reputation Index. 

The latest research (April-June) shows that Disney has overtaken Microsoft as the company with the best media reputation.

Media Reputation Index – Top Ten Companies

1.  The Walt Disney Company
2.  Microsoft
3.  Intel
4.  Wal-Mart
5.  General Motors
6.  IBM
7.  Home Depot
8.  Coca-Cola
9.  Bank of America
10. AOL Time Warner

Read more details here.

Lou Hoffman, founder of the Hoffman Agency and a regular writer on matters PR, has written a great feature on those phrases which freeze the blood of the most hardened agency practitioner.

I’m sure you’ve all heard many of them in the course of your professional life, but it’s an enjoyable rant.

Postings have been a little sparse of late as I am currently travelling to a range of interesting places and meeting a range of interesting people.

However, back to business.

It’s interesting to see how the media percieve PR people and the UK Guardian (whom the rumor mill has suggested are looking at launching a US version of the newspaper to follow up on the popularity of their Gulf War II coverage) has a piece by Paul Carr,  the editor of UK site, The Friday Thing, about how music companies don’t really get the online medium. It’s a rather sad account of “viral marketing” actually.

I was also interested to see that the spate of corporate crises over the past twenty four months is encouraging journalists to adopt some of the same PR tactics that we recommend in a crisis.  Bill Breen in this month’s Fast Company pens a mea culpa in follow up to a glowing review of EDS a couple of years ago that has turned out rather differently.

Like any good PR pro, Bill gets all the bad news out on his own terms.  It reads very well.

“Our rather optimistic account elicited a sharp observation from my dad.  As EDS’s stock swooned, my father joked that he was going to start shorting my articles.  That once really hurt.”

As you might have read in the comments to my earlier posting, about his anti-PR rant on the I-Blog discussion list, Rick Bruner has posted a long and detailed rebuttal.

He’s expecting a flame war, but I can’t give him one. Here’s why.

I still think his posting to the I-Blog list was insulting.  He calls it “irony” I don’t. I also have a major problem with Rick’s use of rash generalizations to carry his argument, e.g.:

“Sure, a handful of PR visionaries are blogging to date, but so far as I can see, they’re all blogging about PR. They’re not actually blogging for PR. IDC is using RSS to syndicate its press releases. But beyond that? “

There are loads of companies delivering news feeds over RSS, IDC is only a recent example and there are also a large number of examples of PR driven weblogs.  I don’t do a lot of self-promotion on this blog, but Cape Clear for example, has had exactly this kind of blog for over a year.

However,  Rick’s posting is well written and well reasoned and how ever much I wanted to disagree with it, I found myself nodding in agreement with much of what he wrote.

I agree that we are behind the ball on the Internet in general and blogging in particular.

What his writing does not recognize is that PR people are stepping into the breech. I agree it’s not fast enough, I agree we should own the web, be experts on search engine optimization etc. etc. You can’t argue with any of that. Fair play.

I just wish he’d stop kicking the poor old dog. In the words of my compatriot Oscar Wilde:

“If they have not opened the eyes of the blind, they have at least given great encouragement to the short-sighted, and while their leaders may have all the inexperience of old age, their young men are far too wise to be ever sensible.”

PS: Rick also correctly points out I referenced the wrong Cow in my earlier post, it is of course the Raging Cow, not the Purple Cow.  Seth Godin wouldn’t be a happy camper. But I am sticking to my guns that the Raging Cow incident sucked.

Thanks for Niamh who forwarded me this story from Australia’s The Age newspaper about the trials and tribulations of an Australian computer journalist attending a computer conference in Denver.

To sum up, if you’re a journalist attending an event in the United States, make sure you’ve applied for an I-visa.

Well I’m sure if you use e-mail you have been inundated with the latest Virus attack. I think this is the worst one since the “I love you” Virus one a couple of years back.

But there is an upside to these Viruses.  I’ve had e-mail this week (albeit Virus delivered) from friends and colleagues I haven’t talked to in a long long time.  Going through all the Virus e-mail was like a trip down memory lane.

Furthermore, it’s always interesting to see who has you in their address book, very interesting.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record (too late!) but I am amazed at the proportion of these Virus e-mails coming from PR people. I’d say thirty percent of the Virus e-mail I’ve had is from people in PR.

This means that even though e-mail communication is key to our business, we’re still not updating our Virus checkers and more importantly, we’re still keeping our contacts in programs like Outlook where the Virus knows how to find them.

I suggest you all check your Virus software is up to date!