The five things your PR agency needs from you (and why)
BlueChip Communication's Carden Calder lays her cards on the table and outlines the five things PR agencies need from their clients (but might be too afraid to ask).
If we were really honest we’d tell you, upfront, we need five things from you. I’m not saying you don’t take the right approach already – I’m just saying that the better you get at these things, the better our work and relationship should be.
Then, if we don’t get it right for you, it’s likely that responsibility sits with us, not you. There’s always the force majeure clause of course (otherwise known as ‘a meteorite hit us’ or sh*t happens). But assuming no angry God actions… there are things you can do to help us help you.
The five things your PR agency needs from you (and why).
1. Senior access
We need this so we understand the strategy, in its purest form. Also, so we hear the full facts (see next point)… even the things the CEO won’t even tell you, or her or his direct reports yet. And so that what we do is aligned to the CEO’s leadership agenda. The best outcomes we’ve seen over years are those that flow directly from a CEO briefing, regular access and open conversations about even the most sensitive topics.
2. Full (or nearly full) disclosure
With all the information out on the table, we can plan accordingly. This might be as simple as sharing your strategy, as it went to the Board, or as complex as a re-telling of issues from previous management over decades. Risk management documents, issues logs, legal documents and other highly sensitive materials are shared by clients who want the best possible outcome from our senior advisory work. Without this, particular in issues and crisis management engagements, we’re hamstrung. Sometimes more junior executives hold on to key information. This nearly always ends badly for our client, and stops firms like ours doing our best work.
3. Willingness to understand our pricing
High quality complex work is expensive. It’s an unfortunate axiom of our work that time, quality and price are related. You can have two but not three, the thinking goes. And it’s mostly true. A high quality complex piece of work is expensive to produce because it usually requires senior time, deep thinking and, often, peer review. But if all you need is ‘good enough’ we need to know that too, and we’ll adjust accordingly. Both types of work are needed for successful long term client /PR relationships. So open conversations about which we are dealing with are helpful.
Ultimately it’s our job to let our clients know this, be brave about telling you what it will really cost, and make explicit the options so you can make good decisions about how to invest, and when not to.
4. Reasonable turnaround times
Sometimes, as PR and marketing firms, we make life hard for ourselves by giving clients deadlines that are not realistic given our other work in progress.
There’s a whole side of ‘service orientation’ that makes for good client relationships but poor commercial outcomes and more rushed work than is needed. On the flip side sometimes clients want low importance items quickly, and risk quality and strategic integrity in the process. Open conversations about when things are really needed help solve this.
5. Quality time and patience
From all accounts, appointing a new commercial partner of any kind can be painful. As one of our own consulting partners says “Life will get a little bit more difficult before it gets way better.”
This is for many reasons, but getting to know each other, learning about your business and establishing an effective cadence are just three of them. Then there’s legal paperwork, scoping (essential to prevent unpleasant surprises later) and helping us forge strong relationships of respect with your CEO and other internal stakeholders. All a short term pain for longer term gain.
So your time and patience are key.
When clients want relatively trivial things immediately, it interrupts our planned workflow, risks your more important goals and eventually damages the relationship.
Finally, we are experts at what we do, but we are also human. We receive and understand information in different ways, have different professional expertise and personalities. And sometimes, mistakes are made – even by the smartest, most experienced, nicest and hardest working people on the planet.
Carden Calder is managing director, BlueChip Communication.
Love this, totally resonates with me!!
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“Willingness to understand our pricing”
Doesn’t everybody want that?
Oh don’t pull that face PR Person, I’m just yankin ya chain…Hey… you’re alright!
(Yeah, Nah, just kidding, PR is actually useless. Anything you do can be done via a media agency. PR as an industry will be gone in three years).
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understand our pricing?
Sure, if it is reasonable pricing for what is given in returned.
In my experience, these two factors rarely match.
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