PR As a Top 10 Most Stressful Job…Oh Pahlease

The annual list of most stressful jobs is making the rounds and some of my public relations colleagues are carrying the fact that “public relations executive” was ranked by CareerCast as the 6th most stressful job as a of badge of honor.

Here’s the full list, beginning with most stressful job:

Enlisted military, military general,  firefighter, airline pilot,  event coordinator, public relations executive, senior corporate executive, newspaper reporter, police officer, taxi driver.

Outside of the entertainment factor, the annual listing isn’t very meaningful, really.  You can read more about the methodology CareerCast uses for its ranking here. To me, the comparisons are apples and oranges.  For example, an airline pilot charged with transporting 300 souls in a metal vessel travelling at 600 MPH and at 38,000 feet, or an urban firefighter sprinting into a burning apartment building while everyone else is running in the opposite direction, have stress level factors PR people can only imagine.

And it’s ridiculous to think that a big city police officer, who’s pre-work routine includes donning a bullet proof vest and a loaded pistol, has a job that’s less stressful than the PR guy who’s pre-work routine includes reviewing email, checking the charge on his smartphone or taking one last look in the mirror before dashing off to a meeting at Starbucks.

Not to downplay the PR profession by any means.  It’s a fantastic occupation, one that has been my bread and butter for more than 25 years and like any job where demanding, paying customers and deadlines and rejection are involved, it has its fair share of stresses. But it doesn’t belong on the same list as enlisted military, firefighters or police officers.  While we’re at it, add nurses and school teachers to the list but remove event coordinator, corporate executive and newspaper reporter (I was one early in my career and while I was almost punched out by an intoxicated town councilor, I was never put in a position to save lives like our heroic first responders are).

Let’s leave taxi driver on the top 10, though.  Cabbies put themselves in harm’s way every time a new client steps into their ride, especially when it’s an overly caffeinated PR person who just got word that his story idea was just rejected by the WSJ and his smartphone is about to die.

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Size Matters When It Comes to Picking a PR Agency

Public relations agencies come in all shapes and sizes. Some are holding-company owned with offices in 50 countries or more and thousands of employees.  Others are independent and mid-sized with a handful of offices and perhaps a hundred or more workers. And of course there are scores of founder-run, single-office firms and boutique consultancies with anywhere from three to 50 staffers all working under one roof or virtually.

While all of these agency types often compete with each other for the same prized piece of business, they can be very different in their approach to new business, client service and relationship management.

For the prospect, deciding to work with a one-office firm or a large agency with an office in every major U.S. metro area can be a tricky decision as agencies have grown adept at becoming chameleon-like. For example, a smaller agency may try to present itself as bigger and more “scalable”  than they really are when pitching a potentially big client. They will bring up that they work with “partner” agencies all over the world allowing them to send your message out globally.  And a large agency may attempt to present itself as nimble and flexible (with pricing and programs) when pitching an emerging brand with limited marketing dollars.  They will bring up the fact that they have specialized teams working on smaller programs and the promise that you won’t be a small fish in a big pond.

Blah blah blah.

Ok, so perhaps there are a few instances where both the large and the small agency can get the same job done well.  But typically, this won’t be the case.  So to help you decide, here are a few guidelines to mull:

• if yours is a global company, then hire a global agency with global branded offices. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t bring in a boutique for specialized work as well. But in my experience, the various global networks of independent PR agencies are better suited for project vs. ongoing work.  I’m sure there are exceptions, but it’s difficult for one agency (the AOR) to control and manage the quality of the work that another agency in another country is doing for a client.

• if it’s important that agency principals pay close attention to your account, then hire a boutique. Even with many mid-size firms, you won’t see the firm principals very often once the contract is signed unless you insist on it or have a previous relationship.  In most cases, agency principals are too busy running the business to pay attention to client service until something goes wrong.

• if you are an emerging brand with limited PR dollars to spend for the foreseeable future, hire a boutique or mid-size agency.  Big agencies are working hard to penetrate the emerging brands market, especially in tech, but until they figure out how to make money on small budgets it’s still largely a work in progress for them. Generally, if you’re an emerging brand, the sense of urgency and enthusiasm and attention you’ll get from a smaller firm will outshine that of a big agency (at least once the honeymoon is over).

• if prestige and name recognition is important to your CEO, then hire the global agency so he/she can brag at the next cocktail party that his PR agency has offices in 75 countries even though the client only does business in three of them. Just remember, someone has to pay for all that overhead.
  

IPO Communications Guidelines That Make Good Sense

It’s the dream of many public relations professionals:  land a position with a promising pre-IPO company. Take less base compensation and sacrifice weekends and holidays for the promise of mainlining a gold vein of stock options and sailing off to the Caribbean following a robust IPO and the requisite vesting period.

Ah.  If only it was that easy.

The reality is that the PR pro in a pre-IPO company has enormous pressure and responsibility to ensure that his/her organization is playing by the IPO communications rules of the road. The job can be like herding cats.  A single communications misstep can be extremely costly to the organization, and of course to communications leadership.

2013 is actually turning out to be a banner year for IPOs in the U.S.  According to the czars of IPO research at Renaissance Capital, 165 IPOs have priced so far this year — that’s a near 50 per cent increase over 2012. In addition, a whopping 208 IPOs have been filed with the SEC year-to-date, more than 75 per cent than a year ago.  And the average IPO has returned almost 30 per cent from the offer price.

Twitter, as the galaxy is aware, is expected to complete its IPO process before the end of the year, possibly by Thanksgiving. Its recent decision to fuel the IPO frenzy is having a significant and positive impact on other recent IPOs as well, like Rocket Fuel Inc. and FireEye Inc.  Their stock price has doubled since their IPOs less than one month ago.

Going public has many pluses.  Among the benefits is the opportunity to earn significantly more interest and coverage from business and financial information channels, major newspapers, business magazines, television, radio, financial and business websites, among other media outlets.

However, the benefits of enhanced publicity come with the increased responsibility of communicating appropriately, leveraging new-found media attention to support strategic business goals while playing by fair market rules and maintaining corporate transparency.

Much of this enormous responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the organization’s communications leadership. Remember the companies in the dot.com boom that screwed up their IPOs by inadvertently leaking confidential information that found its way to the media and then the SEC?  That’s a sure-fire for the dream to become a nightmare of epic proportions.

Here are a few guidelines for PR  pros and their pre-IPO companies that will help dreams come true:

1. Prevent official and unofficial spokespeople from telling external sources your company intends to go public. Regardless of when it’s said, it can be published during the IPO quiet period and will look like SEC rules have been violated. Instead, focus on the company’s growth story.  Talk about financing as an adjunct that facilitates growth.

2. Develop a story that describes your company’s competitive advantages and barriers to entry without industry jargon. Keep it simple and do it well in advance of the IPO as it will serve as the basis for your corporate description in the prospectus.

3. Strengthen your website. During the quiet period, your company website will speak for you to industry influencers and potential investors.

4. Stay visible.  Typically, visible IPOs price higher in the range and trade higher afterwards. Don’t focus only on the Wall Street Journal and other national publications. Industry trade publications, bloggers, industry and Wall Street analysts are also excellent visibility creators.

5. Be visible now or company attorneys may say “no” after you have filed. If you haven’t been active before the filing, it will be difficult to be active once you have filed.  Even if you have been active with the media before the filing, many attorneys will take an ultra-conservative position and still try to prevent the company from being visible.  Challenge their position by sharing the many examples of companies who got their cake and ate it.

6. Once your company has gone public, employees have no right to material information before other shareholders. Make sure your company employees understand the rules. Be prepared to circulate policies that explain how to handle material information and how to avoid insider training.

7. IPO day is the beginning, not the end, of communications. Use the remainder of your quiet period to plan your debut as a public company. Decide what your publicity stance will be on the first day of trading.

8. The first nine months of being public will prove whether you can properly forecast your future for Wall Street. It’s easier to keep your good reputation than try to rebuild it.

9. Look to bellwether companies outside your industry for best communications practices, and not only to your competitors.

10. Work with your company’s attorneys and advisers to fit your desired business strategy within regulatory rules.

11. Get your corporate legal and investor relations teams involved in social media to protect the company from violating disclosure requirements. The risks simply don’t outweigh the benefits.

Oh, and good luck.

In The New Normal, Client Retention Means Playing Above The Rim

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

These are the five stages of grief a PR agency (or any business for that matter) goes through when a good client takes their business to a competitor.  Each of the five stages were detailed in a recent post in which I promised a follow-up with a few ideas on how an agency can beef up its existing client retention program (you have one, right?).

The problem some agencies and other organizations have is this:  a short memory. What often happens once the initial jolt and after shocks of losing a good client subside and everyone gets back to business, or perhaps even begins work on behalf of a “replacement” client, is that they revert to some of the same bad habits that got them in trouble in the first place, like ignoring the obvious signs of a failing business relationship.

While many of the keys to client retention in the “new normal” are second nature to many organizations and are seamlessly rolled into how they conduct business on a day-to-day basis — like proactively managing and measuring client expectations, the overall health of the relationship and the value that is being delivered while saying “no” to non-aligned business — there are above the rim ideas that can help lock in a client for life.

For example, how about setting a new standard for quality performance? Name it whatever you want (TQM = total quality commitment?).  Pull your senior client-facing managers together once a month for a couple of hours to probe and to get to the root of client issues and problem areas.  Don’t talk about staffing or utilization or new business at this meeting.  Just focus on the organization’s top clients and use the time to share best practices. Chances are you or one of your peers is facing a client relations issue another had already experienced and successfully resolved.  It’s amazing how many important war and success stories aren’t shared in real-time due to the hustle and bustle of the average work day in a typical agency.  Set time aside for this.

Secondly, consider retaining an independent auditor — someone familiar enough with your business to add real value —  to call on your clients a couple of times a year to nip little problems in the bud.  Quarterly reviews and a relationship management tool like the balanced scorecard can take care of the bigger business issues.  But a five or ten minute call or email questionnaire every six months from an independent professional will solicit from clients the type of complaints they might not normally share with their account team.

And how about a customer advisory board?  A board can be challenging to assemble (and a bit tricky regarding which clients to leave in and which to leave out)  but  can be well worth the effort.  A customer advisory board can accomplish a few critical goals as part of a broader customer retention program:

• the board should be composed of execs from your biggest customers (customers who deliver the lion’s share of your organization’s revenue).  Even if they don’t want to commit the time, any client will be flattered you asked and just by doing that you have deepened your relationship with them.

• board members can provide your organization with early warning shifts in their needs as well as emerging opportunities and feedback on new services your firm is providing (or should be providing). And for board members,  membership gives them an opportunity to share best practices, network and build new relationships with other executives in and outside of their industry.

• By following through on customer advisory board recommendations, you’re ensuring client satisfaction, building customer loyalty and reducing attrition among your biggest revenue generators.

I’m always on the watch for innovations in customer retention programs so holler back.

The Best Way to a Journalist’s Heart is Through Research

The more things change in tech public relations, or in PR in general for that matter, the more they are the same.

Despite the demise of paper tech trade publications, like InformationWeek which last published in print on June 24, and the tsunami of all-digital channels, what journalists want from PR people hasn’t changed all that much – and likely never will.

• Reporters still want relevant pitches from PR pros and abhor the thoughtless shotgun approach that for reasons I will never understand (other than pure laziness), so many PR agencies (sadly) still do.

• Journalists will ignore PR pros who won’t take the time to understand their interests before they pick up the phone and pitch a story (what they might do instead is put together another one of those “why I despise PR people” articles).

• A reporter is more likely to cover a trends piece vs. as a standalone company story.  As in the past, it behooves a PR pro to share the bigger picture in a pitch and insert the relevant client story as a case in point.

• Oh…and PLEASE don’t forget to research the media channel and read the journalist’s most recent articles before you pitch. Sounds basic, I know, but not everyone does it.

These recommendations could have been written 10 or 20 or 30 years ago.  They were as relevant then as they are today.  But, in fact, they come out of The 2013 Top Tech Communicators Awards recently published by PRSourceCode which provides tech editorial, speaking, and award opportunity services for tech PR pros.  It’s a useful report  — which surveyed 68 journalists and 114 PR people — even though it reads much like the 2010 version of the same report which I wrote about here.

“Even in this Internet world, where the last story a journalist wrote is just a click away, journalists rail that PR folks fail to do their homework.  Journalists say 93 percent of pitches are not on target,” reads the PRSourceCode press release announcing the survey results.   “This points to a massive missed opportunity, as three out of four journalists say they use proactive pitches from PR folks to generate story ideas and sources.”

Imagine pitching a reporter before researching what that reporter likes to write about? Yup, happens all the time.  Senior PR people will do the profession a great service by mentoring the junior people to NEVER pitch a reporter or blogger before doing their homework.

Journalists, by a wide margin, also still prefer email pitches (99 percent which is actually higher than in 2010) while 70 percent of PR people use the phone for pitching (this stat actually surprises me since so many junior people especially are reticent to pick up the phone these days).   “PR pros need to hold the phone,” reads the report.  In addition to using the phone to pitch story ideas, PR pros who participated in the survey of course also use email (100% of them).  But apparently a high percentage, to the chagrin of journalists, are using the phone to follow-up on their email pitch.

The report also shares winners of the annual top tech communications awards including top tech business and trade publications (print and online), top tech blogs (no real surprises here), top tech journalists as well as top tech PR agencies  and top in-house departments. You can read the entire report right here.

(And a shout out to Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr for inspiring my lede).

The Balanced Scorecard: Guaranteed To Reduce PR Agency Client Attrition

The balanced scorecard (BSC) measurement system, which measures a business and business relationships across four critical categories, will absolutely positively save — and even grow — accounts when appropriately tailored and implemented for your public relations agency and clients’ needs.

I got religious about the BSC scorecard during my tenure with global PR firm Porter Novelli.  Gary Stockman, an executive at Porter Novelli at the time, introduced the BSC to the firm in the late 90’s (if memory serves me).  We modified the traditional structure of the BSC to suit the requirements of a PR agency while fully guarding the traditional scorecard’s integrity and intent.

And when we used it properly, it not only saved a number of key, global accounts but uncovered numerous organic growth opportunities that may not never had been uncovered otherwise.

More recently, I was part of a BSC exercise with a firm’s very important (I know, they’re all important) client and the results were less than stellar.  Among the reasons for the surprising results was that the client was “too nice” to be honest about how they were feeling about the relationship and the agency — until the BSC was introduced — wasn’t asking the right questions.

On the surface, the relationship was motoring along nicely.  In reality, the relationship was skating on thin ice (you can read about the outcome in the P.S.).

If you’re not familiar with the BSC (some argue it’s really a management system that has measurement as a key component), it was created by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton of Harvard Business School and was introduced to the business world 21 years ago.

Since then, it has been implemented by scores of organizations around the world as a way to measure the strength of a business and a business relationship beyond financial parameters. Of course, there’s a Balanced Scorecard for Dummies if you’re interested in taking a deeper dive on your own; and related works that could fill a BSC library. There’s also the Balanced Scorecard Institute which apparently has trained more than 5,000 people on BSC practices.

A traditional balanced scorecard has four legs: a measure of a client’s level of satisfaction with a company’s products and/or services; a financial track; the internal business process leg (IE, what are we better at than anyone else?), and finally, the knowledge, education and growth leg (in simplistic terms, how do we improve upon our core competencies?).

For PR agencies, a BSC can be structured similarly with only a few modifications.  It could go something like this: 

• 1, Strategy — these are questions that help an agency understand the client’s world. Questions like, “Does the agency understand my business?” and “Does the agency understand my internal challenges?”
• 2, Execution & Tactics — the goal of this leg is to understand from the client if the agency is acting strategically.  Questions like, “Does the agency come up with program recommendations I would not have come up with on my own”? and “Do the agency’s program ideas reflect bigger picture thinking?”
• 3, Results/Impact — questions that get at issues around desired value and showcase the agency’s impact among client senior management.  Questions like: “Are the agency’s results viewed by my management as having an impact?”
• 4, Income & Investment — is the client seeing a return on its investment.  Questions like, “Does the agency do a good job of managing my budget”? and “Has the agency had a positive, measurable impact on my business.”

Any thoughts on using the BSC in your agency or if you’re a client, asking your agency about developing one?  Are the categories reflective of a holistic approach to measuring and managing agency-client relationships?

P.S.  The agency-client relationship that was skating on thin ice just prior to the BSC ultimately survived thanks to the quick action both sides took on the heels of the BSC.

Anyone Can Do PR — Easy As 1, 2, 3

Why pay big money to a PR firm when it’s so easy to get media coverage? Here’s how to do it on your own.

That’s the sub-head of sales guru Geoffrey James’ most recent post in Inc.com.

What the…?

Wait.  There’s more.

“PR firms can be pricey and they’re often not all that good at landing media coverage,” James says.

“I know people who are paying as much $10,000 a month to a PR firm and getting very little out of it,” he continued. 

Said Mr. James:  “And that’s sad, because PR–getting positive media coverage–isn’t all that difficult.”

A bit later in the post, James throws PR a bone with, “I should probably note that there’s some ‘art’ involved in figuring out story angles.”

But he no sooner giveth that he taketh away with:  “…and most PR folk don’t do it very well.”

In his next breadth, he pretty much throws the newspaper reporting profession under the bus with, “If you need help, consider hiring an out-of-work newspaper reporter. There are plenty to go around.”

Perhaps James — who writes mostly about sales and marketing for Inc. — woke up on the wrong side of the bed following a bad experience with a public relations agency and then decided to trash the entire industry.

Or, perhaps he really believes that generating favorable media coverage is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

What is for certain is that James has a pretty low opinion of an industry that is growing about 8 per cent a year, generates nearly $11B in annual revenue and employs nearly 75,000 people around the globe, according to The Holmes Report.

So at least a few companies — from start-ups to global organizations — see the value in hiring a PR agency.

Granted, James’ post is focused on new companies vs. larger, well-established ones.  But at the same time, encouraging entrepreneurs to do their own PR is encouraging them to take their eye off of their core competency (developing a product, building out a service offering, etc.) and to drink their own Kool-Aid as not only do PR people develop their skills and media relationships over the course of years, but they are the best at sniffing out the B.S. that some entrepreneurs try to pass off as news.

After James takes his readers through the very basics of PR, he concludes his post with, “As you can see, there’s no big mystery to doing PR work.”

What the … Mr. James?  As one of his readers commented, with his advice James is giving false hope to business owners.  Don’t fall for it.

Stop Burning Through PR Agencies – Here’s How

Stop wondering about the relationship with your public relations agency and find out exactly what’s working and what’s broken.

If you don’t want to become one of “those clients” known for burning through one PR agency after the other, and if you don’t want to be known as a PR agency that churns through clients — then measure, measure, measure.

The mid-point of each year is always a good time to reflect on one’s business and business relationships.  It’s an opportunity to review goals against accomplishments for the first six months of the year and to consider course corrections for the next six. If you’re in corporate communications and work with a PR agency, this means it’s an optimal time to assess and evaluate this critical relationship.  Whether your agency relationship is a relatively new one (perhaps it started on the first of the year, as many do), or a well-established one, a six-month evaluation is worth every bit of time and effort.  It will nip-in-the bud elements of the relationship that may be heading in the wrong direction.

The mid-year agency assessment can be as big an undertaking as client and agency want and need it to be.  But just because the managers of the relationship “feel” things are going well and everyone is so busy anyway doesn’t mean the assessment should be a gloss over.  In fact, just the opposite is true.  If the relationship is being managed by “feel” vs. by agreed to measurement and evaluation criteria (e.g. strategy, execution/tactics, results/impact, income/investment) and on a regular basis, then plan for a bumpy road ahead.

Here’s a little help.  Consider these questions when you sit down with your agency to discuss the hits and misses of the first half of the year and your expectations for the second half.  And if you work on the agency side, insist that the senior-most client stakeholders participate in the assessment process.  If the client dismisses the process by not making enough time for it or by delegating the process to junior-level people, then a BIG problem is already brewing.

• Does your agency team know your business, markets and your customers at least as well as you do?
• Do your agency account team leaders understand your internal pressures or do they only see the world through one lens — theirs?
• Is your agency team visible and communicating with you enough?
• If not, why not?
• Do you think your agency team is too busy working on other accounts or out trying to win new ones?
• Is your business important enough to them?
• When do you see or hear from the senior-most agency executives — only when there’s a problem or only when there’s good news to share?
• Are the agency’s senior client service pros truly engaged with your business, in the trenches with the account team generating ideas and creating insights to propel your communications program forward?
• Is your agency listening to you or do they insist on doing things only their way and throw a temper tantrum when you insist on an alternative approach?
• Does your agency hold itself accountable by following through on their commitments or has accountability waned since the early days of engagement?

In the best agency/client relationships, issues that come up during a review shouldn’t be a big surprise to either party.  In the best relationships, communications are open and frequent enough so that major issues are raised and addressed in real-time. However, the “best” agency relationships are far and few between. In too many agency/client relationships issues stay in the parking lot with both parties hoping the issues will disappear on their own.

They won’t.

What’s the relationship with your agency like? It’s the mid-year and a good time to find out.