Hiring a Pr Agency - a Headhunter's View

Since so much has been written about how to go about finding a PR agency, I thought it timely to examine the process from my perspective - a consultant who is also a PR headhunter.

Throughout the U.S. there are thousands of PR firms of all sizes who claim to specialize in dozens of different specialty categories.

As the person designated within your company to identify and hire a PR firm, where do you start? What do you look for? How much should you pay? What characteristics of the PR firm differentiates it from others - and are those differences important to your company? What size firm should you hire? What about account conflicts? Is the firm's location important? Who's going to work on your business? What about performance and results? What should you reasonably expect and how do you measure success?

These are only some of the questions that will undoubtedly arise in your quest to hire a firm.

From my experience, all of these questions should be asked and answered before signing on with a PR firm. However, the real issues that become important should be evaluated within the context of your company's needs and goals. Chances are the answers will fall somewhere in the proverbial gray area.

Going solo

Should you decide to identify a PR firm on your own, there are many reference materials available which can help you quantify the players. However, without the tools and the inside knowledge of how PR firms work and which will work best for your company, the task can be difficult to qualify.

Many solo searchers rely on references from colleagues, industry sources and the like to help them target a group of likely PR firms. The tough part however, is evaluating the relationship between members of your company and the PR firm. Additionally, not every PR agency is listed and quantified in every directory. New ones are popping up all the time and others are merging, being acquired or just fading away. When working with a limited knowledge-base, evaluation can become problematic.

The key to any successful PR agency search lies in the depth of the research expended. The greater amount of time spent researching the agency, its people, culture, working style, etc., the better chance you have of bringing home a winner. Also, it's easy to be distracted by fancy promotion and lose sight of the agency's key elements.

Sometimes the identification of a winning PR firm can be a slam-dunk. More often, it can be like nailing Jello to a tree.

Slam-dunk

If your company produces a highly specialized or technical product, chances are there will only be a few PR firms that will fill the bill. Whether it's engineering, biotechnology or baby toys, your choices will be limited. Add to that the numerous other specifications that you will invariably want to see in your new PR firm.

It's a slam-dunk if your product or service touches on issues such as abortion, guns or smoking. Options will be limited if your PR budget is unusually small or restricted, or if when your PR program is narrowly focused on, say, major mentions in key business publications, or, interviews for your CEO with major network media.

It's probably a good idea to go solo when the budget is small, the PR program is limited and targeted to a highly technical audience or, when the agency's geographic location(s) is restricted. Of course, if management's view of PR is archaic or unrealistic, then the chance of a successful agency union is rather slim under any circumstances.

Not so fast

In my PR agency identification experience, the two most difficult parts of evaluating an agency are costs, (both actual and projected), and team identification and evaluation. Each tend to resemble a moving target that's hard to keep in your sights for too long.

As a general rule, PR agencies don't advertise their fees for services they perform. They tend to promote their expertise and experience in the business of PR and then charge you based on the size of your budget. By knowing that beforehand, they can tailor their services to your specific needs and stay within your budget - or, so you would hope.

However, clients often complain that their agency goes over budget. This is especially true during economic boom times. The firms usually argue that you, the client, have either implicitly approved of the extra work that was done on your behalf, or, that circumstances mandated that your account be "over-serviced." The budget and over-service issues are less pronounced when business and the economy is slow.

As any other business, agencies must stay profitable. Just like management consultants or lawyers, PR people parcel out their expertise in the form of hourly charges. Whether you're paying a "flat monthly retainer" or hourly for services rendered, the agency will calculate the time spent working on your behalf in increments of hours to remain within profitable guidelines. Agency client management employees usually have an "hourly rate" that is levied against the time they spend on behalf of their client. That rate is usually a function of the employee's title. Obviously, the higher the title, the higher the rate.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, not so fast. There are many variables that impact this rather neat little picture. Variables such as employee promotions, employee title inflation, freelance consultants, the changing nature of your account, fee increases, out-of-pocket expenses, economic inflation or recession, conflicting accounts that pay higher fees, result measurement, client vs. agency expectations, irreconcilable differences and much more.