How much do PR agencies know about their clients?
In the 13,204th rant a journalist has written about the failings of the public relations industry this year, Robin Hicks wonders if there is really any point to PR agencies if they know so little about their own clients.
So, the short answer to the question in the headline appears to be: not very much.
This piece is inspired by frustration, and is one that should probably have – like many an angry email – stayed in drafts.
But it just got too much to bear.
Why is it that PR executives are so clueless about the clients they are paid to represent?
In what has been something of a cathartic exercise, Mumbrella has over the past few months asked a number of PR agency folk some fairly basic questions about their clients to see how clued up they are. Or not.
The results will probably come as no surprise to journalists based in Singapore.
Of the 10 PR people Mumbrella asked three questions each about their clients, only one got all three right.
Four execs – representing LinkedIn, PayPal, SilkAir and Glispa – did not give a single correct answer. Actually, they didn’t give an answer at all.
Four (representing Courts, VML, AIA and Discovery Networks) got one question right. One (Grab) got two right.
So, call a PR executive in Singapore, and the chances of you getting any kind of answer to a question about their clients is less than one in three.
And it’s not as if they were being asked for the sequence to their client’s genetic code.
A PR exec representing SilkAir, a junior who called to check if we’d received a press release, did not know who the CEO of SilkAir is.
Nor did he have any idea that Mumbrella had written a story about SilkAir the week before.
An executive representing Discovery Networks, a senior associate who’d sent out a press release about some senior hires for the Southeast Asia team had no idea about an influencer network Discovery had just acquired in China. Her response: “China is not the market that we cover, we only do Southeast Asia.”
An executive handling LinkedIn did not know how many users the social network has. Nor did she know which Asian market is LinkedIn’s biggest.
An executive representing PayPal did not know that just a few weeks prior the payment service had shut down its Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Amazon apps. Or that PayPal’s co-founder had been embroiled in a legal dispute with Gawker.
This is information you’d really expect a PR agency to be on top of if they take any interest whatsoever in their client’s business.
The most frequent phrase I have heard on the phone to PR executives in Singapore is this: “Um, let me check.”
Or, “I’m not very sure.”
These phrases will forever more reverberate around the walls of my head. Let me check. Not very sure. Let me check. Not very sure.
A maddening merry-go-round of cluelessness.
The key point, though, is that the questions where all asked over the phone.
In some cases it’s likely that the PR knew the answer. They were just terrified of getting it wrong. Or just did not want to say.
That was probably the case with the PR for PayPal who was asked if she could name any of the payment service’s competitors. She simply refused, saying that PayPal had no direct competitors.
Of course, this is not true. But you can sort of understand her response. Why would any PR talk about their client’s competitors on the phone to a journalist? Unless of course they knew anything about how a journalist approaches a story.
There are probably clients who see merit in their PR agencies not breathing a word to journalists over the phone without their approval first.
Fewer mistakes, sure. But this strategy is not without risk.
A PR agency that takes two hours to respond to a simple question because they’ve felt obliged to put it in an email – and loop in 10 people before they’re absolutely sure their ass is covered – does not cut it with a journalist on deadline.
Chances are, as time wears on, the story won’t get covered at all. And there goes their KPI.
A single-fact story should take about 15 minutes to write. Not three hours because a journalist is waiting for a PR to check a fact, polish a boiler plate or remove their head from their bottom.
A journalist who works on a national newspaper in Singapore recently shared her belief that there is no point to PR agencies. Brands should take the function inhouse, she said, and hire a team that is sufficiently empowered to do their job.
It’s hard to argue with that when you call a PR agency with a question about a press release and find yourself in a yard of headless chickens.
A good PR agency should be an extension of their client’s communications department, should it not? Not an information vacuum.
But not all PR agencies in Singapore are a horrible waste of time.
Smaller, more local shops are probably the best bet, for clients as well as journalists.
As Lou Hoffman, the founder of independent firm The Hoffman Agency suggested recently, there will always be a market for small shops where the founder is also the client’s account manager. The same thing rings true for journalists.
The only agency that answered all three of Mumbrella’s questions was a local shop called Gloo that is a little over a year old.
The person who answered them (When did Oppo launch in Singapore? Who is the co-founder of Oppo Singapore? Where is Oppo headquartered?) was – yup – the agency’s founder, former Straits Times journalist Oo Gin Lee.
He was also able to do another very rare thing in PR cycles – talk about the client’s business and place in the world.
This ability to provide context, PayPal’s head of APAC communications pointed out recently, is almost unheard of in Singapore.
But it is fundamental.
So is the ability to give life to a client’s story with an anecdote or a bit of colour – another way in which PR agencies tend to make pitifully bad storytellers.
And storytelling is supposedly PR’s strong point.
So is having ideas.
In almost four years of covering Asia’s media and marketing industries, the number of genuinely interesting creative ideas pitched by PR agencies I can count on two fingers of one hand (thank you, Mutant Communications and Ying Communications!).
That PR people seem to know so little about their own clients, and seem to serve no purpose beyond slowing a story down or killing it, is exasperating for journalists. But this can sort of be excused by how often accounts move around, and how often people leave agencies, or the profession altogether, because – as the head of comms for a travel agent suggested recently (“I have my life back!”) – they’ve been overworked. Can’t it?
It can also be explained by the tendency for PR agencies to put interns in the frontline to do the grunt work, like pitch stories to journalists and check they’ve received press releases, which allows the agency’s bosses to escape blame when things go wrong (something PR agencies excel at).
One thing I have stopped is being mean to juniors who call to ask if I’ve received a press release, and clearly don’t have any idea about what they’re pitching.
Because it’s not really their fault. It’s their boss’s. It’s their agency’s. And it’s ultimately their client’s for paying for such crap service.
So, clients. Do yourselves a favour. Either do PR yourselves. Or give your agencies more power to make decisions – informed decisions that stop your stories from dying, and journalists from going quietly mad.
Robin Hicks is the editor of Mumbrella Asia
Robin,
If as you say they do know the answer but don’t want to say, then doesn’t it comes down to trust in the relationship with the journalist that they won’t be made to look foolish they say slightly the wrong thing?
Have you asked yourself what it says about your relationships with these PRs that none of them feel they can speak to you in a candid way?
In short, are you sure it’s them and not you?
ReplyHave recently had a run of trying t get info out of global digital companies – you know the usual crowd,.What I want tho know is when media accepted that we can never question these coys and have to accept that they do not engage with their markets. Great at organising junkets and plugging – otherwise not so good.Ofcourse-they are very good for their clients,
ReplyYou’re absolutely spot on in pinpointing where the problem lies. It’s about empowerment (to be given from the client to the agency), and it’s about being overworked (handling too many accounts at one go that one can barely scratch the surface of one before moving on to another).
Based on just the two points above, you’d realise that the TYPE of demand in this case is actually responsible for the quality of supply it generates. To put it simply – clients themselves too, are clueless. Having been on the agency side (but now no longer), I’ve heard unnegotiable demands such as ‘if the story is going to mention our competitor, we don’t want the story’. It’s not that the PR person doesn’t know how journalists work, but is that they let their clients dictate how they should do their jobs.
As to the overworking bit – it’s not that PRs are all sadists who choose to work themselves to the bone. But they too, are a business and they need to stay afloat. If there are clients who do not see the value in (or understand) PR, and pay measly sums to ‘have a press release written and disseminated’, I doubt PRs can afford to be spending any more time and effort trying to understand the client’s business.
ReplyFirstly, 10 is a too small sample and you never described how you chose the sample, what is the sample distribution at all (local agency/international, level of the interviewees, etc.)
ReplySecondly, you asked them directly over the phone and all the interviewees knew you are a journalist. They automatically turn cautious about their answers.
This article is so misleading.
A perspective from someone who has worked in both journalism and comms positions in a number of markets, both in and outside Asia.
Companies use PR because they want to grow their brand awareness, but it’s alarming how many PRs can’t articulate why a super busy writer should cover their pitch. Being able to give a unique selling point is basic proficiency.
So you want to get a journo’s attention? Research. Customise. Get to know the journalists relevant to your clients personally. Check out their LinkedIn. Learn more about their publication. Read their work. What beat do they cover? If you’re just getting their email from Telum, so is literally every other agency sending copy and paste emails straight into their unchecked junk mail. Figure out how to make your pitch stand out. Do your homework,understand the proposition, then call with the pitch – don’t email. Build a relationship. Journos notice and appreciate this. Become a trusted source of great stories and they will call YOU.
Journos are trained to ask questions, not be a stenographer. It shouldn’t come as a ‘gotcha’ when one asks a basic question about a press release, or a company, or frankly – given how many ‘non-news’ releases come in – the unique selling point of the article for their specific audience. This isn’t unfair treatment by a journo, it’s a PR’s job. If a journo calls a PR back with a question, it’s an opportunity to impress them. Take it!
ReplyI would imagine they are a bit afraid of mumbrella….because it is not a brainless shill like a couple of other sites that just print whatever rubbish you tell them.
I cant imagine someone like industry scam artists letting their guard down with the likes of the Big M.
Occupational hazard….just keep chipping away….PR people are idiots….no substance just fake charm.
Reply@Shaggy – generalisation much? Not all PR people are idiots, just as not all clients are nasty, or not all media only write ‘brainless shill’.
Granted there are a lot of juniors who are not clued in, and I do blame that on their mentors or superiors not teaching them or guiding them better. But the industry in itself is not without its use. Don’t let a few bad apples spoil the bunch.
@Robin – Anonymous (No.4) has a point. Who were you speaking to? If you were interrogating 10 interns who were doing follow up calls with you, then I am not surprised that you got the answers you did.
Again, this isn’t representative of the entire industry, but I do agree that it is a growing problem as agencies get more stretched, are dumping work on interns as well as not investing enough time to teach them, or in the case of more mid-level staff who simply do not have the time to fully get immersed in one client when they have 10 other clients to also worry about. It’s not right but it is reality, unfortunately.
As a PR practitioner who has been on both ends of the scale i.e. having multiple small clients doing tiny projects vs having one major client running multiple projects and retainers, I can fully vouch for the value of immersion in the company. But not everyone is lucky to have that experience.
Ultimately, I guess everyone needs to play a role in solving this problem, before it gets from bad to worst.And a little more tolerance all round wouldn’t hurt.
Cheers!
Alina
P.S. Shaggy is right, I do suppose most agencies have given warnings to interns “beware of Mumbrella’ so there is a healthy dose of fear on their part, perhaps in speaking to you over the phone (totally unwarranted though 🙂
ReplyLooks to me Robin’s had a bad day. And I’m sure when Robin reflects on this article he’ll concede that a sample of 10, from a single market, is not a valid indication of an entire industry.
Also, I suspect he may feel a little bad for indirectly naming and shaming the PR firms in such a public light.
Those that were sampled should lift their game.
Those that are offended by this article should make sure this type of critique can’t be levelled in the future.
Those that were involved in the article will probably agree that there are more informative and newsworthy investigations to be done.
I’d pay a year’s subscription if someone were to investigate and unpack the two most consequential marketing campaigns recently witnessed… And what marketers can learn from these…
ReplyUnfortunately, most PR agencies are little more than outsourced arms-and-legs lacking client-specific experience, expertise and insight; fewer still have the discretion to comment on behalf of the client. The author’s frustration is entirely understandable.
But his solution (“either do PR yourselves or give your agencies more power to make decisions”) is relevant only to this typical client-agency model. There is another model that is rarely the source of frustration for journalists, quite the opposite in fact. I’m referring to an admittedly small number of firms that employ only very capable, highly experienced practitioners who advise, assist and encourage clients to have a direct dialogue with the media and other stakeholders. They work behind the scenes with the client and rarely insert themselves into the exchange unless absolutely necessary. These firms employ former journalists, consultants, business leaders. . .people with relevant experience and perspective. Their value proposition is to provide an outside-in perspective to help clients break free of groupthink or internal myopia and engage more effectively, more credibly and ultimately earn the trust of their stakeholders (including journalists). In other words, the best PR firms are the ones you rarely encounter unless absolutely necessary. They do exist but they wouldn’t be seen dead at an industry awards event.
On that last point, it’s interesting that Mumbrella publishes such a broad-brush rant indiscriminately slamming all agencies, even telling clients to do their own PR, whilst leading in the very same issue with a call for agencies to enter its own lucrative annual industry awards programme? Ironic inspiration or just an awkward coincidence?
ReplyWhile Robin makes a good point about the need to understand our clients, far too often PR juniors desperately pitch story after story with no time to digest details. Some are really unforgivable e.g not knowing who the CEO but Robin, off that top of your head do you know which market has the most Mumbrella subscribers? Which media title last quoted your MD?
The only reason why you’re not seeing more responses pointing out the flaws in this poorly researched ‘survey’ and observations is because, unfortunately, PR folks DO have to watch how they interact with journos and no professional can risk being caught in this crossfire. That’s why you’re getting freewheeling dialogue from hey, an ex journalist!
I’ll stop here as I need to get back to some deadlines (yes, we are very overworked, you got that right at least) – so if you want to devalue an entire industry based on a biased survey formulated solely to fuel an industry-breaking ‘opinion piece’ I won’t waste more time trying to make you see otherwise.
Remember this, PR agencies probably have a part in driving a title like Mumbrella which in turn, creates jobs for people like you.
ReplyThe first thing that came to mind when I read this piece was that it would get lots of attention in the PR world, really quickly.
The way I understand it, the piece is probing a deeper question – whether agency juniors are receiving enough training and knowledge of their clients.
I was from a small agency, and the seniors were adamant we understand our clients and know the industry. Heck, we did media monitoring by publication – spending the first hour or less every morning checking out what’s happening. Not just monitoring coverage through Google. Although this took a long time, it was important in knowing what our client’s competitors are doing and industry conversations.
With regards to storytelling, agencies do not have much say in an organisation’s brand story, but knowing the client well helps convey that story. In turn, this helps journalists tell that story to their audience.
Ultimately, it’s about knowing what your target publication is currently talking about, and how your client or brand can add to that story.
I know we’re all chasing pieces of coverage set by clients, but honestly, if you’re able to help your clients tell their stories to the right journos, they will show their appreciation.
Clients, it is up to you to give your agency the amount of knowledge needed to understand the business well. I’ve worked with clients that spent hours getting us onboard (much appreciated). Agency peeps, it’s up to you to update yourself on a daily basis.
ReplyHave your say