Comments on: How to Hire a PR Firm http://emsincorporated.com/how-to-hire-a-pr-firm/ Public Relations Firm EMSI - PR Firms, PR Agencies Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:29:23 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Michael Gury http://emsincorporated.com/how-to-hire-a-pr-firm/comment-page-1/#comment-376 Michael Gury Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:54:47 +0000 http://www.emsincorporated.com/?p=572#comment-376 Dear Marsha, having hired and fired more than a few PR agencies in my time, both small and big around the world, your quiver of questions to prospective agencies are spot on. There are also questions about conflicts of interest, for example, if there are competitors lurking amidst an agency's roster, which lends credibility to the agency's industry savvy but may prove to be a legal problem. But those can usually be handled up front. I'm interested in your "pay for performance" model. What is the definition of performance? This is a totally loaded question, since I've had this debate many times, and seen it defined many ways, but I'd be interested in your thought. I also think that it is incumbent upon an agency, no matter how hungry, to ask a few questions of the prospective client. Why do you think you need a PR agency? What do you expect from it? How will you know when the agency succeeds? How much time can you allocate to working with the agency? Do you or will you have any news to advance the business or is this a defensive/crisis situation? And finally, as a recitation of your earlier question: who's going to be our account manager and does he/she know anything about PR? Those are just a handful of questions that come to mind. The phenomenon I have observed is that agencies are often hired for reasons other than public relations. In the minds of hiring authorities, they are there to pave over huge potholes in strategy, products and logic; or they are there to blow air into leaking corporate life rafts; or there to send the hounds and horses to the left when the last thing a company wants is to have a stampede to the right. That is not meant to diminish the majority of clients that hire agencies to promote themselves, their products, and deliver news as effectively as possible, but you get my point: agencies should be responsible for due diligence as well as should clients. Anyway, good post. Dear Marsha, having hired and fired more than a few PR agencies in my time, both small and big around the world, your quiver of questions to prospective agencies are spot on. There are also questions about conflicts of interest, for example, if there are competitors lurking amidst an agency’s roster, which lends credibility to the agency’s industry savvy but may prove to be a legal problem. But those can usually be handled up front.

I’m interested in your “pay for performance” model. What is the definition of performance? This is a totally loaded question, since I’ve had this debate many times, and seen it defined many ways, but I’d be interested in your thought.

I also think that it is incumbent upon an agency, no matter how hungry, to ask a few questions of the prospective client. Why do you think you need a PR agency? What do you expect from it? How will you know when the agency succeeds? How much time can you allocate to working with the agency? Do you or will you have any news to advance the business or is this a defensive/crisis situation? And finally, as a recitation of your earlier question: who’s going to be our account manager and does he/she know anything about PR? Those are just a handful of questions that come to mind.

The phenomenon I have observed is that agencies are often hired for reasons other than public relations. In the minds of hiring authorities, they are there to pave over huge potholes in strategy, products and logic; or they are there to blow air into leaking corporate life rafts; or there to send the hounds and horses to the left when the last thing a company wants is to have a stampede to the right. That is not meant to diminish the majority of clients that hire agencies to promote themselves, their products, and deliver news as effectively as possible, but you get my point: agencies should be responsible for due diligence as well as should clients.

Anyway, good post.

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