June 3rd, 2010 by Steve

Over the Hill

It’s a worry. I’m 46 and three quarters and this is my first ever blog. Not only that, I’m ‘babysitting’ (babyblogging?) for my boss, whose blogs are the stuff of legend. And he’s younger than me. In fact everyone at Speed is younger than me, which confirms two facts: first, I am old; second, we work in a young industry.

Obviously, I haven’t always been old. But when you’re the oldest person in a team of almost 40 PR professionals, you certainly feel it. Speed is not unusual in this respect – all the agencies I have worked at (and there have been a few) have a similar age profile, with most people in their late 20s and early 30s. Quite what happens to PR folk in their 40s, I’m not sure, but there aren’t many of us around.

This is a worry. At a recent iMedia Agency Summit in Brighton, one of the keynote speakers was Professor Sarah Harper, director of the intriguingly-titled Institute of Ageing at the University of Oxford. In a wide-ranging presentation, Prof. Harper argued that the wider marketing community needs to rethink its attitude to the ’silver’ market and shift the focus away from an obsession with all things ‘yoof’. The flurry of approving tweets from the largely 30-40 year old delegates at the summit were testimony to the fact that the professor had hit a raw nerve.

Simon Hill (almost 47)

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April 14th, 2010 by Steve

PR department of the future part three: are agencies even worth hiring?

I suppose the answer to this had better be yes they are worth hiring, or I’m out of a job.

My point here though is that there is a growing danger that in-house marketing teams don’t really know what they’re buying when they’re considering taking on external PR support. And the main reason for that is that PR has changed, and will continue to change, so dramatically.

That’s all because of the digitisation of media.

Yes PR is changing, but everyone is banging on about that so let’s be pragmatic and make a stand on it
As I covered in the last of these posts before I ventured south for sunburn and saddle antics, the media looks very different now to how it looked when I first joined the Beano Fan Club. It even looks very different to how it was five years ago. By the end of this year, it will have changed further.

It can be dizzying. The advent of television changed the nature of media in this country: newspapers had to compete with its relative immediacy and ability to communicate news visually compared to radio, plus its entertainment appeal and reach. The expansion of the trade and lifestyle media in the 80s and 90s drove further change as the desire for more specific (and often banal) information grew. Then along came the internet, creating scope for what would be a two-way dimension to media and content taken onto all manner of platforms.

Meaning that while conventional media is getting the body blows at the moment because of this new ‘competition’, the lust for information and sharing content has never been greater. And for organisations wanting to gain value of some kind through PR, the choices are both extensive and ever-changing.

I’m not going to delve into that further here. What I will say is that, generally speaking, the PR industry is currently far too hung up on new types of media and trying to make itself look on the ball, without having the balls to truly change itself in preparation for what the media will look like in the future.

Of course, I don’t know exactly what it will look like in the future either. But it will all just be media – conventional, social. Print, audio, visual, text, delivered wherever and whenever. Animal, vegetable, mineral. PR needs to stop glamourising digital media while it stands back on its heels worrying about media change.

Could PR (and other marketing) agencies have predicted this change better when the internet first began to gain a foothold in the mid 1990s? Possibly. We could have seen the two-way thing coming better, but couldn’t have quite foreseen the meteoric rise of YouTube back then. Not the print media’s burying of heads in the sand over payment for content.

So here we are. A right mixed bag of an industry. I think, and Speed thinks, that it will all just be media and that the PR agency of the future will need its whole team to be equally adept at all types of media. In the meantime, let’s look at the choices facing PR buyers in 2010.

A la carte, but at the risk of indigestion
This is doubtless incomplete, but here are the types of sustained external PR support on offer in the UK today:
- Classic PR agency: knows conventional media, niche expertise in one or multiple sectors, has started a digital division probably, and talks about PR and digital PR as if they are two separate disciplines
- A step up from that: as above, but talks about the domino effect of content from social to conventional to social media etc, and gets that it’s all just content, you just needed to be cleverer in deploying it
- A dithering dinosaur: classic agency with no willingness (probably at the top) to understand digital PR and would rather leave it to someone else. Ancestors probably blindly wedded to the Penny Farthing when Henry Ford was busy plotting. On borrowed time
- Pure digital agency: may talk about doing digital PR, may not even use the letters P and R, but is working with clients to create/deliver/inspire influential content across social media. So is doing PR whether it says so or not. Typically smart entrepreneurial people, shorter-term commercial ambitions, marvellous hair and look down on classic PRs (and in some cases, like the dinosaurs, that’s fair enough). However, not investing in understanding and being able to deliver across conventional media. Perfectly capable of delivering a social media campaign that makes it into The Sun, but does not really understand The Sun and so assured outcomes from the investment can be questionable
- Ad firms or other marketing agencies: have started muscling in on former PR turf. All’s fair in that respect, but generally ignorant of how to handle and measure the influence of the editorial world effectively. Could make a claim for the PR ground of the future, if only the shareholders or powers that be didn’t see it as a modernising advertising business rather than a marketing business. Saying your stuff is great and getting others to say your stuff is great will always require different approaches
- Mish-mash job: may have done social media consultancy for a car brand, also does trade print PR for niche clients, also does some international campaign management, big on digital PR obviously (because people need to say that these days) and also now has a blog. Potentially extremely painful

No one of these agencies is likely to provide a full range of effective PR services for any sizeable brand today. You could say that has long been the case, that brands have long worked with several agencies, and that’s true. But as media keeps digitising and diversifying, the danger is that any sizeable brand might need a dozen PR agencies, and an army of internal PR people to manage them. The freedom of a la carte, but too many courses and inevitable indigestion. And a bigger bill to pay.

How can PR buyers make sense of this?
Increasingly, I get calls or briefs from prospective clients not really sure what they’re looking for. That’s completely understandable, because the way the industry markets itself to them is in a real mess. The need for rapid modernisation and threats from new kinds of agencies has caused some wild claims, some strange diversions and some changes in fortunes. Couple that with the recession and media change, and the landscape looks very complex.

In many ways, the advice here to clients is unchanged. Figure out what you want to do commercially, define your brand strategy, then comes the talk about how and what PR can deliver for you. Then you can assess who you want to reach and understand what media is best, and what content you’ll need. Inevitably, not all in-house PR departments will have the ability to determine all that for themselves, or even dedicated PR experts who have that knowledge. The problem is that at the moment too many client teams are approaching different kinds of agencies and getting all kinds of different stories about what it is they actually need from PR.

In the words of my brilliant colleague at Seymourpowell, Richard Seymour, “they’re probably digging in the wrong place”.

What should PR buyers do?
It’d be presumptuous, arrogant and possibly foolish of me to tell people what they need to do. But I’m paid to consult, so let me stick my neck out and see if I can avoid mortal wounding. Here’s what I think PR buyers need to do in working out what external PR support they need at the moment:
1. Do you really know which media will be most effective for you and how you can best/most accurately measure the impact of what exposure you’ll generate across it?
2. Does/how much does your audience care about you, and why?
3. How will your PR operation (and content delivery) work overall: are you sufficiently agile to get the job done right?
4. Which types of agency should you rule out of the running because they don’t provide enough of the services you need?
5. If it can’t all be done under one roof, is the best split of responsibility by media type or audience type (and shouldn’t an agency working to reach a specific audience be able to handle all the media required to do that?!)?
6. Hand on heart, do you really have a clear view of where the media landscape is heading and, in particular, how to work with social media?
7. Equally, do you really understand how the conventional press has changed in the past few years and what its modernisation plans are?
8. If the prospective agency claims to understand how to deliver content across conventional media and now understands the digital world too, do its web site and blogs live up to that, and are its senior management all engaged with it too?
9. Once you’ve figured most of these things out, have a serious conversation, ideally with your board or senior local management, about how what PR can deliver for the business is changing and how the way the business uses PR services will need to evolve too
10. Once you’ve got the budget signed off, think hard about how you need to measure the value of PR and do not just take one agency’s word for it. This is a hot topic of debate at the moment, although some corners of the industry seem to be staying suspiciously silent on it

This honestly isn’t supposed to be a plug for Speed, but incidentally our approach in all of this is to invest in becoming the agency that cracks it all: that can work equally well across all forms of media to deliver assured and measurable value for clients. It is not just media digitisation that is forcing that evolution, it’s us being bold and not tolerating any lily-livered half-bakedness. If the PR person of the future can’t handle what the media of the future will be, they should start looking for another job.

So (phew..) agencies are worth hiring. But the right agencies and for the right reasons, and in my opinion PR buyers both need to tread carefully and take an honest look at how they’re set up to do modern PR.

Next post: a three-year plan for upgrading your PR department to meet this challenge.

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March 17th, 2010 by Steve

More Gen Y: be responsible for your own happiness (by guest blogger)

This is a great follow-up to the blog series I ran last week on Generation Y in PR. It’s by @rebeccaatcirkle, and was initially intended to run on Paul Sutton’s blog but Paul thought it’d sit better here (most noble of you Paul, thanks). Rebecca, this is powerful stuff, thanks for taking the time to put it together. Do leave any comments below, or go to Rebecca directly. Now we need some Gen Xers to go public too.

@rebeccaatcirkle on Gen Y’s attitudes to PR
We think the world owes us a living. We want a pay rise just for being at our desks. We don’t want to put in any extra hours. We moan about how we feel, but we don’t bother doing anything about it.

Over the last week, I’ve been following Steve Earl’s series of blogs on Generation Y PRs with interest. I’m Gen Y myself – according to Earl’s definition, the generation includes anyone born after 1983 – and all the accusations above were made by Gen X bosses about their Gen Y staff.

As far as I can see, the Gen X vs Gen Y problems focus around three things: attitude, motivation and understanding. Gen X thinks that we have an attitude problem. We’re not dedicated, we don’t have the same work ethic that they do, and we want someone else (our bosses? Our mummies?) to sort our lives out. Fair? I would say absolutely not, but those of us who fall into the Gen Y bracket (or even just the mindset) need to remember that perception is reality. If our Gen X bosses think we’re whining slackers, they’ll treat us as such, and that really isn’t fair.

As for motivation, it’s been said that work/life balance is more important to us than it is to Gen X, but I think that’s misleading. Many Gen X bosses seem to think that work/life balance means being able to do our daily four hours of overtime from the comfort of our own homes. The problem is that in this economy, Gen Y can’t afford houses or pensions anyway, so we’re likely to be working until we’re 80. If we don’t enjoy our jobs as much as we enjoy our free time, what’s the point? We don’t want a work/life balance – we want a LIFE.

This brings me neatly on to the third, and possibly most important point: understanding. Most of Gen Y aren’t lazy. We know we have to work hard if we want a promotion or a pay rise, but the real point is that what we really want is recognition of our abilities, and reward for doing a good job. The promotion and the pay rise are nice, because they show us that we’re valued, but they’re not the be all and end all, and generally we’d rather be happy than be running the company.

Interestingly, Earl admits in his final blog on the subject that his initial thoughts were that Gen Y PRs should “suck it up, snap out of it and get back to the harsh realities of toil”, but that wasn’t his final conclusion. In fact, he recommended that agency bosses need to take responsibility for understanding and motivating their Gen Y staff if they don’t want us to just give up and move on, because the very nature of Gen Y is that we won’t hang around if we’re not fulfilled.

I don’t think that any of us should give up responsibility for our own happiness though. If our whole generation just sits back and waits for our bosses to change, we’re going to be waiting a hell of a long time. It’s up to us to facilitate the understanding of what drives us and what we want out of our careers, and of course we need to show ourselves to be valuable members of staff with a comprehensive understanding of the business and why it works (or doesn’t work). If we commit to helping Gen X see us in a different light, life will be a lot easier for everyone.

And if I’m wrong, well, I wouldn’t worry. It’ll work out in the end… after all, someone somewhere owes us a living!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think that Gen Y is getting an unfair reputation, or should we just stop whining and start working harder?

@rebeccaatcirkle

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March 12th, 2010 by Steve

Finale: Gen Y, a whine of the times

This is all a bit odd.

Here we are, the end of this five-part series that has gripped (a very small PR sub-set of the) nation all week. Ish.

I’ve tried to poke into each corner of the issues that PR agencies and their employees are facing as Generation Y becomes a more prominent factor in the workforce. I’ve even tried to be objective about it.

And you know what? When I started this on Monday, my sense was that on Friday I’d end up writing about why Gen Y should just suck it up, snap out of it and get back to the harsh realities of toil.

Yet that is not the conclusion of this strange little blogging experiment.

Bosses must lead, tension is their gig
Instead, it is this: the people running PR agencies have to stand up and be counted over the growing issue of differing generational attitudes and outlooks amongst their staff.

Secondly, Generation Y needs to avoid going down in history as Generation Whine. The stereotypical whingeing of today’s teenagers is tarnishing the self-honesty and modern pragmatism of Gen Y in the workplace. It is up to Gen Y to change this, with the support of bosses.

Thirdly, all other generations need to pull their heads out of their fast-maturing arses and realise that we are all part of the problem and can all help to improve understanding.

The growing, oft-silent tensions in PR agencies today between people with differing ambitions, approaches, goals, motivations and communication techniques are the by-product of rapid technological, economic and (to a much lesser extent) political change. It’s the job of bosses to tackle it. If your boss isn’t, or isn’t even prepared to acknowledge it, perhaps you should ask them why.

So let’s go through some ‘learnings’ from all of this. Some points that each generational group (although many people have commented that they’re not quite sure which bracket they fit into) should probably take on board if they’re going to enjoy their jobs and develop their careers:

Generation Y
1. Think about how you’ll be the boss. I don’t mean be career-hungry and obsessed with rapid progression. I do mean think about how what you do now will enable you to manage, motivate and lead people in the future. If you don’t think the way you’re managed, motivated and led now is necessarily the right way, it probably isn’t. Don’t whine, have a discussion and figure out how you’ll do it better when your time comes, by which time workforce motivations should be even more diverse than they are today

2. Understand the business. Whereas Gen X was brought up on 1980s greed, boom ‘n’ bust and exploiting the property ladder, Gen Y has it different. But if you turn a blind eye to how the business works, how it makes money and the commercial realities that govern how you can reward and develop people, you’ll struggle to develop personally and professionally. PR businesses are simple anyway: a five-year-old could grasp the basics.

3. See it from the perspectives of others. Yes it does not make sense to be seen to work long hours any more: doing that for no good reason beyond impressing the boss is just stupid. Work long hours if you’re getting something out of it by developing your career and the business. Go home on time whenever you can. But remember that Gen Xers had it differently when they were younger: you must make them understand the value of what you’re doing. Sell yourselves more and it will go a long way.

Generation X
1. Get real. Some people will inevitable just be lazy bastards and blagged their way through those interviews, but many Gen Yers have desires on your job. They may just struggle to show it. They will show ambition in different ways. Their enthusiasm may not be overt. Get under the skin of why, work with them rather than dismissing ‘kids today’ as disengaged drifters. Unless they are, in which case consider encouraging them to find another career.

2. Take a long hard look at yourself. You didn’t really want to be that Michael Douglas character in Wall Street did you? Secretly, you may be a bit envious that Gen Y has the nonchalance and career outlook that it does. You thought you’d turn out like that, until the machine got hold of you. Be honest with yourself rather than bemoaning the differences of others.

3. You’re in a position of responsibility, and it is – probably – your generation that has the biggest role to play in cracking this generational change issue. You’ve got to lead by example and transition agency approaches to flourish from the diversity of motivations and attitudes, not sink under their weight. It’s not like me to write things that look a bit like self-serving political correctness, so let’s be clear that I don’t intend it to be. But I do mean it.

Generation Jones
1. The in-betweeners. Obama is a much-lauded example. The future now rests in their hands, it’s said. Not in PR it doesn’t. But what Gen Jones must do is realise it is different. You are very different to Gen Y, and Gen X has more of an opportunity to understand the younger generation. I think your best role is to help Gen X to open its eyes to the differences in generations by telling them what you’re thinking, and how you struggle to get to grips with the pace of change.

2. Use the tools. If you don’t get to grips with how PR is modernising because of digitising media, you won’t only hit professional snags but will increasingly struggle to understand younger colleagues. Don’t try to get down with the kids, but don’t shy away from change, grab hold of it with gusto.

3. Think about how you can rebrand your generation, because the Jones thing sounds really sh^t.

Baby Boomers
Interestingly, I’ve had some really insightful comments from people in this category in the past week, with the benefit of experience coming to the fore. My thinking is age and experience make it easier for them to spot the signs, but the pace of change remains frightening. Beyond that, boomers should really look at the points for Joneses above.

The end
So there we have it. Hardly academic, not particularly pretty but hopefully an interesting read at least.

Gen X: the ball is in your court. As well as our industry modernisation challenges, we’ve got to make PR jobs engaging and emotionally fulfilling for all. We’ve got to think beyond salaries and benefits. We’ve got to think bigger. We’ve got to pull our fingers out.

Gen Y: cheer up, liven up, realise how good you are or can be.

If anyone has any ideas for other PR topics I should tackle, do let me know. Mistakes execs make, account managers with a power complex, sadomasochism in the boardroom, whatever; I’m game.

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March 11th, 2010 by Steve

Part four: what Gen Y means for a PR industry in pain

The emotive word there is pain. Let’s not spend too long on that though, because hopefully anyone who reads this blog regularly, or has tripped across it and reads through some of the other posts, will recognise my point of view on this – PR is in pain because it must continue to modernise, and too few people who call the shots have figured out what to do about it.

I state that as if it were fact, while of course it’s merely my opinion. Feel free to challenge it, but be prepared for a passionate barrage of evidence and anecdotes that add elephantine weight to the argument.

Like pre-lunchtime tummy rumbles, I feel a list coming on: here are 10 points of pain that are making PR agency bosses feel most uncomfortable at the moment:

1. Digitising media. The media doesn’t know what it’s doing either mind. But PR agencies either have digital ghettoes of coneheads while the big bosses fight shy of the internet or they’ve given the whole job a digital lick of paint, or they’re clinging stubbornly to the darlingluvvy world of print. All will founder if they carry on that way.

2. The value of media relations (as we knew it) is sliding away

3. Most agencies have a fudged take on what the future holds for them so struggle to communicate any meaningful vision to their staff, instead banging on about how they influence influencers and such like

4. The counsel that’s most valued is about how media is changing and how we can create new value for clients, yet too many just want to stick to their knitting

5. Too much international or global business is held by firms that are part of large listed groups beholden to advertising. Advertising is even more pained than PR. So investment in modernisation for the agencies who have those big global accounts is hard to come by, and the fear is they’ll fall behind. Double ouch

6. Lack of transparency about business plans and performance can leave staff feeling undervalued. But those who haven’t started modernising may not have much good news to share, beyond the short-term

7. Everyone feels they should talk about how the market seems to be looking up, but they know that’ll mean people who’ve had pay freezes want more money. Modernisation costs money. Quick fix or long term improvements – what balance is best?

8. Evaluation is no longer woolly stuff that can be pulled over the eyes. It needs to be done properly. But without having modernised to embrace all media it is difficult to do it meaningfully. And clients can be reluctant to pay for it – you could make them understand the value, but that might mean they see you haven’t got the bigger picture of the conventional/digital media future cracked (in fact you’re turning a blind eye to it)

9. People are getting itchy feet because they’re not getting the skills they need to allow them to do the PR jobs of the future, and the recruitment fees for replacing them might wipe out your training budget. Catch 22.

10. Some are still not convinced that digital isn’t just a passing fad. Perhaps their predecessors used to think the same about TV

What’s the impact of the Generation Y issue on all of this?
Doesn’t help, does it?

To be honest, I don’t think that’s really what the point is. It’s more that with everything else that’s going on in the turbulent world of PR at the moment, the growing issue of Gen Y seems to have fallen by the wayside. Which is pretty short-sighted.

And fair enough. Agencies do need to modernise. The PR people who call the shots and set the commercial wheels in motion do need to knuckle down and transition their businesses, their management approach, their services and their marketing to meet the rapidly changing needs of where the industry is heading.

PR has enough problems without Generation Yers not pulling their weight (at least that’s the kneejerk view of some senior/experienced agency people).

But if PR agencies aren’t able to modernise in a way that enthuses and engages Gen Y, the impact of the modernisation won’t be long-lived. Because Gen Y will sod off to do something entirely different.

Should Gen Y just wise up and fall into line with everyone else?
No, of course not. Honest guv. Agency businesses are not charities (despite the odd expenses claim I have to sign off) and can’t model themselves around the new needs of a new generation. Equally though, agencies have to wake up and get to grips with generational change and the pace of evolution now in play.

Tomorrow I’ll try to blog some conclusions. Which won’t be easy. But I have some ideas.

Thanks for those who’ve sent comments, collared me in person and sent emails/DMs with input this week. Some interesting views. Strangely though, very few from Gen Y.

Perhaps the crusties do read blogs after all.

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March 5th, 2010 by Steve

PR’s generation why? A blogfest begins

There’s a contentious conversation doing the rounds in PR agencies in the UK. It’s one that most people running businesses and managing teams acknowledge is a big issue for them, but few are prepared to talk openly about it. But believe me, they have whinged to me. In technicolour.

The issue is Generation Y. The struggle agencies are having, so these people have told me, is that Generation Y can become a straightjacket for personnel and client development in agencies. People who have entered the workforce during a certain period have unrealistic expectations of their careers, their workloads, their salaries, their employers and what they personally have to do in order to get ahead. This is a sweeping generalisation of course, but I’ve heard it enough times now to get the sense that it’s an issue that’s not going away.

I did say it was contentious.

I’ve been planning to blog about it for some time, but have been scratching my head about the right format. How can you do justice to something like this, how can you be fair and accurate (I still remember my NCTJ training, thank you) in covering the topic?

This morning it finally dawned on me. A five-part serial. Like Corrie or EastEnders for one of those seminal storylines, albeit with a slightly smaller audience.

So each day next week I’ll be tackling PR’s Generation Y: what the issues are, how agencies are trying to deal with it, what generation Y is thinking, what this may mean for a pained industry struggling to modernise/adapt and what it means for other ‘generations’ working in agencies today.

Everything I have been told to date (and it’s something of a dirty dossier) will be treated in the strictest confidence. If you want to leave a comment on this post, please do. If you want to tell me your point of view on this, do DM me.

Stay tuned.

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February 19th, 2010 by Steve

Money’s too fright to mention

There can be few more contentious issues in PR than salaries.

I did a quick search on what bloggers have written about the topic and found nothing. A few bits and pieces on the debate about work experience slavery morals last year, including something I wrote, but nothing that tackles the guts of the topic – do we get paid the right amount?

I could make this a very lengthy post. But in the interests of my time and your sanity, here are what I see as three major salary factors in the PR industry at the moment:

The money must be there
If you work for an agency, that agency must make enough money in order to be able to pay more in salaries. This is blindingly obvious. Yet so few agencies, despite being in the communications business, seem to do a good job of getting their teams to understand that. There are essentially three levers in a PR agency: staff costs, overheads and profit. That is it. These aren’t complex businesses. The greater your income, the more you can increase staff costs. And those income increases can come both from growing your client list and increasing your fees. A good starting point for anyone wanting to increase their salary might be to demonstrate consciousness of ways of generating new client income and ways of charging more for services, where there is a market demand and where the market will accept that pricing.

It is a similar picture with in-house positions. A growing, thriving business will typically have ever-larger and more sophisticated publicity needs as its reputation develops. A stagnant or shrinking business will not.

Agencies must benchmark better
Most agencies will tell their staff that they pay reasonably well. They’ll use phrases like “in the upper quartile” or “aim to be industry-leading”. In an age when most are advising clients on the commercial virtues of truth and the challenges of maintaining credibility across diverse media, this does seem to be wearing a little thin.

Agencies should be benchmarking their rates and their salary brackets versus the market at least annually. Speed does it twice a year. We’ve just done one actually, taking data from recruiters and competitors (don’t worry, we won’t reveal any specifics!) and comparing that with what we offer. This is not a foolproof approach as job titles vary, some figures are given as broad ranges and sector specialisms come into play. But without blowing our own trumpet too much, we’ll be showing this information to all staff. No spin, no massaging the figures, no rushing it before the eyes so it doesn’t sink in. I doubt many agencies are that transparent.

If your specialism is media-linked, watch your earning potential erode
Ah, the digital divas. The above stuff about benchmarking currently has one fly in the ointment – that fear is forcing some agencies to pay unsustainable salaries to digital specialists. I don’t know why, but my guess (and, as I tell my wife, I am not often wrong) is that the agencies paying them are fearful of missing out on the modernisation of media and its implications for PR, so are chucking money at it rather than taking a more commercially grown-up approach.

If we had had such a developed PR industry 50 years ago, we would probably be in the same boat over the development of TV. People would have set themselves up as small screen specialists, touting the end of print and charging a big premium for their services. Only the sector wasn’t even in its infancy then, and the development of TV as a medium was far slower than the internet, hence the lack of a panic factor.

A far better approach is for agencies to train all staff to be able to handle all sorts of media. Conventional PR operators must master digital. Digital PRs must do the opposite – all media may eventually be digital, but understanding the fundamentals of journalism must be meat and drink to all PRs.

Media is changing fast, but whatever we call it today before long it will all just be media. A new, exciting, challenging and diverse media that can both move in the blink of an eye and pause to think shrewdly.

If you tie your earning potential to just part of that media today, do not expect it to keep on growing. And as a client if you’re being charged an unfair premium for what amount to niche media services, perhaps you should question that.

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February 19th, 2010 by Steve

The school reunion (agency style)

I could be generalising. I could be being unfair.

But from what I know, the vast majority of PR agencies do not welcome former employees with open arms and warm wishes after they’ve left. Instead, there’s a typically sniffy attitude from both sides, with the employer sometimes feeling slighted and the employee feeling unwelcome, or jaded. The connections made through social media are changing this, but nevertheless a malaise remains.

PR agencies are people businesses. People do get on with other people. Some of my good mates are people I worked with years and years ago and I still meet up with them from time to time. So it’s natural that when people leave agencies they will stay in touch with former colleagues. In my opinion, the best scenario is if they stay in touch with the employers too, and that everyone appreciates the contribution people make in working hard and their achievements in developing their career.

Of course some people leave jobs with a bitter taste. A shame, but it does happen. Employment law being what it is, it can be difficult for these things to happen in the way both parties would really want, and can be far from ideal. Equally, some seem to struggle to move on and it takes a while for them to give up tapping into gossip networks. If they’re particularly lacking other things to focus on, the wooden spoon can come out.

Which is all a bit daft. One of my former employers, now operating as Ketchum Pleon, started doing an annual reunion about 10 years ago and it has spawned various (positive) splinter factions of people who get together for drinks occasionally. They make contacts, they remember what was good about working there, they wonder at how old some people look these days.

Speed has been on the scene for nearly a year, but its short history goes back further, to the roots of BMA Communications, Mantra, Lighthouse PR and Rainier PR, and a spin-off, Custard PR. Over (in some cases) 20 years many people have passed through the doors. Most have left smiling. Typically the teams were good at retaining people and most got a lot out of it. Many have gone on to develop PR and marketing careers that those who founded the agencies are rightly proud of. Which is great; how it should be.

After work on 23 March we’re asking them back. We have contact details for most, and if not we know people who know people. So it’s an open house. It won’t be glamorous, but we’ll have food and some booze in the office and a crowd of people nattering. So very much like old times.

Agencies should take their alumni seriously. People should be, ideally, proud of where they worked and the bosses should be proud of the people who worked there. Here’s hoping the rest of the PR industry can do something similar.

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December 21st, 2009 by Steve

Final top five of 2009: bad agency Christmas videos

Bah humbug. Actually these are surely in the festive spirit, given the boundless hilarity they give to viewers?

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Send a card, make a donation, but do not attempt to be funny in front of a video camera. The result of an office poll of the worst agency Christmas videos:

1. Ogilvy. It had to be. Thankfully, given ’tis the season of goodwill, words fail me.

2. The Anthill Mob. And a wierd fake horse.

3. Wolfstar had us howling last year.

4. Lewis. Alright, at least you had the guts.

5. Shout, shout, let it all out; these are the things I can do without.

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October 20th, 2009 by Steve

Idiotic approach to agency leavers: chapter one

Most PR agencies are pretty responsible in how they treat people when they leave. Sure, some can take it a little bit personally, but given it’s a people business that’s only natural, to a degree.

But some agencies are just plain idiotic and let the industry down with how they handle the situation, and can bear a grudge for no justifiable reason.

I’m thankful that I haven’t witnessed much of this sort of thing in my career. I’ve talked to people who’ve had some pretty nasty experiences so I’m fully aware that some shenanigans go on – people not getting paid what they’re owed, getting the cold shoulder, being given guilt trips and the like.

So a recent situation that cropped up amazed me in its new depths of stupidity. Some context first: it’s common for an agency PR to get asked at some stage why they left their previous job. The majority of us are charitable and professional – even if the experience was not a happy one, we’ll typically make reference to it not being the right fit, wanting to work on different types of clients, the desire to work more on strategic counsel versus purely on events and stunts, time for a fresh challenge, etc. There is nothing to gain from running agencies down.

A contact of mine thought the same. In a recent conversation with a former client, she was asked the question and said much of the above. She gave a diplomatic answer that was a fair reflection of her reasons for leaving and what type of agency she wanted to join, which avoided (she assured me) the finer, gory points of why she really decided to leave the old job.

Having heard about this, the head of that agency then called her current employer’s office in a rage, threatening legal action for defamation, slander and libel (advice: read the scope of the Magistrates Court Act 1980 so you actually know your arse from your elbow about the basics of this area of the law, which as a senior PR you should really know already). Not only does this smack of paranoia, it shows utter mistrust in – and respect for – people who used to be colleagues. If you can behave like that now, God only knows how you conducted yourself when they were actually on your payroll.

Point: people will leave jobs, and the vast majority of them will be professional when in the future they’re asked why. Bosses should get a grip and focus on making their business a place where people want to work, rather than acting like vile children when someone seeks green pastures.

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