Do you want PR to deliver greater commercial value to your business? Have you been tapping into new media to develop more effective ways to develop brand influence? Do you sometimes look at the PR options available and wonder whether it’s all even really PR any more?
If you answered yes to any of these, you’re not alone. In fact, there was probably a unanimous yes to all three.
So does the way your marketing budget get allocated – the money you have to do this stuff – reflect this modernisation, or has it not really changed in many years? A lot of organisations, if they’re honest, probably say no to that one.
What’s my point? Well it’s that despite PR going through enormous growing pains as it both modernises services hurriedly and capitalises on modern media, the way budgets are planned and apportioned is too often a drawback. It stifles change, at a time when it should be enabling it.
I’ve been having conversations with lots of prospects recently, as tends to happen at this time of year, about budgets for the next calendar year. Of course requirements vary widely, but the common threads are that:
- There is a marketing budget, and within that there is a line item for PR which is largely intended to cover media relations and monitoring. This convention has not changed for a long, long time. This does little if anything to help the person signing the cheques to understand what the money goes on
- As PR changes and its potential expands, money ends up being ‘borrowed’ from other pots in the marketing budget. This has always happened, but now it’s rampant. Research, events, integrated projects, you name it – there are lots of line items being pillaged to support PR’s march beyond media relations (which, I’d argue, is bang on the money as PR comes full circle and is all about building successful relations with publics again). This is making a mockery of the way in which PR services have been bought for the past few decades, and highlights why a change is needed in how budgets are drawn up
- Everyone wants to do more sophisticated kinds of PR. Most want more integrated planning. All want more scientific ways of measuring the spend, where feasible. Yet ask how they can fund it and they’re tied to what amounts to a media relations line item in a budget
- Digital is both forcing this and making this worse, as some marketing budgets have digital line items that are shared across several areas of marketing but risk being rudderless, while others have digital fiefdoms that are equally unhelpful. Before long, it will all be pretty much digital so slapping it as separate line items onto an outdated budget model is folly (a wonderful word, that)
All too often, the parameters of the budget spreadsheet inhibit the development of a more successful PR programme . By that I mean more sophisticated one, where a more integrated approach to influence can be taken with a better-targeted audience and improved measurement. And it’s all because the old line item can’t cover the scope of the new approach. Sometimes because there’s not enough money to cover it, sometimes because it will cause political problems elsewhere. Tim Dyson had some good insight on how to work out what to spend on PR, but the problem is that the way in which the budget is drawn up can sandbag the intentions of the PR team.
In recent times, smart marketers have begun to realise this and are changing how they do things. Those unable to make changes that quickly are pressing on with new kinds of PR regardless, and retrofitting their budget models to it.
But it’s a pain in the arse we can all do without. It may seem like minor bureaucracy in the scheme of things, but a new broom would clear out the obstacles that exist, and show the people paying for PR that it’s not just all about getting stuff in the (conventional) media any more.
I’ll be covering this in a future blog post or two, with some ideas on how PR budgeting should be changed, and how to go about it. Do let me have any ideas or share experiences.
