Why PR Agencies Should Never Mark Their Own Homework- KAREN PRICHARD

PR agencies have too much control over their clients, and surprisingly enough, it’s not all to their clients’ benefit. It starts out justifiably, with professional communicators crafting the most compelling, clear and consistent messaging to express clients’ points of view on the issues that matter to their stakeholders in a clearly differentiated way. Journalists may dismiss this as spin and manipulation, but there are more winners than losers in a world of more effective communication. Having contracted out message and news development, many companies also instruct PR agencies to be their representatives in media and stakeholder relations. When a company speaks – particularly on corporate and financial issues – the person doing the speaking is very often a consultant not an employee. Experienced, senior and well-briefed consultants often do a good job in this role, although this practice is known to ratchet up the frustration among journalists who want a direct line into company thinking. This trend certainly appears to have increased in recent years, and many companies – and their external PROs – make it very difficult for outsiders to speak to anyone who actually works for the company. This is particularly true of the bigger, listed corporations – the very organisations who make most of the news, most of the time – as Guardian journalist Nick Davies points out in his book Flat Earth News. Where I believe PR agencies overstep the mark is when they started measuring and evaluating the impact of the work they do for their clients, when they start to mark their own homework. First they create the messaging, then they communicate it, and finally they assess how well it has landed. For me, there are a pretty un-magnificent seven reasons why this growing stranglehold is not in PR agency clients’ best interests; why media analysis conducted by PR agencies is a false economy. 1. Media analysis conducted by any organisation of its own work lacks independence and objectivity, 2. PR agencies often put their most junior (and cheapest) staff, armed with the most basic tools – and often no rigorous methodology – on the media analysis beat. Too often, it’s a menial task farmed out to interns. 3. PR agencies usually only measure outputs (traditional or social media coverage), not outtakes (how attitudes and beliefs have changed), let alone business outcomes. They’re not looking for business impact, insights or learnings of how the client’s communications outreach – or indeed the agency’s own performance – could improve. http://perfectbrandsng.com/why-pr-agencies-should-never-mark-their-own-homework-karen-prichard/#prettyPhoto