pr-media-blog.co.uk

Companies will, no doubt, say that PR agencies don’t always live up to the heady promises made in the heat of the client pitch. Anyone working in PR who disagrees with that should be washing their mouth out with soap.

But companies procuring PR are sometimes equally guilty of not getting the best out of their agencies. Versus buying stationery or getting the photocopier repaired, buying PR is different. That might seem obvious, but despite the agency/client relationship working best as a true partnership,  some businesses still behave as if an agency is just another supplier.

Yet some of the most visceral exchanges I’ve ever seen in business relationships occur between a client and its PR agency. Why? Because the reputation of a company, the success of promoting what it does and the vital connections it needs to build with its audiences - be they customers, neighbours, stakeholders, media or the CEO’s wife - are all critical. The best agencies understand this dynamic and don’t take it lightly.

So, creating an environment in which a company can really share the responsibility for the business’ future with its agency (the guy who comes in to water the plants or check the rodent poison won’t offer this) will engender a united approach to the task. A wise business trainer once suggested that there is no client and supplier, just an objective which we all need to treat as the client. 

Sure, you might say, of course PR Media Blog would come out with all this malarkey. So, in the interest of unbiased reporting, I’ll hand you over to Nicole Jordan, a marketing and PR professional on the client side in LA, who has been willing to share her views on getting the best from PR agencies with Todd Defren’s PR Squared blog.

And thanks to Todd, for being willing to let a former client air her views on PR, with his company her most recent experience.

Tags: client and supplier relationships, Nicole Jordan, PR agencies, PR Squared, Procuring PR, Todd Defren, working with PR agencies

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 3:38 pm and is filed under General PR, PR agencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.