IF ALL YOU WANT IS A SUPPLIER, TRY THE STATIONERY CATALOGUE

Does your PR agency work with you or for you? Are they on your wavelength or just on your pay roll? Do you trust them with your commercial strategy or just feed them information on a need-to-know basis so that they can write a press release?

There are considerable differences in these two approaches to managing your relationship with a PR agency. And there are no prizes for guessing which one will help you achieve the best coverage, the most stakeholder traction and the biggest positive impact for your business and image awareness.

And yet, so many clients continue to treat their agency like a supplier rather than a consultancy and I simply don’t understand why.

First of all, working with an agency that can deliver a PR programme aligned to your business strategy is fundamental to leveraging the full value of your PR team’s knowledge and experience. Only if they know what you want to achieve commercially can they plan a programme that supports those goals. After all, PR is not just about getting your name in the paper or your product online, it’s a business function designed to influence opinion.  It can only be truly effective, therefore, if you trust your agency with candid insights into your business so that the team can understand who you need to influence and why, and recommend the best ways to achieve those goals.

To get the best out of your PR agency, you not only need to trust your appointed team with potentially commercially sensitive knowledge, you also need to leave them to do their job. It never ceases to amaze me that so many companies are prepared to pay an agency to do their PR…and then expect to take on the role of account manager themselves!

To do a good job, a PR just needs the skills, contacts and stories to meet their KPIs. To do a great job, however, they also need the freedom to think creatively, to engage with journalists and stakeholders and to seize opportunities while the news is still hot.

Clare PR is a construction PR agency with a reputation for profiling clients through incisive thought leadership and for gaining coverage in vertical sector press as well as clients’ core media. We can only do that because our clients trust us to advise them, which makes us much more than a supplier.