PR is back, like Dawn of the Dead Part 2

By Steven Phenix, ViaMetric Principal

While the VC money flowed like wine back during the dot com boom, I directed accounts for several high tech PR agencies in San Francisco. I noticed that my client-side counterparts were hired and then replaced with alarming regularity. Then came the tech bust and it was more of the same–though the pace of hiring and firing accelerated as the dot coms flailed about in desperate attempts to raise revenue. While the repo man banged on the door to collect the ping pong tables and the Herman Miller Aeron chairs, many a PR professional had Security stand guard over them as they packed their belongings. Then, to paraphrase “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, I saw the best minds of public relations destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the sushi streets of San Francisco at dawn looking for a job. (See Howl.com for a better version.)

Apparently, public relations is back, according to Alan Gottesman in an AdWeek story called From Boom to Bust and Back Again: “It’s been six years, but by one key measure, the marketing communications industry has worked its way back to where it was at the height of the Great Internet Bubble.”

But before signing those fat retainer checks, I would advise some caution on the part of every CEO. Before the PR agencies start dazzling you with visions of your dotted picture on the cover of the Wall Street Journal, you should ask your agency some important questions like “How does buzz, mindshare, name awareness, etc., sell more product?” “Can you measure the effect a media hit has on sales?” “What does PR do for my bottom-line?

In other words, or rather in Rickie Ricardo’s words, PR industry, “you got some ’splain’n’ to do.”

Here’s more from Mr. Gottesman:

“One big winner in this shift has been public relations. A lot of marketers, notably the pioneering dot-com companies, relied heavily on PR to create a buzz and get their stories told. The PR sector, though still much smaller than advertising, grew more than three times faster than advertising between 1990 and the peak. And even though both disciplines saw massive employee cuts after the Big Burst, public relations today, as measured by the body count, is 44 percent larger than it was in 1990, while advertising is up by only 14 percent.”

The growth is great, don’t get me wrong. And all the busy work of a PR agency makes CEOs very happy–in good times. But when the wheels come off the economy–and the wheels always come off–mere activity won’t sustain an account if that activity doesn’t have a direct and clear impact upon sales. Otherwise, when things go bad, the PR peeps are the first one escorted off the property.

In his post, We Are Gaining Market Share, Rich Edelman ponders several reasons for the PR industry’s growth and they hold up well in a booming market. I just wish the big dog of PR bloggers had addressed the issue of accountability.

What I can see now with the perspective of several years post-Boom is that PR professionals wouldn’t have been driven howling mad into the streets if we had better tools to measure our successes and failures.

I know, I know, the bust couldn’t have been prevented with just proper metrics in place. However, if we had had the ability to tie an article we had helped secure in InformationWeek directly to sales, then Security would have been standing over the advertising department while they packed family photos in boxes. If you prove that that mention in the Wall Street Journal brought in X number of leads, that the ROI on those leads is higher and faster than any other source, companies in trouble will jettison the other marketing programs that cost more and bring in less.

Instead, back during the Boom, we dithered over airy concepts like “name recognition” and “buzz,” and we employed saccharin metrics that attempted to show value by tying a hit in the media to ad rates and circulation. “But how many units did all this activity actually sell?” asked the CEOs while the repo men banged at the door.

Is it any wonder that the streets of San Francisco turned into a George Romero film as thousands of howling PR people got pink slipped?

Has anything changed since the Bust?

Take a look at some of Mr. Edelman’s thoughts on the return of PR:

“First, PR practitioners are at the decision makers’ table as equals with other communications brethren. PR is often the source of the big idea. […]

“Second, we are being engaged on assignments much earlier in the life cycle because PR is better able to establish a brands credibility. […]

“Third, we are able to compete effectively in the world of dispersed media. […]”

It would have been great if Mr. Edelman could boldly declare that PR is rising faster than any other marketing practice simply because we help companies sell more stuff. And we can prove it.

Now with PR budgets expanding it’s time to make public relations viable in good times and in bad with real metrics, real accountability. If we can’t prove our contribution to the bottom line now, then Dawn of the Dead II is inevitable.

Share This