Richard Edelman writes we need to keep our clients focused on the stakeholder, not the shareholder model. What about public relation agencies? We belong to the corporate world as much as our clients do, and the strategies that we suggest to our clients should be as well our strategies. In my opinion, large PR agencies have abandoned their clients to concentrate on shareholders, and this has forced them to focus on time sheets and billable hours. Because of this attitude they have completely lost a couple of critical factors: quality of client service and innovative thrust. I think that is time to get back to the basics of the profession, and regain our status of corporate consultants.

Technorati Tags: public relations, business model

Tags: pr, Public Relations

I’ve started to mumble about this subject after I’ve read this post, which I have quickly summarized.

According to the original Peter Principle: ”in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence”. This means that all the work is done by those who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

A wider application of this principle emerges from looking at how companies grow in the marketplace and how they innovate and how they “lose their soul” and stop innovating.

Companies innovate until they find a cash cow. At that point, only innovation that supports the cash cow is promoted, while innovation that does not support the cash cow languishes or is actively killed. Eventually, most of the innovation ceases as the innovators leave and start new companies (and the cycle repeats).

PR as an industry has definitely lost the “innovation momentum” a long time ago, when cash cows such as media relations have started to consolidate. Too many people are offering “commoditized” services, which do not - or should not - belong to our profession.

PR should be about research and innovation. Using the same strategy and tacticts - when there is a strategy and there are tactics - to reach audiences wich are different by age, sex, income, culture and skills (and so on) is a total nonsense.

PR should be at the forefront of innovation. PR should be about inventing new ways of relating with people, or perfecting those invented by others, and not about selling “two pounds of press releases and half pound of interviews”.

Too often, this is PR today, at its highest level of incompetence.

Tags: media, Media Relations, pr, Press Release, Public Relations

Toni Muzi Falconi mumbles about several interesting inputs collected while teaching at a social media training seminar organized by Ferpi - the Italian PR Association - in Rome and Milan, and while attending the Euroblog 2007 Symposium organized by Euprera in Ghent. He summarizes the process (which you should definitely read) with this sentence: are we leading to a radically different model of practice which involves much rethinking?

My answer is definitely yes. You can find some of my rants on the subject here, here and here. I will come back on the subject.

Tags: media, pr, Public Relations, Social Media

• What is a business model?
• New Business Models for Strategy Consulting
• Christensen on Business Model Innovation
• Interview on Business Models

Nessun tag per questo post.

According to Joseph Jaffe, marketing organizations need to foster and adopt an aggressive and intense culture of experimentation. He presents 10 critical components to take on the journey and a 5-step process to guide the way in this manifesto from the Change This Newsletter. An interesting reading.

Tags: Marketing, pr

Last year, Robert Gray has reported in a PR Week feature how the staff at 50 UK PR agencies spend their time, based on 12 months worth of research. The results are not surprising, and confirm why the business model built on the billable hour - which, in my opinion, has never been the right one for an industry whose main objective should be to create added value on behalf of clients - is totally obsolete. Here are the numbers:

1. Media relations: 15%
2. Tracking features: 0,9%
3. Client communication strategies: 0,6%
4. Business development: 1,5%
5. Reporting: 17,8%
6. Administration: 6,3%
7. Account management: 44,9%
8. Other tasks: 13%

Just to summarize: 16,5% of the time is spent to provide added value and 19,3% to provide some added value to the client, but a whopping 51,2% of the time is actually wasted in activities that do not bring any value to the client but are only intended to “please” the financial controllers. Robert Gray comments: “The findings suggest that agencies are - for want of a better word - ‘wasting’ much of their time”. I do not feel confortable when I see these figures because I know that they are real, as I have been on the client side before switching to the agency business and I always had the perception that PR agencies were not organized to provide the added value that I wanted (and needed). At the time, I have probably been one of the nastiest clients in the business, but I always managed to get the right level of service. For instance, I refused to accept more than one report per month (no meeting and no phone call reports) and I wanted to attend the agency meetings (usually internal) where the account team was supposed to discuss PR strategies and tactics for my company. PR agencies should be as “flat” as possible in term of structure, and as “networked” as possible in term of organization. In my ideal business model, which I can describe as a “matrix” where each individual is part of several account teams (each one built in order to provide the highest added value to the specific client) and at the same time has a strong vertical specialization (for instance, product reviews, technical media, or industry analysts), the continuous “contamination” between teams and specializations brings an additional value to the client. I will return on this subject in the next few days. P.S. - I have not accessed the original PR Week research. The data have been mentioned by Andy Smith at Object Towers in this post on October 31, 2006.

Tags: media, Media Relations, pr, Public Relations

I’ve found a blog that can help those interested in understanding the Italian economy, even if they don’t speak Italian. In addition, there’s a comprehensive blogroll with many interesting sources of information.

Tags: pr

I’ve found this list of rules, which - in my opinion - aren’t just related to the career path but - more generally - to a successful life inside any kind of organization.

1. Unless you’re working in a coal mine, an emergency ward, or their equivalent, spare us the sad stories about your tough job. The biggest risk most of us face in the course of a day is a paper cut.
2. Yes, your boss is an idiot at times. So what? (Do you think your associates sit around and marvel at your deep thoughts?). If you cannot give your boss basic loyalty, either report the weasel to the proper authorities or be gone.
3. You are paid to take meaningful actions, not superficial ones. Don’t brag about that memo you sent out or how hard you work. Tell us what you achieved.
4. Although your title may be the same, the job that you were hired to do three years ago is probably not the job you have now. When you are just coasting and not thinking several steps ahead of your responsibilities, you are in dinosaur territory and a meteor is coming.
5. If you suspect that you’re working in a madhouse, you probably are. Even sociopaths have jobs. Don’t delude yourself by thinking you’ll change what the organization regards as a “turkey farm”. Flee.
6. Your technical skills may impress the other geeks, but if you can’t get along with your co-workers, you’re a litigation breeder. Don’t be surprised if management regards you as an expensive risk.
7. If you have a problem with co-workers, have the guts to tell them, preferably in words of one syllable.
8. Don’t believe what the organization says it does. Its practices are its real policies. Study what is rewarded and what is punished and you’ll have a better clue as to what’s going on.
9. Don’t expect to be perfect. Focus on doing right instead of being right. It will simplify the world enormously.
10. If you plan on showing them what you’re capable of only after you get promoted, you need to reverse your thinking.

The original text is here, the author’s blog is here.

Tags: pr

We have believed for the 24 years of our existence in a singular vision - the network is the computer. That vision remains unchanged, and if anything, today’s refinements to our market focus, our R&D portfolio, and to our overall business model, drive us even closer to fulfilling it.

Finisce così il post chilometrico in cui Jonathan Schwartz, CEO di Sun, annuncia e motiva il licenziamento di 4 o 5 mila dipendenti. Un grande esempio di trasparenza, visto che il post offre un maggior numero di dettagli rispetto al comunicato stampa, soprattutto nell’area delle considerazioni di carattere strategico che hanno portato il management a prendere questa decisione.

Oltre alla riduzione della forza lavoro, Sun chiuderà il campus di Newark e lascerà le sedi in affitto a Sunnyvale (California), e concentrerà tutti i suoi dipendenti negli Stati Uniti a Menlo Park e Santa Clara, sempre in California.

Tags: comunicato stampa, pr

Dal discorso di Scott McNealy alla JavaOne Conference, citato da ZD Net:

1. Non devo scusarmi per quello che dico a Wall Street.
2. Non sono più nella lista dei CEO più pagati”
3. Adesso posso dire: “Questo è un problema di Jonathan”.
4. Posso leggere “The Hockey News” senza sentirmi in colpa.
5. Non sono più costretto a farmi la barba tutti i giorni.
6. Non devo firmare la certificazione per la legge Sarbanes-Oxley.
7. Adesso posso finalmente dare la colpa a qualcun altro.
8. Posso finalmente vendere il mio ultimo vestito da cerimonia.
9. Jonathan non gioca a golf, per cui ho il sospetto di doverlo fare io.
10. Il mio nuovo ufficio è vicinissimo al bagno degli uomini.

Per quelli che non conoscono Sun, Jonathan Schwartz è il nuovo CEO dell’azienda, ed è stato scelto dallo stesso Scott McNealy per la sua successione. Sun significa Stanford University Network, ed è l’azienda fondata dallo stesso McNealy insieme a Bill Joy nel lontano 1982. Scott è un personaggio molto informale, ed è un grande appassionato di hockey, sport che ha praticato durante gli anni dell’università.

Tags: pr