The Rise of Savvy Clients and Smart Boutiques
Clients today are, for the most part, far savvier and smarter about enlisting outside communications and public relations agency counsel than 10 or 15 years ago. The days of fat budgets and little agency supervision are on the wane. The emphasis is on greater accountability and results that mean something.
It’s another indicator that in the digital era, the old model of global PR conglomerate is becoming obsolete, unjustified and unnecessary. A very real and recent warning sign was Omnicom’s 23 percent third quarter drop in earnings which no doubt will translate into layoffs. Fat PR and ad agency holding comglomerates – such as Publicis Group, WPP and Omnicom – are as bloated, outdated and slow-moving as Jabba the Hutt.
Large agencies, after all, are built around a model of the senior people pitching and landing new business while the more junior staff struggle to do the work, often with little training or experience, and being billed out at exorbitant rates that are close to larceny.
Clients, on the other hand, expect incisive results … solid, measurable and meaningful results … that deliver return-on-investment value. Clients want accountability by their agencies which has already been a weak area for many PR agencies. A lot of clients today came out of the agency world … so they are hip to the billing practices of PR agencies and how the shell-games are played over insignificant results. By contrast, agencies are still clinging to the decades-old bad habit of counting clips and contrived audience reach. In the online era, such things are downright silly and insulting to a client.
Here’s where I’m going with this commentary today … what I have detailed is why there is a proliferation of boutique and small- to mid-sized agencies. Many of the most experienced and talented people at larger agencies have either gone to the client side or to boutique shops where doing good work is more important to them than padding hourly billing.
Filed Under: Featured • Public Relations
About the Author: David is a veteran communications strategist ... writer ... blogger ... online publisher ... and Emmy Award winning former CBS Network News correspondent. He lives in the Washington, D. C., area, and works worldwide.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by David Henderson, Ed Lallo. Ed Lallo said: Doing good work and achieving results is more important than padded billing – http://tinyurl.com/yb5uokp [...]
David, your commentary is particularly timely for me as I’ve been contemplating my own blog posting for today.
A “fellow” [she's a female-fellow] just asked me in an email: Do I know anyone looking for marketing and business management services?
My first reaction was that TOO MANY business people are NOT looking — but ought to be!
So, YES, there are definitely “some” more savvy clients, but I’m sure you’d agree with me that there aren’t nearly enough.
Therefore the task for the “Smart Boutiques” is to find ways to reach both the “savvy” and the “un-savvy” clients — and show them what types of marketing strategies are likely to bring results in today’s vastly different communication landscape.
That being said, I’m off to write “the rest” of my post. THX for providing a sounding board on which to begin.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by davidhenderson: The rise of savvy clients and smart boutiques – http://bit.ly/35kwKK...