Comments on: 5 Ways to Save Porter Novelli PR

By: exPNer

exPNer — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:57:18 +0000

PN has now just lost Gillette a $5M client for 20 years. And, PN has lost over $100M in revenue in past couple of years. Why is current leadership still in place? Where is Omnicom to make a change. The fall continues and no changes ever made.

By: DH

DH — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 19:07:32 +0000

Porter Novelli is no longer casting much of a shadow as an agency, in my opinion. Pretty much relegated to just making profit numbers for its master, Omnicom.

By: PN Insider 2

PN Insider 2 — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:21:04 +0000

So we are 18 months out from your original post on this, and PN has had a brand makeover. I’d be interested in hearing your follow-up thoughts? From the tone of your OP, it doesn’t sound like you thought they would even still be standing.

By: Andrew Graham » Blog Archive » Model For ‘Blue Monday’ Research Is Just What You’d Expect From Publicists.

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:08:20 +0000

[...] The PR firm that promoted this dodgy piece of flackery appears to be Porter Novelli, a part of Omnicom Group and an agency that should totally know better. Or perhaps maybe not! [...]

By: John Tsantes

John Tsantes — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:32:03 +0000

Dave:
As an ex-PNer, I agree with your post. Today, PN has no great leaders. They all started leaving after in the new millennium and those in charge have been looking for their “Corporate Soul” (their term, not mine) ever since. Bu the real problem is not PN, but rather the DAS and Omnicom management, that rewards poor (PN leadership) behavior with promotions and bonuses, while the RAF do most of the work. As the overseer to PN, DAS should have acted on the lapse in true leadership when it first saw holes. It did not, and I was there to witness it.

By: Alumnae

Alumnae — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:25:25 +0000

The last time PN had truly great leaders was when Jack and Bill (Porter and Novelli) were there. They were brilliant, but it was all downhill after that. In their haste to sell out and take the money, they left a nice-but-not-a-leader guy in charge. His selections for senior positions were disastrous. John Brodeur could have turned the tide, but Omnicom let him be pushed out. And after that, it was mediocrity followed by menace. Omnicom bears some responsibility — they see the outflux of great people and do nothing, but perhaps the method in their madness is to let PN fail and then consolidate with FH or another respectable in-the-family brand.

By: Lee Smallwood

Lee Smallwood — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:58:53 +0000

Hi David

Interesting mixed views here. But I believe that Porter Novelli can turn this around – and be positioned as a ‘knowledge source’ in moving forward. But changes will need to be made – as Stephanie Agresta discusses.

I hope you and your readers don’t mind me mentioning that there’s also an interesting ‘conversation’ unfolding on my blog – http://lee.smallwood.ws/2009/12/social-media-lessons-learned-a-retrospective-guide/ – based on what’s happened to Porter Novelli in the UK.

As a rule, I wouldn’t normally redirect attention to my little bit of the social media ecosphere, but I think both these conversations are linked – not just because of Porter Novelli being involved but also because of the implications to all businesses dealing with these ‘new’ communication challenges…

Best wishes,

Lee.

By: Rainer

Rainer — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:47:50 +0000

Interesting discussion about the future of agencies. I feel compelled to correct a few points about Porter Novelli. It is true that the biggest obstacle to success and growth at Porter Novelli is intrenched “leadership” who manage to the margins with an eye toward self-preservation. Marian Salzman was a brilliant addition to the team — and the sole mastermind behind initiatives like Jack and Bill mentioned by an earlier poster. However, she lasted for only a year and is now successfully leading a competitive firm. Stephanie Agresta faithfully relays her employer’s talking points, but it is well-known that the high profile global brand “wins” she mentions have not lead to revenue growth and so the endless rounds of layoffs have continued into the fourth quarter with recent significant cuts in the London and DC offices.

By: PN Insider

PN Insider — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:15:02 +0000

Wow, it’s almost like you’ve been roaming the PN halls over the past few years. You’re spot-on about the old guard of senior leadership. Two of them in the flagship office alone have been haunting the halls for a combined 40 years. And the past ten of which have focused solely on billability. They make personnel decisions (hires and layoffs) based only on billability and not on creativity. Look at the facts … our new COO was a financial officer from Omnicom. In that former role, he had the unenviable job of chewing out PN’s senior leadership for revised P&L plans that consistently didn’t meet their targets. He has stated in no uncertain terms that if you’re not billing, you’re gone. PN has slapped on a few Band-aids with personnel here and there, but the creativity and agility problems are endemic to the old-guard senior leadership.

By: Brendan Cooper

Brendan Cooper — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:57:00 +0000

Hi David,

I think I agree with some of your points, but having worked in the London Porter Novelli office I’m not so sure all the criticisms are valid.

For example, we had a highly active and engaged creative director who helped us push the creative envelope and we had training to help us do this too. Having worked at other agencies since, I would in fact single out creativity as one of PN’s strengths. I think Porter Novelli’s ‘Jack n’Bill’ online agency was a great online, creative idea.

I’m also not sure the criticism of the website is valid either. I think it gets across the idea of engaging in conversation and letting its people speak on its behalf rather than putting forward a centralised view of the company. This is important. The fact that it doesn’t render on mobile well is immaterial – it’s simple enough to build a parallel mobile site, as in fact Edelman is doing with edelman.mobi.

Looking at digital in other ‘big’ agencies, I think Edelman are doing pretty well. Sure, they’ve made mistakes, but that’s because they explored new ground, and their investment in people like Steve Rubel is admirable. I’ve worked in the Fleishman-Hillard digital team too, and they have a significant investment in digital married to creative. Likewise, PN has in the past invested in people from outside the traditional PR world such as Mat Morrison and Marian Salzman to help it move forward.

I know the financial charts don’t look so great but which charts do nowadays? On the whole it looks to me like Omnicom has at least trended with the Dow.

So I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom specifically for Porter Novelli, or for digital at larger agencies either, even if they’re having tough times right now. Now, whether or not PR is in trouble, well that’s a meme that makes the rounds on a regular basis…!