I attended an informative conference hosted by a trade association in Washington recently and happened to observe two PR people who had been sent over by the agency that represents the association.

They smiled … a lot. They chatted and were pleasant. They sat attentively during sessions. And, beyond that … they did nothing. They took no notes. They took no photos or video. They just warmed chairs.

It reminded me that traditional PR agencies love client events … a time to send-in numerous staff members, all billing at full hourly rates. Here’s the most egregious example I ever encountered -

While head of global communications and marketing at Gulfstream Aerospace in the mid-90s, I supervised worldwide media attention on a series of historic long-range international flights of the then-new Gulfstream G5 corporate jet. It was around-the-world – Van Nuys, California to London, London to Hong Kong, a short hop to Beijing and Beijing to New York.

I had inherited the PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, which was billing more than $100,000 each month but produced little in the way of results for the fee.

Even though my small staff at Gulfstream coordinated all the media relations worldwide, B-M sent out about a half-dozen senior people from their Los Angeles office – none of whom had ever worked on our account – for the take-off of the G5 from Van Nuys.  They all billed a staggering amount for doing absolutely nothing. Same thing happened at London, Hong Kong and New York … hordes of Burson-Marsteller people showed up, billing hourly and doing nothing. Mostly notably, none of them asked if they could lend a hand. They were just there … billing.

In 15 years – between the mid-90s and today – not much has changed in the PR agency business. The PR agency business model is to sell hours … not results, but hours.

The problem is that agencies are still selling hours when the needs of clients in today’s highly competitive world are much greater and more complex, driven by the digital revolution and the critical need to achieve competitive differentiation. Agencies need to be more creative, imaginative, active and results-driven than to just stand around or warm chairs.

Incidentally, my small team achieved massive mainstream media coverage worldwide for the G5 … all by ourselves.

Executive Search: In Need of a New Coat of Paint

It’s a familiar story – a seasoned PR veteran is approached by an executive search firm, hyped over an attractive-sounding corporate position, strung out through a series of interviews, and then, told that the evaluation process is too far down the road for further consideration … or some other lie.

For the communication pro, it turns out to be largely a waste of time. For the head hunter, they make their fee.

PR agency leaders are peppered often by calls from job head hunters, seeking names of possible candidates. It’s not unlike realtors seeking leads except the threshold for competence and knowledge in executive search is much, much lower. Anyone with ordinary hygiene can be in executive search.

Executive search is, indeed, a sales job that requires little authentic competence. It is a fairly generalized business, and most people assigned to filling corporate communications slots lack experience, contacts and knowledge. I never met one … or know of anyone else who knows of a head hunter … who possesses more than a thimbleful of savvy about the field they are placing people in. They are merely seeking warm bodies who might interview well.

Let’s call it what it is – Executive search is a field that attracts ego-driven demigods, no intelligence, education or training required. Yes, there are exceptions … there are some people who work hard at doing a good job for clients and candidates … but in the field of communications and PR, they are in a tiny minority, in my opinion.

Executive recruiting in the PR/corporate communications field is more a beauty contest than search for competence and expertise … and it is a disservice to corporate clients of the search firms and an insult to communications professionals. I think it’s a business badly in need of an ethical and professional makeover.

Suffering from a lackluster image … if any image at all … the agency represents the way PR used to be done, in bygone times.

Today’s subtle communication styles in the digital era have eluded Porter Novelli. Even the agency’s fairly new Web site sends a signal that they just don’t get it – a clunky site that uses dated flash technology not compatible with today’s wireless devices, like the iPhone.

The outdated big PR agency tactic of throwing as many bodies as possible at client projects in order to bill as much as possible no longer delivers results that sophisticated clients expect and demand. PR agencies don’t sell creativity, big ideas or results … they sell time.

With Porter Novelli’s owner, the enormous conglomerate Omnicom, hemorrhaging money in large part because of the mismanagement (strategy-deficient leadership) of flagship firm’s like PN, it’s just a matter of time for PN to do something purposeful to turn itself around or face the consequences.

Here are 5 ways Porter Novelli could be saved:

1. Visionary leadership – the agency has been managed for well over a decade by visionless people focused solely on billable hours and the bottom line. It’s time for authentic leadership to inspire greatness and create a brand of differentiation … a position from which the agency can not only compete, but can clearly define a client advantage that does not today exist.
2. Bold creativity – the agency needs to be recognized for creative ideas that make things happen for clients in today’s fiercely competitive world.
3. Masters of digital – the agency must enter the digital era or die. With no big PR agency legitimately or realistically taking the lead in the digital revolution, the door is wide open with potential.
4. Enhanced training – the agency has virtually no formalized training program that would support creativity and innovative thinking. Without training, PR agencies revert to old and bad habits that don’t make clients happy.
5. Greater depth of expertise – the average age of staff at Porter Novelli is 27. The average person has three or four years experience. In recent years, senior staff has either been fired or driven out in order to save money … a sure sign of an agency on life-support. It’s time to hire people with significant expertise – who will bring visionary creativity – and who will know how to carve a distinctive new niche for the agency.

Porter Novelli can be saved … but it hasn’t begun trying, and the clock is ticking. Without a dramatic turnaround, I predict the agency will shutter doors within six months. When Porter Novelli falls, it will only be a matter of time until others follow.

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.

As I found in my research while writing my new book, Making News in the Digital Era, many if not most PR people today – especially at agencies – have no real or practical working media contacts or story pitching skills, and consequently, they rely heavily on blast email press release services like Vocus and others that do little more than create a glut of spam for anyone on their lists. Yet, in a trend missed by many traditional PR people, today’s online digital revolution offers many greater and more effective ways to capture attention for news.

Unfortunately, I got on those lists years ago and once on a Vocus or PRNewswire spam list, there’s no way of getting off. Not picking on Vocus or PRNewswire but none of these spam press releases services honors requests to opt-out. So, I regularly call attention to some of the dumb releases I receive.

Let’s take a look at some of the recent stuff … none of it relevant to my work:

• Here’s one from announcing “World Pneumonia Day on Nov 2nd” from someone at Edelman.
• Another shouts: “DON’T LET LINT AND DUST STAND IN THE WAY OF A PERFECT HAIR DAY! FIGHT HAIRDRYER BUILDUP WITH CYBER CLEAN HOME AND OFFICE!” It’s from Griffin PR. I believe that anything in all CAPS is hype.
• The subject line of another press release says, “New Survey: More Than 2/3 of Marketers Bypassing Traditional Ads to Reach Customers Directly.” It’s from someone at Channel V Media, whatever that is.
• A press release from an outfit called USA Cares shouts: USA Cares Announces Military Housing Lender Program. I’ve tried for years to get removed from the spam list of USA Cares with no luck.
• Another from Integrity PR announces a “slim data USB card.” I always thought those things were called, USB data cards.

Anyway, you get the picture. I probably receive about 200 to 300 press releases a week, all blindly emailed with no purpose or follow up, and all of the releases are caught by SpamSieve. It’s deadly.

Press releases, while still a crutch used widely by lazy PR people, are today’s least effective tactic for getting attention … with few exceptions. One exception might be a brief release about earnings for a publicly traded company but even in that area, the digital era brings other and more effective ways to achieve meaningful results.

I would ask PR people to remove me from spam lists but, heck, they have no idea who they are blasting releases to. Like making sausage, they just write releases, click a mouse and let the spam service handle it with no consideration for return-on-investment to client or employer. At least sausage is more palatable, especially with spicy mustard.

This issue came to my attention thanks to Ogilvy’s John Bell after I had written a blog posting, Why Big PR Lacks Online Leadership/Expertise. Bell left a comment in which he said:

“…clearly you do not know much about my team at Ogilvy. 360 Digital Influence is Ogilvy’s global social media-based word of mouth marketing discipline. I have almost 90 people worldwide about half of which come from social media and longer digital backgrounds and the other half from public relations.”

When I read his blog comment, my first thought was to find out how many people work for Ogilvy PR worldwide. The number is around 1,700. So, “almost 90 people” translates into roughly 5.29 percent of Ogilvy PR’s staff devoted to digital communications. My second thought was … WOW, that’s a pitifully small team in such a large agency and certainly nothing to brag about, especially when you consider that digital communications is the wave of the future.

But Bell had given me a valuable insight and lead that was confirmed simply by calling other major PR agencies … it is that most large public relations agencies are woefully behind in developing the resources to assist clients with strategic opportunities in the fast-evolving online digital environment. Some haven’t even begun.

In my survey, roughly 3 to 7 percent of agency PR employees are assigned to online/digital communications, and the rest are doing traditional PR. It’s an obsolete model that will inhibit agency growth.

My research was conducted this past summer and the numbers haven’t shifted much since.

What’s more, these digital teams within large PR agencies are acting more or less as independent entities to either develop their own stable of clients or to be called in when the agency needs digital expertise. This odd dynamic sends interesting, mixed signals to clients that maybe the large agency doesn’t really have a full commitment to the online world but has merely created a token group. It also tends to validate today’s growth of boutique agencies that provide a higher level of online and digital expertise.

There is, however, an enormous opportunity I believe for the emergence of an authentic leadership in the area of digital communications expertise by a large PR firm. Quite simply, the advantage will go to the first major PR agency that takes the bold and dramatic step to educate, cultivate and develop meaningful skills among a majority of staff members, not just a few.

Think of it … a major PR agency that can counsel and advise clients on the best techniques of  strategic communications, public affairs and online/digital communications. No one is there, yet … and no one is close. But I believe the payoff would be huge for whoever eventually “gets it” and takes this bold new direction.

By the way, the concept is developed in “Making News in the Digital Era.”

What struck him at first was the singular focus of the agency on itself. The agency’s lobby was filled with statues and awards about the agency, presented by all the people or services that survive by feeding the PR industry with aggrandizing accolades, based on nothing. Awards from The Holmes Report. Awards from Jack O’Dwyer. Statues from PRSA.

What was missing – in the agency’s lobby and during my friend’s job interview – was any mention of clients or any significant work done for clients. It was all about the agency.

My friend got the usual questions:

• What are some clients or companies he might bring to the agency?
• What are some influential people he knew who might steer business to the agency?
• How long will it take to bring in a client and then more business?

You get the idea. The agency only wanted to hire a rainmaker, not a solid communications professional.

This branch office of a major PR agency only wanted to hire someone who might bring in billable hours in the short term to help feed the mother ship headquarters that is owned by a conglomerate. My friend turned down the offer.

The agency business today is singularly about billable hours, not achieving sustainable results or building trusted and valued relationships with clients. PR people today by and large are less than competent to address the needs of business and how to deliver results to business CEOs. They are focused instead on generating as many billable hours as possible and landing more clients.

And, yes, there are exceptions … generally smaller to mid-sized PR shops that provide specialty services are flourishing because they are darn good at what they do. But, that is the exception, unfortunately, in a large industry dominated by the money hungry big agencies.

By clinging to this old, outmoded model for so long, the big PR agency industry has made itself obsolete by selling clients only hours … when what clients need and want are results with accountability. It’s not unlike the newspaper industry.

The alert level was elevated in August 2006 after an incident in England. People were arrested and then released. But the threat level in the U.S. has remained at orange ever since. Now, the Obama administration wants to review the whole color-coded threat system, and I applaud their intentions.

Call me a cynic but I have always felt the color-coded threat system was a propaganda attempt by the Bush administration to manipulate public opinion in order to create ongoing fear as opposed to any more strategic attempt at national security.

More than the color-coded system, the new administration needs to evaluate the whole airport security bureaucracy that has grown up and the procedures that seem more for show than substance.

If threat detection systems have improved, why then do we still need to remove our shoes and put laptop computers in separate bins for airport screening? The U.S. is the only country that mandates such things, and I believe it simply is for no other purpose than to manipulate our level of fear.

The administration also needs to review the propaganda and PR machine supporting Homeland Security and airport TSA. The agencies have big, expensive national PR agencies on retainer seemingly for no greater purpose than to attend endless meetings with the ever-changing ranks of PR people at Homeland Security, an agency not unlike FEMA that has unfortunately attracted less than competent or professional communications leaders.

The outcome of this new effort by the Obama administration may be an end to those mindless and meaningless “The Threat Level is Orange” recording loops that have repeated over and over at the nation’s airports for years.

• PR – because it has gotten so competitive and budgets tight – is less willing to push the envelope, and introduce clients to new ideas and concepts. Agencies have become client-driven order takers, and about all many clients can think of doing is an event or press release.
• PR is mired in pitching the dying mainstream media. Even though newspapers are folding, or on life-support, PR people and agencies still blindly blast out press releases, hoping that it will somehow, magically become a story. Doesn’t happen.
• PR is afraid to pick up the telephone. I’ve got a pal at a New York agency who gets stories by actually calling bloggers. Can you imagine that?! Nobody calls bloggers. But this guy does, and lands great coverage for clients. How many other PR people today use the phone to pitch stories?
• PR wouldn’t know a story if it kissed them on the nose. In a profession so obsessed by cookie cutter promotional press releases, the idea of real, legitimate stories is unheard-of. Let me share an example …

As publisher of BoomerCafe.com – the popular online eZine for baby boomers – I get hundreds of emailed press releases. They ALL end up automatically in my spam box, thanks to SpamSieve. But, each day, I cull through the releases to look for any hint of a story. When I see something that might work, either my partner in BoomerCafe.com, Greg Dobbs, or I will respond to the PR people.

We explain that while press releases are not stories, the subject of the release they sent might be developed into a story. We ask that they check our story submission guidelines of BoomerCafe.com, write a real story on behalf of their client, and send it to us.

You want to know how often we hear back from the PR people who send the releases? Maybe once in ever 50 requests.

Writing a real story takes extra work, an extra effort. Agencies and in-house PR people clearly send the message they simply don’t want to be bothered.

What do you think?

For a business or organization, WordPress brings an online newsroom alive and interactive with many features. The newsroom is no longer a dusty and boring archive of news releases that go back years. Rather, it becomes an online showcase for an organization’s latest news, photos and video, and a place to listen, exchange, and share with key audiences.

You can see where I am going … in today’s Internet era, stop shouting. Reach out to the media, investors, stakeholders and others who follow your organization, and tell them that everything new will be online. Focus the media’s attention back to your site, to your organization. Give them a site they can subscribe to in order to instantly get all updates by email. Such an approach meets the legal requirements of full disclosure for publicly traded companies.

What gives each WordPress site its distinctive look and feel are called Themes, and there are many to choose from. Solostream.com and DIYThemes.com are just two examples. Incidentally, WordPress is free.

Here’s the good part – when you post news on a WordPress-powered online newsroom, it shows up on Google within minutes. In other words, it becomes search engine friendly.

If you want to learn more, send me an email.