Inflation: coming soon to a PR budget near you?

Centrica announced its big 35% price hike yesterday ahead of underwhelming results today. As we get into energy and financial services half-year results season, expect more of the same.




All this surely points to inflation 'creeping' up. At the very least, we're like to see pressure on employers to increase salaries, but in order to do so they'll need to increase their fees. And all the normal laws of economics will come into play.



What does this mean for PR firms and PR budgets? For me, one big question - charges will have to go up, so who's going to be first to do it?



If the prices of basic essentials continue to escalate, a growing wage bill is inevitable. Putting prices up is always tricky for a PR agency, particularly when it doesn't come at a convenient point like year-end. Demand for digital PR services may help to soften the impact, but if we see prices going up all over the shop, PR has to follow.


For the small independent agencies, wage pressure will probably initially be soaked up by a big drop in profits rather than fee hikes, but that's not sustainable for too long as banks won't give the credit facilities many will rely on to manage their debtor books. They may look like they have cheap rates for a while. But hold fire for too long and, given they're likely to have relatively high overheads pro-rata, there's a danger they'll go under or struggle to handle larger clients.



For the mid-sized specialists and longer-in-the-tooth firms, there will probably be a need to make sensible increases to ensure charges are aligned with wage inflation. They have quite a comfortable position as they are big enough to be able to stomach a lower profit line.

The big boys, particularly those that are part of a publicly-listed company, will probably have a dilemma. Shareholders will want positive profit growth, albeit more restrained. Yet their cost bases will be higher and will doubtless shoot up fastest, meaning charges will have to increase. Their resource management is normally less effective, so wage bill increases will have less impact on productivity. That trump card of the big listed agency - acquiring in order to hit growth targets - looks hamstrung by a squeeze on profits and banks less willing to back them. It all points to a very tricky time ahead.

So can PRs look forward to pay rises to help them pay those increasing bills? It is looking that way, but agencies are going to need them to sweat harder to offset that. So jobs are likely to be harder to come by over the coming year, recruitment will be muddled and productivity will be a huge asset. We've already seen two agencies make redundancies in the tech sector recently, and firms everywhere will be looking to trim their fat.

The good news is that many specialist markets, particularly technology, still seem fairly resilient.

Agencies that can show their clients they are taking a responsible, sustainable and unselfish approach to these enforced pricing conditions are the ones most likely to come out smiling.

Cuil runnings

Search for 'Google' on http://www.cuil.com/ and you get a full page listing Google's primary services.

Search for 'Cuil' on http://www.google.com/ and the first entry is a story from the Toronto Star newspaper entitled Search engine cuil's splashy debut fails miserably.

With all the talk surrounding how the two services compare, this seems to be a pretty clear indication of how they square up in one area.

Well oil be damned?

Firstly let's face it: there is no original way to headline a story about air travel, so cheap puns are permitted, and at least you don't get the usual wing and a prayer thing.

It's a stroke of good PR luck that while Gorden Brown and David Cameron are holidaying in England on the 'cheap', the budget airlines are being knobbled by fuel prices.

Ryanair announced a sharp drop in profits yesterday, much of Fleet Street sneered gloatingly, and last night the news stations questioned whether the death knell is tolling for cheap flights.

Yet I have to agree with Alice Thomson in today's Times: we need the cheap fares, and the mainstream airlines don't treat budget passengers as a priority anyway, despite them being the mainstay of their business. Her point is that Dubrovnik is now cheaper than Dorset, and having been up to the Anglian coast last weekend (courtesy of 50 litres of diesel) I can see her point.

The parliamentary PR machines must be rubbing their hands together though, given the leaders have opted for Britain rather than flying abroad. Meanwhile environmentalists have celebrated what they predict to be the demise of budget air travel.

I can see, and agree with, the climatic considerations and Brits jetting off every other weekend is unsustainable. But I suspect the more nimble and wily budget airlines will have more up their sleeves yet. If most customers loating them hasn't put them put of business yet, I doubt the barrel price will have lasting impact.

Max Clifford: can the man PR anything?

I have publicised some strange things in my time.

But hats off to Max Clifford for handling Kerry Catona's new perfume. Sure he has done a masterful job of handling her broader publicity, through all its ups and downs, but this is an assignment I think I'd struggle with.

By comparison, it makes minor IT product announcements seem like something to relish.

eGov 3.0?

Well I never thought I'd be writing such a cheesey headline.

But the controlled parking zone department at Islington Council has brought me much joy, for a change, and IT is at the heart of that delight. After years of battling to get annual parking permits out to residents on time, frustations driven by lengthy queues at the council offices and psychotic wardens, the council this year made it impossible to buy permits other than by phone or online, using an e-commerce application.

So I was forced to do it online. But it works so well. Why should I ever have doubted local government? I applied at about 11pm on Tuesday and a new permit turned up on my doorstep at 9am yesterday. No need for photocopying documents, no need to queue, just a customer ID number used to verify account history with an integrated database.

After some stuttering, is digital local government really here, and worryingly impressive?

Mind you, they've never had any problem collecting my parking fine payments.

Gently does it

So, two weeks in and it seems this blog is already making waves - or causing mild ripples at least.
Posts over the past fortnight have been deliberately provocative, opinionated and, sometimes, insightful. Personally I think that's what a good blog should be. Equally, I if I rant too often people will just think I'm a ranter with little else to say. Not the case, honest.

The plan was always to get your attention fast then move on to different topics, and if the PR grapevine is anything to go by, job done. Rainier PR remains on top of the Google rankings for many relevant UK PR searches, and hopefully this blog is doing its bit (rather than dragging it down). Sometimes the truth hurts, but the comments and emails I've had from others in tech PR over the past few days shows there’s room for such candour.

So what next? Now we have your attention, what do we do with it?

Well don't expect a watering down. But do expect more useful stuff, more insight, more you might want to take issue with. The rants have helped put the blog on the map, the readership is growing and seems intrigued, so stay tuned.

And if it's any consolation to anyone offended, Google ‘worst PR blog UK’ and see who makes the top three!

It's the little things

Never has the oldest truism in British journalism - little happens in the silly season - been more apt.

It seems the coming of the annual news drought has been marked by a dwarf story in the popular press. Today we have the report of a vertically challenged burglar being, er, caught short and landing himself in the dock. The man in question admitted the charge.

But it's not the first time this has happened. This January, in the post-festive haze, came a story about wee people being concealed in bags by gangs in order to allegedly commit robberies.

What is fuelling the newsworthiness of smaller people and their part in what would otherwise be fairly mundane incidents? Have the tabloids got a warped fascination, perhaps fuelled by an underlying national intrigue? I Googled 'dwarf news' and tripped across this strange organisation - clearly for some people reading such news is no longer enough, they crave (in)appropriate 'ownership rights' too.

Mere coincidence that these stories seem to happen when newsflow is low? I smell a small conspiracy.

Floor and peace

And so it begins.

Our agency started looking at new premises this morning, having outgrown the current offices. The familiar conversations have already begun - it's amazing how PRs will pay lip service to the commercial considerations - lease term, service charges, location, facilities, infrastructure - then instantly dive into the cosmetics.

Is it just human nature to put cost and all other practicalities out of mind and instead start lobbying for which desk you want, what type of pot plant should be next to it and where the beer fridge should go? Or do PRs possess a hidden genetic flaw that brings out the diva whenever such matters are raised?

We should remember that, generally speaking, PR firms tend to occupy fairly decent office space, with some good facilities and modcons. True, our current space needs a lot of lipstick after nearly eight years of occupancy, but while more profitable sectors than PR can boast offices that would put anyone to shame, PR doesn't do too badly.

I've decided there's only one way to handle it - whoever whinges and lobbies hardest gets least. Time for me to shut up - this post is already starting to look like something from Grumpy Old Men.

When it comes to pass(words)

It would be really naughty to, say, download your entire agency's file server just before you resigned, then take all that information with you to your new place. These days, most firms keep a beady eye on that.

Fewer think about all those costly online services they subscribe to. I have been made aware of four agencies that routinely minimise their subscription costs by using usernames and passwords that their new joiners have craftily brought with them from former agencies. I haven't had time to look up the points of law, but I would think a Theft charge under the Magistrates Courts Act (1980) wouldn't be unworkable.

Rainier PR does a regular sweep of its online services to change the passwords. So if anyone thinks they're being sneaky by snaffling our data, you left recently and we know who you are. And we changed all the passwords this afternoon.

Hire or lower?

I've only just seen Andrew Smith's info about the jobs market in UK PR and marketing. So what really is going on with the jobs market in tech PR at the moment?

A few trends spring to mind. One (and true in the media too), is people are leaving to go freelance. Fair enough, if that's their path, and good luck to them, but it's a risky time to do it. Another is that people continue to use interviews with other agencies to lever rises from their existing employers. Scumbags! Another is people accepting jobs and then backtracking when they change their mind. Naive and discourteous.

Despite the gloom of a fall in the requirement for PRs, most agency bosses I know are still falling over themselves in this sector to attract and retain the best people. Chief economic soothsayer Wadds may wax lyrical about the poop hitting the fan and yes it probably will, but while there's cause for concern, agencies should be keeping their heads and thinking long term about the quality, loyalty and satisfaction of their employees.

One thing that does strike me as true is that a fair chunk of the UK's tech PR workforce needs to think long and hard before making career decisions in the current economic climate, and make moves for the right reasons. Few have worked through a real recession before. Most have enjoyed years of prosperity, the freedom to change jobs without fear of being cut, and had employers chasing them for their signature.

I came into the labour market in 1992, when we were still gripped by the tailwind (picture that) of a nasty recession. I qualified with 29 other journalists - nine months later, more than half were still unemployed in either press or PR roles. At the end of my first week at work, having scooped the front page lead and started to make my feeble mark, I was offered voluntary redundancy (sod off said I).

So if you're the kind of PR who thinks you can hold your employer to ransom, flit between jobs until you find something that's "really you" and mess both recruiters and interviewers around while they fall at your feet, it's time to wake up and smell the frothy latte.

Has all the pun gone out of it?

I've noticed that pubishers often water down their headlines when they republish content online. Perhaps it's all about the SEO. But it does take the fun out of it, particularly if you read the red-tops.

So for your punning pleasure, this is how today's Sun covered the latest Ronnie Wood allegations (leaving his wife for a 20-year-old Russian) online. Bit tame?

The print version was a little more to my taste. Headline: Little Red Riding Wood.

Now that's proper journalism.

It's not who you know, it's who you p*ss off

I have lost count of how many people I've worked with in PR. Most of them great, some a bit rough around the edges, some of them downright odd (all the current Rainier PR team fit squarely into the first category of course).

In the past few weeks I've had several blasts from the past with people just saying hi or letting me know via Linked In or just by email what they're up to. Even if I only met them in a revolving door moment like Becky McMichael it's always nice to hear from people, shows that tech PR does have a human side somewhere, and that this is a small sector so there's no point p*ssing people off. Thanks Becky.

It's also the polar opposite to some agencies who slag off their staff publicly when they leave, when they should be wishing them the best. I know of one firm that slagged off a leaver to a ridiculous degree, then called them when they had their feet under the desk in their in-house job to ask to pitch for the account. Short chat, that.

The point is this - parting on happy terms is the best way for all concerned when they leave an agency. There might be a need to grit the teeth a little, but in the long run everyone wins. I've never understood people who leave an agency, befriend former colleagues who they never really got on with anyway (and who used to slag them off) and then form a witches' coven, meeting for a drink every once in a while to bitch about the old firm. Sad that they have little else in their lives to keep them occupied really (bit like bloggers eh?).

Thankfully we don't have that sort of thing in this agency. Most of my colleagues spend most of the working day just bitching about me to my face.

Train(ing) takes the strain

One thing you find managing a PR outfit is you get an unhealthy stream of junk mail.

And something like 30% of it is from training companies, looking to strike the fear of God into you about the commercial risk of not having all your staff intimately au fait with the latest quirks of PowerPoint, or promising to help you harness the fruits of Public Relations 2.0.

Training is undeniably critical. But it strikes me that the quality and relevancy of PR training on offer in the UK has been getting more and more out of whack with actual need.

Digital skills have widened that gulf. PR training firms seem to be scrambling to offer anything digital, when in reality it seems obvious many of them know sweet FA about it. I remember my first blanket 'WTF is PR?' course I was sent on as a young exec - run by an ex-hack who told us about newspaper layout processs in the pre-Quark days. So only about 15 years out of date then.

Don't get me wrong, there are many very good trainers out there for certain skills - Rainier PR uses some great sales and writing trainers for instance. Plus lots of journalists run very good courses. But many of the larger generic institutions are so chocolate fireguard that their sole contribution is the couple of calories I burn each morning tearing their mail into small pieces and hurling it into the recycling.

This is going to read a bit like a SJP article sign-off, but... with the majority of relevant skills already existing with PR agencies, and those agencies wanting to engender those skills throughout their whole team, should agencies be putting more effort into knowledge-sharing internally rather than passing the buck to some clueless, faceless external organisation that will just worsen thier profit line? Should all PRs, once they reach a certain level of comptency, be the trainers, and people running agencies must be responsible for making sure it happens?

You're right, SJP's are better.

"And my name's Max"

I've been missing my daily dose of Mosleygate. The case has been adjourned until Monday's so no action today.

Is it just me, or does the whole saga pose the question of who came up with such a brave, or perhaps foolhardy, communication strategy?:

Client: the allegation is that the incident centred on a Nazi-themed orgy
Advice: fine with the deviant orgy bit, but let's refute the Nazi bit

Oh well, that's alright then.

Privacy notwithstanding, if the head of another major sporting institution, organisation, or (shudder to think) government body came out and said he or she was partial to the odd extreme group sexual encounter but not anything directly Nazi in orientation, would we think any less of them? I expect so.

At least it gives The Sun an easy way to feature the word orgy on a daily basis. Come on Wadds - orgy orgy orgy - you must come and post a comment now...

The dark side shineth brightly?

A seasoned (experienced, not doused in oregano) tech hack told me last week that he believes tech journalism has become a young person's career. These days, because the media wants cheap news stories quick and is less interested in knowledge and journalistic pedigree, older hacks ultimately are ending up facing their worst fear -becoming a PR.

This was his thought at least. Some hacks become analysts of course, but for the news sniffers who love a good story, the media market in the UK now offers little of a path for the senior pro and the draw of PR is becoming stronger (he reckons).

I need to avoid hypocrisy here. I trained as a hack, chased ambulances, dodged bullets and attended Womens' Institue AGMs or a few years before turning to PR, for the better pay. So for me, journalism to PR seems like a natural route.

Yet I can see his point about the media holding fewer openings and less interest these days for hacks who have been around the block. Chris Green is apparently moving to payment by results on story hit-rate for IT Pro freelancers - neat approach, and it'll sort the wheat from the chaff.

So here's my question: with tech PR firms always struggling to hire experienced, quality people and a new talent pool looming as journalists resign themselves to a PR future, are agencies ready for an influx of grizzly old hacks who need to learn to be nice to clients? Or are some hacks just impossible to 'house train'?

Kissed by a, er, thorn

Cold calling and email pitching for sales is rarely pleasant. But PR suppliers seem to be particularly bad at it. PRs are not perfect beasts, but we do spend our lives selling over the phone to tough hacks, so surely sales approaches to us have to cut the mustard?

This morning's example is a PR intermediary whose sales guy seems to have spotted my email address, not bothered to check my name (Google might help) and confused me with a small furry mammal or the Kissed By a Rose crooner. Not me guv. Anyway, here's the evidence:

----------------------------------------------
Hi Seal,

My Name is Kashif and I work for AMIPLAN. We help the national media journalist to source their future news stories and used by number of PR agency to forward plan for their client. I have attached a brief information along with this email. Please have a read and if you think this will be something which will be helpful just let me know and I will contact you to arrange a quick phone call.

Best Regards

Kashif


Kashif Michael
Account Manager | Advance Media Information
The Registry, Royal Mint Court, London EC3N 4QN
-----------------------------------------------

Power selling eh? Kashif, chin up, at least you don't work for Cision.

Cision incision

Question: name a press relations database company that settles out of court with an aggrieved PR agency about a breach of contract matter, then calls the agency a few days later to try to sell it more services? And then sends a joke bull whip a week or so later in a further weak and severely misguided bid to sell its wares?

Answer: Cision.

The Cision vision is apparently "a consistent promise in every market". Can't speak for that, but you've consistently p&ssd me off with everything you've ever done.

Here's the sorry tale:
- December 2007, Rainier PR serves breach of contract notice on Cision over failure to provide a database that works properly. Cision fails to acknowledge this through various ranks of command and simply buries its head in the sand
- March 2008, Cision chases invoice payment and threatens court action
- April 2008, Cision finally joins the dots and realised why the invoices are being binned. Still threatens court action
- May 2008, letter from lawyer saying you're daft as a brush, Cision backs down with no apology
- June 2008, Cision starts laying on the sales charm thick and we can't stop giggling

Mad as sticks. The chaps at Gorkana and PR Newswire enjoyed the saga mind.

Separate ways

Has the increasing digitisation of the media brought with it one welcome benefit? It has been months since I've had one of those friggin' colour separation calls from poxy magazines full of press release reprintisms.

Is it me or is colour separation the weakest excuse in the world for a crap magazine wanting you to chip in for its sarnies? Why not just call it a hamster tickling charge and be done with it? "Printing our magazine costs money, please support our cause. Your client will love it".

Good riddance to them.

Blog off

Why I haven't had this venting platform before is beyond me. I'm certainly not short of opinions, usually first to open my gob and always got lots to say.

Plus what'shisname across the office has a blog and I sort of felt neglected.

So here goes. Stay tuned. Slap me back.

What to write about though? Well I am in technology PR, have been for donkeys' years and used to be, in the mists of time, a hack. So how about tackling the topic of how a PR agency does its job of working with the press to achieve things for its clients? It is what I do all day after all. And it's that or tedious Manchester United trivia.

Blog off and running.