Pay-for-Performance PR...why, what, and how...or how not

One truth is not so self-evident…all PR firms are not created equal. This certainly goes for those of us in the profession dedicated to the proposition that charging by the hour might be appropriate for a hot masseuse, but probably not for public relations…and absolutely not for media relations. It seems the economic disaster of the last three months has once again turned attention within our profession toward something “unique,” something “new,” something almost “revolutionary”…pay-for-performance PR. Once more, a compensation model that has been practiced successfully by myself and a few others for almost two decades is being trotted out of the shadows into the bright sunlight by our own trade media as either the “answer” to reduced marketing budgets at best…or as a viable test at worst for companies willing to experiment. How To Get Good PR Without the Big Retainers

I recognize this happens every few years when the traditional big hourly retainer PR firms and their clients begin to feel the economic squeeze of constricting budgets, or heaven forbid, a pang of guilt. Ok…the guilt thing is way overrated.

And with this renewed focus on pay-for-performance PR, comes the usual confusion as to what it is, who does it, and most importantly how do you go about selecting a firm should you decide it’s your path. Here are some thoughts from those two decades…

Pay-for-performance PR goes by many names….”pay-for-results,” ”incentive-based compensation,” “contingency-based,” and the most unglamorous, “pay-for-play”…but all are intended to describe PR firms that utilize a compensation system where the majority of their charges are based upon successful media placements or completion of actual designated services, i.e., speaking engagement, etc….and not by hourly fees or large retainers based on such fees. Some may offer some combination of hourly fees and/or retainers depending on the PR services being requested. However almost always the media outreach portion is performance based. One of the most common misunderstandings about pay-for-performance PR is that it is some how “cheaper” than under a traditional compensation model. Not necessarily. Over the long run of several months or years, a client may pay close to the same number of dollars, but the difference will be that each one of them will be attributable to a specific tangible result…not wasted effort.

And in spite of the old-fashioned basic fairness of this compensation structure, only a few PR firms practice it on a regular basis…and only a very few have practiced it successfully over a long period of time for all of their clients. Some large traditional PR firms have experimented with “pay-for-performance” for short periods or have tried to pass off the hourly/retainer model under its guise but seldom with any long-term success. The most common reason for failure lies in the fact that it is the antithesis of an ingrained compensation culture based on charging for the abstract “consulting” and “effort” rather than for a tangible something.

So, if there is only a small percentage of PR firms practicing legitimate pay-for-performance PR, how do you know which will best serve your needs as a client. Here are several pointers…

• Do a search for “Pay-for-Performance PR” on the Internet and review their web sites. Then contact the principle of the firm directly, discuss your particular PR needs, and their experience with similar challenges. 

• Do not hire a PR firm strictly online no matter what inducements may be offered. You can’t go “cheap” by filling out detailed PR or media needs online and expect any real level of successful service. Successful PR placements are the result of a collaborative process between the client and the agency…not a questionnaire. 

• If still interested, ask for a detailed written statement of the PR firm’s compensation structure and how their fees are determined. It is fair and appropriate to discuss budget and estimated potential charges at this point, but understand that under pay-for-performance compensation, the good news is that budget ceilings may not always be achieved. 

• Be leery of bundled pricing. Ask to see what’s in the “bundle” and that you’re paying for what meets your needs, not the agency’s.

• Make sure that compensation is based on real “performance” based on the successful publication, broadcast, or posting of your story…not just the “setting up of an interview opportunity at a specified date and time.” Make your agency deliver the actual placement…along with its invoice.

• And always make sure you’re willing to work with the agency as a team whichever PR firm you select…i.e., check the chemistry, not just their experience. As mentioned previously, successful PR is a collaborative process based on trust, responsiveness, and teamwork. And oh…patience.
  

Embargos, exclusives, and suck-ups, oh my ...

Once in the land of blogs nestled in the valley of silicon lived a large man, Sir Arrington of TechCrunch, with a small pen that grew to believe through haze of smoke and the magnification of many mirrors that his pen was mightier and more powerful than all the inhabitants of the valley…and indeed of all those that came to visit his words posted along the great highway. That with a single keystroke of his instrument, he had the power to create immense wealth or almost instant demise. Those that lived within the boundaries of this great highway, which seemed to both begin and end at times in the valley of silicon, catered to and feared this man’s pen and its perceived power. They sent personal emissaries to bid for the man’s even slightest attention and brief acknowledgement…begging for his positive notice in return for knowledge that he alone would receive.

But alas, one day in a fit of pique and after a multitude of emissary encroachments upon his personal lair, all promising special knowledge in return for his favors, the great man bellowed from his mountaintop, “ENOUGH! No More!” “I have all the knowledge I need or could ever use. I am tired from sycophants clawing at my feet, promising special knowledge in return for me holding my great and powerful pen even a second longer than I must.” Death to the Embargo

And the emissaries grew frightened. Even though there were other pens in the valley of silicon and elsewhere along the great highway, none were perceived to produce such wealth or harm as that held by Sir Arrington. As emissaries and devoted sycophants to their masters whose lives depended upon the bounties grown along the great highway; and whose riches depended upon having these bounties acknowledged through the written word, they knew not what to do?

In a great vision however, it came to them on how to please both their masters as well as the great Sir Arrington…do what we have always done…only more so. Self-flagellation to begin….acknowledge the error of their ways and the wisdom of the great man for bringing it forth. Beg for forgiveness and promise to ferret out the severe offenders and offer them as sacrifices. And of course, charge mightily by the hour… TechCrunch Kills The Embargo, But PR Holds the Smoking Gun



And a great peace fell across the land of blogs and a sigh was heard across the valley of silicon.

To be, or not to be…a flack. That is the question.

One of the sad side effects of this current recession is that traditional media in both print and broadcast are cutting editorial staffs in record numbers creating an influx of highly qualified and trained journalists on the street. Last week many of these journalists were reporting on the growing unemployment numbers and now they’ve joined them. Some are shifting their talents online…some are finding income as freelance writers, and some are dropping out entirely in hopes of finding more secure professions. But many, heaven forbid, are debating whether to join what they have always jokingly called, ‘the dark side’…public relations. A field, in their minds, infested by those who simply don’t get it…”flacks.” As expressed by Rob Walker, a New York Times columnist in his recent blogpost PR Corner:Tragedy as hook

And others… B.L. Ochman's blogpost

I for one, welcome these dispossessed journalists not as the elitists they might have once been, but as brothers and sisters that frankly we in the established PR world, need as much as they need jobs. The very thing that Walker complains about is the very thing that good journalists bring to PR…an inside understanding and empathy of what makes the media work…what makes a story compelling and why…and most importantly, how to persuade the media gatekeepers to listen. Or as we say around INK, “to make our client’s story the most interesting one that an editor will hear that day.”

That is not to say that all journalists have the skill or temperament that transfer well to pitching stories as opposed to writing them. Many will fail because of a lack of this skill set and because they simply cannot adjust to the creative demands and pressures of client expectations. In general however, good journalists, those I describe as good news people with an instinct for news, are extremely valuable and welcome.

But what of this question of name calling…i.e., flack. Is it really necessary and is it really so bad? According to Merriam-Webster, maybe not. Flack “One who provides publicity: as in press agent: an agent employed to establish and maintain good public relations through publicity.”

Doesn’t sound quite so ominous put that way, does it?

Peter Himler, a respected long–time pro in the PR profession actually titles his blog post, The Flack. Personally I am not a big fan of this tag, but it is what it is. By sharing best practices and exposing ethical lapses, it is my hope that "the flack" will follow "the hack" into semantic oblivion.”

Those remaining reporters and news directors that complain the most about PR people being “flacks” and not worthy of their time or even email acceptability, had best be cautious and perhaps a bit more respectful. That pitch which you just rejected out-of-hand might well be coming from a former colleague that used to reside in that empty cube next door.

From Tolstoy to Twitter…short form reporting.

Where have all the words gone…long time passing.

My apologies to Bob Dylan, but in listening recently to his anthem to the Sixties, I was reminded how differently we communicate today than when I began in the PR business. No, not quite in the era of the famous Russian novelist, but yes, in the same days Dylan was still acoustic. And contrary to many of my generation, I’m thinking in general, it’s a good thing. I agree it would be hard to imagine “War and Peace” rendered down to 160 characters (letters not people), and not nearly as enjoyable for a long winter read. Some things do continue to be best communicated in the long form as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs.

But when it comes to reporting breaking news, and breaking it fast to a global audience, even if in 140 characters, news organizations have new competition from the general citizenry as reported in Sunday’s NY Times coverage of the attacks in Mumbai. “At the peak of the violence, more than one message per second with the word “Mumbai” in it was being posted onto Twitter, a short-message service that has evolved from an oddity to a full-fledged news platform in just two years.”

It’s not just the news organizations that need to fear being replaced by Joe and Jane average citizen with a cell phone and a quick dexterity, it’s also the PR practitioners that feed them. We’d better learn to not only understand the new technology of communication, but the new short form reporting it demands of us. Communicating shorter doesn’t have to mean ‘pigeon or license plate English.’ It means being more concise and succinct while still being literate. It might be as simple as sparing us all the gratuitousness and jargon; and just telling something straight and honestly. No, not eliminating entirely that which makes the English language so beautiful in its description and imagery, but to simply cut out the superfluous and proselytizing…to inform and not to sell. One of my favorite scenes in the movie, “A River Runs Through It” is where the father in teaching his son to write, admonishes him to halve in length the essay he is proudly shown…then to halve it yet again until it is its most succinct and powerful in its impact.

But perhaps the best example of a communication where less is more is the Gettysburg Address. President Lincoln was actually not the featured speaker on that cold November day; and asked only to say a few words prior to a gentleman named Edward Everett giving the main speech. Lincoln spoke for approximately two minutes and said exactly 238 words. Everett spoke for two hours and rambled off thirty-nine thousand words…enough said…truly, enough said.

The lesson of short form reporting and choosing one’s words carefully could never be more important than in this time of a shrinking economy and the shrinking number of traditional news outlets along side the proliferation of online outlets where brevity is at a premium. And while I disagree that “what are you doing now?” is reason enough to take someone’s valuable time, it’s obvious these new communication tools are now being used in far more important journalistic ways as well. If all business and world leaders currently communicating the mundane on Twitter can convince their PR departments and themselves to be as succinct and honest in communicating to the general public as the general public is in communication with each other, what a powerful impact it might have…maybe not for the ages, but at least for the passing.

The lost art of story telling…

I couldn’t help but be struck by Stuart Elliott’s column in the New York Times The Power of Storytelling

“TELL to sell,” once a mantra on Madison Avenue, is making a comeback as marketers seek to engage consumers with compelling stories rather than peddle products in hit-and-run fashion with interruptive advertising like 30-second commercials…”

Having spent considerable career time (as well as a chunk of my hard earned dollars) in advertising, I am hesitant to be overly critical of my brothers and sisters on the ad-side. But the idea that consumers can be engaged through compelling story telling needs to be rediscovered, tells volumes about how far advertising has drifted from it’s origins…and how distinct it’s become from public relations. If in fact, the advertising industry is resurrecting the soft tell rather than the hard sell, I applaud it; and welcome the change certainly as a consumer and as a promotional partner.

Truthfully however, I’m not entirely sure that PR, where the good and interesting telling of a client’s story went to flourish when the ad-side abandoned it for the “interruptive 15 to 30-second blaring spot,” hasn’t also drifted from a good tale to a snappy press release or email subject line. Now, we write press releases and media alerts with precisely crafted message points and hyperlinks to maximize and optimize a web site. Yeah, ok, so…where’s the story? Just because the media as well as it’s audience’s attention spans have been reduced through a generation of MTV edits, doesn’t mean that there is any less need for a tale to be told. Something with a beginning, a middle, an end…a problem, a discovery, and a solution…all told with languid embellishments or compressed to bare essentials, but with intelligence and irony intact, for the new generation of listeners and readers…i.e., a story.

We in the PR business had better get back to it. It would be sad to let the ad guys beat us at our own game… one we should be so much better suited for, considering that the best of our breed come from the news business where truth has always been stranger and more interesting than fiction or the puffery passed as “strategic messaging.” Plus, we grew and advanced our careers not on snappy jingles or two word billboards, but on knowing how to recognize a great story as well as tell it…with all its tension, controversy, irony, pathos, and humor intact. Try packing all that in to your next media alert or 30-second spot.

Our clients all desire to see their name and message become ‘viral’ or to be old fashioned, to have ‘legs.’ What better way than to wrap them in a good tale…told with passion, integrity, and maybe even a hyperlink or two.

Failure is divine and good for the mind…

To paraphrase Ol’ Blue Eyes… “When I was twenty-one, it was a very good year…” It was actually at twenty-three, but why hassle a year or two when you’re young and naïve. Fresh out of school with a graduate degree, a beautiful young family, a dream PR job in New York, and an unlimited future laid out before me...and most important, an attitude of nothing but success. Failure? Not in my world. No way. Businesses didn’t fail. Marriages didn’t fail. And certainly, personal failure (as in getting fired) was not even a passing thought. Failure was for losers…and to be shunned and buried.

But to paraphrase, with literary license, Bob Seger…”I’m glad I know now, what I didn’t know then…” As is well documented in today’s economy, businesses do fail, half of all marriages crumble, and people in this industry do get fired, usually more than once. Thank goodness and probably for good reason.

Whoa…before I alienate all the ‘invest in success’ do-gooders out there... I’m not denigrating nor ignoring the pain; or even that much failure could have been avoided with additional diligence or effort. But if I have learned nothing else in my forty years it’s that failure can and should be a precursor to success. I once worked with an extremely successful and wealthy technology entrepreneur that claimed in a Business Week interview that he had won big and lost big in business twice before his latest climb to the top. I had another client from a wealthy background that ended up on the street, homeless and an addict, before making a twenty-year rise to greatness… economically and personally. Most importantly, both these individuals state categorically, they will not hire nor invest in anyone that has not tasted failure. That “failures” ought to be a line item on any resume worth their time to review. For it is failure that tests us in ways not imagined nor taught. Failure teaches and corrects and fills in the unimagined blanks of our youth. Failure is painful and it’s from that pain that learning and change comes, but it should never be dehabilitating. If you’ve never failed, you’ve never been tested. And if you’ve never been tested, how can you grow.

Yes, there are those that seem to always get it right the first time. People that that seem to have the Midas touch in their business life or in their personal life. Someone with a life too good to be true…a well-suited career, great well-behaved kids, a loving devoted life-mate, loyal forgiving friends, a knack for being in just the right time and place for life’s twisting rope of fate to swing in front of them exactly when needed most to lift them from peril.

Don’t waste time envying them… Rather, wish them well and push on down the road you’ve been traveling… the one with the potholes and hazard signs… and that next great growth opportunity around the corner.

Boldness in the time of shrinking violets…

One of the great ironies of the business world is that when times become economically difficult and great voices of leadership are needed the most; the weak tend to withdraw and complain, the mild hesitate, and even the strong tend to go silent. And to add to the irony as this silence becomes more pronounced, it’s compounded by a rush to abdicate operational leadership to those least likely to have long term vision…the internal accounting and legal naysayers to which risk is the most profane of four-letter words. And risk tied to spending on (everyone whisper now)…. PR or advertising is close to sacrilegious.

Let me be clear in this time of crashing stocks, bankrupt auto companies, and failed political campaigns…risk is not inherently bad, evil or profane. Stupid, ill-conceived, and scurrilous risk is…and those that practice it are stupid at best and criminal at worst. But don’t get me wrong. The virtues of caution and hesitancy are well documented and do have a place in a successful enterprise. Our most recent presidential election, for example, where ‘gotcha’ politics could have spelled instant disaster. But even here, I think we pined on both sides for a little more bold, straight talk and a little less circumvention and caution.

But fortunately, we’re in business and not politics; where we hopefully try to appeal to the highest common denominator of our customers and stakeholders and not the lowest. Doesn’t it just make sense then, that when the economics of natural selection begin to dictate fewer and quieter voices in the marketplace, that those that have great products and services needed to move the economy forward, and a positive story to tell, be allowed to tell it…loudly and boldly? Instead, those companies both well-established and just emerging go silent because of a myopic but frequently held view internally, that the first place to cut spending is on those line items that will be the most important for its survival in the long run. Huh?

We have a real live crisis going on in this economy and in our free markets. If you’ve made it this far and haven’t been wiped out or reduced to the point of mere survival, this is not the time to abdicate operational responsibility to timid accounting and legal naysayers preaching the mantra that by pulling back you’re actually moving forward.

This is absolutely the best and most opportune of times to be shouting and preaching, and getting your message out. That is not risk no matter how you spell it and no matter who tells you. Your company can achieve a double positive hit in doing so…. because the channel is less crowded, the message content will be clearer; and bonus points earned with your audiences for bold action rather than timidity.