If you can excuse the gratuitous innuendo, I would like to look at the issue of size.
The world of PR, like many industries, is at an interesting juncture. Lots of big agencies are expanding through mergers and acquisitions, sprouting bigger corporate beasts almost overnight. At the same time, we have noticed that more and more very experienced communicators are leaving these corporate entities to set up smaller, boutique agencies or to freelance. This is especially true in the property PR world.
This often leaves clients with an interesting quandary. Do they opt to engage the larger, longer-established ‘goliath’, or the smaller, specialist outfit?
Is BIG better?
On the surface, big corporate PR agencies undoubtedly have advantages that smaller outfits can’t compete with. Think bigger teams, greater resources and deeper marketing budgets to spend on client hospitality and fancy new business pitches. On the flip side though, they have large client rosters to keep happy and their most experienced directors may only be allocating a few hours per month of their time to each client. They often also have a multitude of shareholders to answer to and published profit margins to exceed.
So why have so many fellow PR professionals recently taken the bold decision to ‘go it alone’? While some have chosen to freelance, others have chosen, like I did a few years back, to set up a niche agency, but the common theme is that we all tend to come out of very senior positions within big name companies, be those other communications agencies, or client side. That is a lot of talent leaving the ‘establishments’.
What this sudden dispersion of talent means to clients is that their options for PR have never been greater.
Small has advantages
I can’t speak for anyone else (although conversations I’ve had with other stone slinging ‘Davids’ makes me think we all had similar reasoning), but for me the decision to leave the ‘big corporate world’ was born out of a desire to want to do things differently to the corporate giants, to get my hands dirty and make client focused decisions. This ability to be independent is probably where our advantage lies.
We are able to be small, friendly and build meaningful relationships with clients across the board. We can build teams around a shared goal and establish a more approachable personality. We can make decisions based on what we feel to be the right thing to do for our clients, not the back pocket of a shareholder.
No agency is the same
The reality though is that every PR consultancy is different. No multi-disciplined agency is the same and neither are the ‘indie’ ones. Dare I say it, but by and large we also all offer the same thing: similar ideas, contacts and skill sets. It’s just that some of us do it better. There are even a number of my competitors who I respect enough to say that they would do a fantastic job, although I’m not going to be daft enough to give you their names here.
So how does a client choose the right consultancy when today there are so many more options? Some will choose a big name because they want the kudos. Some clients will choose the niche option because they want the friendliness. Regardless, people buy people and when there is a meeting of minds between client and consultant, the results should speak for themselves.
Don’t be afraid of jumping into bed with a smaller consultancy as you can cram oodles of experience into a small offering, but big or small, size shouldn’t matter, it is the fit that counts.
