How to Be a Good Public Relations Client

What Good PR Clients Do

Since public relations isn't done "to" a company—it's done "with" the management team or owners—there's an essentially different nature to how this kind of professional service is successfully delivered. It's much more akin to legal or medical services with the "defendants" or "patients" (read: management team members) having to be deeply and consistently involved in an ongoing process.

As the now-famous slogan coined by tech PR guru Regis McKenna goes, "PR is a process, not and event." Without recognition of that, PR generally goes nowhere—and the agency won't be working with that client for long.

Two Business Cards, One Team

PR is most productive when the agency and client people work as a team. The ideal is a blurred distinction between the two organizations. The goals are nearly the same, only the paychecks and business cards are different. Efficient teamwork and friendships develop, with the clients relying on agencies for a full range of strategic as well as tactical communications values. The agency is free to ask all questions, including the hard or perhaps embarrassing ones, and offer help wherever and whenever needed while remembering its charter to client service.

Exactly when things can go really right or very wrong is typically at the outset. The client/agency relationship should based on a high degree of trust and openness. You see this plea or expectation on agencies' Web sites all the time: "We have strong relationships with our clients." PR services need to be delivered like any other professional service, as typically required by lawyers or accountants. Public relations can truly add value to a business or organization only if the agency people have an intimate understanding of what's going on, warts and all.

An arms-length relationship, when the agency is seen as a "vendor" (like office supplies or a delivery service!), isn't going to yield effective long-term results because the agency won't have been let into what strategically bears on the business. Without such insider knowledge, PR plans will likely be off the mark, short-term and not deliver desired results that matter.

Getting What You Pay for

To gain a better understanding of this perspective, consider that hiring an agency to just execute some tactics like a string of press releases would be like going to the doctor to have a band-aid applied. You can do it, and pay for it, but it certainly isn't the best use of your money or the doctor's talents.

You've got to tell the experts where it hurts and let them diagnose whether or how applying public relations practices may relieve the pain. So, if you want real agency value, share your business or marketing plans and explain your objectives. Mention what may or may not have worked in the PR area previously. Then let the pros prescribe ideas and strategies that address your business problems.

Valuable agency people want to understand the core challenges and bring their experience, imagination, and creativity to finding a solution. Remember, you're investing in expertise to help with business problems that you can't or don't want to solve by yourself. So find an agency that will lead you toward desired goals and an effective market position. Let them become a strategic asset.

Just hiring some extra hands to perform work that you decide is valuable and which you yourself direct isn't cost-effective. If that's going to be the case, hire a junior employee.

Conversely, for the agency people reading this, if your client isn't taking your advice or, worse, is dictating strategies and tactics, plan on replacing the account as soon as possible. You're just an order-taker. You'll be replaced very soon.

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