Three reasons why clients fire their PR agency

By Darren Gilbert

We asked three PR agencies about the reasons why they believe clients are justified in firing their PR agency.

They focus solely on media relations

For Emma King, MD of The Friday Street Club, it’s important that PR agencies be more than just specialists. Yes, there is a space for industry specialists. However, the time is over for a PR agency to offer just one service.

“It’s not good enough anymore for a PR agency, or any agency I would say, to just be a specialist in one thing,” she says. “We are long past the time when communications were neatly slotted into stand-alone silos – when a media relations push ran in isolation from an outdoor billboard campaign.”

Considering that people pick up their news from a number of different sources rather than just traditional media outlets, PR needs to work alongside and within everything else.

“We need to understand everything from social media to corporate identity design and branding, to the management of ambassadors, to websites being portals for brand content, and so much more,” she adds.

If a PR agency doesn’t implicitly understand this, it can quickly become outdated and ineffective.

They are more interested in billable hours than the output

While billable hours is still the ‘norm’ for most of the PR industry, it is common to hear that many PR agencies are more focused on the hours than the output. That’s according to Gabbi Rego, director of urban espresso. She also thinks it’s a farce.

“Once the hours run out, whether they have achieved the objectives or not, the client is required to pay in additional amounts for the agency to then continue along the path to achieving said objectives,” she says. “While I understand the need for the billable hours model, I personally am not a fan and do not use it myself.”

Using this billing model places the focus on the wrong thing – the agency – when it should be on the client.

“How can you be objective and have a clear mind of how to make magic for a client if you’re worried thinking about the billable hours?”

They don’t deliver results in line with your business objectives

In a world where PR budgets have tightened considerably and more businesses are questioning public relations, it is the results that will prove the industry’s worth. But not just any results. They need to be in line with the clients’ business objectives, says Gavin Etheridge, director of Epic MSLGROUP Cape Town.

“Agency: ‘We just got a full page editorial spread in Cosmopolitan!’ Client: ‘But our target audience is a +40 male interested in investing?’”

While the above is an extreme example, says Etheridge, many local agencies are still using the ‘spray and pay’ media approach. “In 2017, this approach is simply not good, or effective, enough. In a world with multiple consumer touch points, the art of defining a target demographic is a critical skill for a modern PR consultancy.”

“For me, there are three steps to marrying agencies with clients’ business objectives: Research, which means adopting a multi-channel PR approach; sitting down with the client and agreeing on clear, measurable campaign deliverables; and continually updating a client as to ‘where we’re at’ with the campaign.”

This not only puts a client at ease but also gives an agency direction and motivation.

Want to stay up to date with the latest public relations news? Subscribe to our newsletter.

When it comes to the PR industry, not all advice is good advice. Read more in our article The worst advice heard about public relations.