Smoke Signal, A Public Relations Podcast

Numbers, budgeting and forecasting are not normally the natural domain for PR professionals. However, if you’ve ever worked in an agency there is one thing we certainly know well – timesheets. But is filling out timesheets and billing our services at an hourly rate devaluing the work we do as a profession?

In this episode I speak to Financial Soulmate for creative agencies, Kathryn Williams, about a different approach to pricing: Value Based Pricing.

Timesheets are not unique to public relations. They are used by lawyers, accountants and management consultants just to name a few. However, according to Kathryn where we fall down in MarComms is we are generally not left brain enough to record our hours properly and take them seriously. But if this is the way we sell ourselves then it IS very serious.

Kathryn wrote this recent blog on Value Based Pricing that piqued my interest. At its core Value Based Pricing looks at what is the ultimate value of a piece of work for a client. It is about looking at what I am giving not what I am going to do and how long it will take. Instead of tracking hours or widgets you are tracking deliverables.

Timesheets are not necessarily broken, she says, they just need to be managed with respect.

The reliance on timesheets also hides the facts there are many other modes of pricing: time, commission, mark up, and Value Based Pricing would be another.

Value Based Pricing should cover your costs as well as recognise the value you are delivering to the client. Kathryn outlines three steps to implementing a Value Based Pricing approach:

1. Decide you are going to give Value Based Pricing a go;
2. Identify the metrics or targets that are meaningful for the client;
3. Assign a value (a price) to those metrics (this will be based on what will the market bear and your confidence).

Introducing Value Based Pricing has flow on effects across an agency. According to Kathryn a lot more agencies are now also hiring from the top down, staffing up based on demand. This fits with the uber-isation of the workforce where talent moves more often and more freely, particularly in our sector where freelancers are widely available. It becomes much more efficient to staff up from a strong pool of freelancers and that could be local or offshore resources.

Although it has been around for a long time this is very much a new space for many agencies. We are not going to see the end of timesheets, rather it should add and complement to the way we bill and ultimately make agencies more efficient and profitable.

Kathryn gives some great one-liners throughout the podcast, here’s a few of my favourites:

• We are talking about how a firm manages its most important asset – its people.
• We continue to give more away and not value ourselves.
• It is about the ROI and the business outcome – not what we do; but rather what we achieve.
• There are thousands of dollars a month left on the floor – look for ways to bill that properly or not spend not so long on the job if we have delivered what we promised.
• Every member of staff should understand the impact of poor timesheets.

In the news this episode a brief discussion on the Public Relations Tech Ecosystem that I released earlier this month.

The technology underpinning the practice of public relations continues to change and evolve and this tool maps the technology ecosystem across 8 different areas of PR practice. It gives practitioners a starting point for what tech tools are out there and I hope it can be shared and added to as this is an area that will continue to evolve and change in coming years.

Reports of the death of media relations have been greatly exaggerated.

According to practitioner and entrepreneur, Shane Allison, media relations accounted for 51% of agency revenues in 2018. As such it remains a core skill for PR professionals, but in many ways the way we practice media relations has not evolved from when we used fax machines to reach journalists.

Shane has launched a new platform, Public Address, bringing much needed innovation and technology to improve the practice of media relations and help remove the friction that can exist between PR practitioners and journalists.

In this episode, Shane supports the view of David Skapinker in Smoke Signal episode 8 that there are now more journalists and media outlets than ever before.

As a profession we’ve gone from interacting with 2500 media outlets in 2013 to nearly 5000 media outlets today. In the same time we’ve seen nearly 1000 journalists added to the population of journalists.

As Shane puts it: “You look at that explosion of media outlets you understand why the PR is struggling to meet the needs of journalists. There are so many different titles and outlets that we need to be communicating with, and pitching to, on a daily basis.

“As a result we have never been busier as an industry. The number of people employed in PR has doubled in the last 8 years... We are putting more and more resources to get the same impact as we would have done five years ago with a placement in mainstream media... So the net effect for the PR profession has been declining productivity.”

For Shane, the PR profession has often confused innovation with diversification. So we’ve innovated by diversifying away from media relations – we’ve introduced video, social, content creation, community management among other skills. But, in Shane’s view, that is now holding us back, we need to come back to our core and ask how we innovate in this core skill of media relations.

Shane is excited about what he sees as the imminent golden age of media relations in a time when media relations has never been more valuable for brands – the process can be improved and evolve but the discipline will remain at the core of what we do.

In the news
Earlier this month I attended the launch of the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer. In the news this episode I discuss three of the key findings:

1. Media is becoming more trusted than ever
2. Trust in social media as a source of news and information continues to be persistently low, especially in Australia
3. A trust gap has arisen between men and women – women are less trusting

Take a listen and you can view the full results here.

At the start of the global pandemic as the world was turned upside down I put a hold on this podcast.
So for the first episode back I thought it only right to look at how COVID-19 has impacted the world of PR and communications. Stephen Waddington says COVID-19 had an “immediate and dramatic effect on PR and communications”.
He authored a report for the UK Government Communication Service titled COVID-19 Communication Advisory Panel Report to look at what the impact those experiences may have on professional communication over the long term.
In this episode we speak to Stephen Waddington direct from his house boat on the River Thames to discuss some of the key take-aways from his report:

• Communication as a strategic management and leadership function. Professional communications was absolutely critical for organisations throughout COVID-19 and has ensured professional communicators a seat at the ‘table’.
• A significant increase in focus in employee engagement and internal communications as workers went remote. We have let people into our home and it has had a humanising effect on society, and how leaders communicate. We’ve discovered new channels and ways to communicate to overcome the absence of face to face communication but we need to find a balance.
• An acceleration to digital media. More than just more channels what we saw was innovation and creativity we’ve seen emerge across all aspects of communication.
• Impact of disinformation and misinformation. Especially concerning was the role of social networks to quite easily disrupt and cause harm in terms of misinformation

Stephen Waddington writes a regular blog and weekly newsletter, follow him on Wadds Inc here https://wadds.co.uk/blog

The global pandemic has fundamentally reshaped the communication profession, with communications becoming more materially important to the C-suite than ever before. So, as we look ahead to 2022, what does this mean for the role of corporate communicators?

Research from Edelman in the US looks at exactly this question. The report – The Future of Corporate Communications – was based on a survey of over 200 Chief Communication Officers across the US. In this episode, I am joined by co-author Geren Raywood, who gives us her take on some of the key opportunities, and challenges, facing communication professionals in the year ahead.

On the role of Comms today: The strategic positioning of corporate communications within the organisation has fundamentally changed. The pandemic pushed the discipline forward in the way that any good crisis does - communicators had to be in the room to be able to help the c-suite to help maintain stakeholder engagement and brand reputation through the global pandemic. It provided a lot of opportunities to elevate the role of communications.

On employee engagement: Employee communication has moved way up the agenda and this is not just a passing fad. The underlying issue is the social contract between employer and employee is changing... the fundamental expectation that employees have for the work experience, how an organisation treats them and how an organisation engages with the outside world is changing and the power dynamic is shifting.

On organisations taking a view on societal issues: It is here to stay. 73% of CCOs say societal issues have changed their communication agenda in the past 12 months. That is huge.

On measurement: There is increasing expectation from the business to prove results. Communicators are moving from counting the volume of communication or basic channel performance to measuring the impact of communication on behaviour. Are they moving audiences – whether external or internal – to do a certain action?

On the role of the communicator: There’s been an expansion from just media relations or internal comms skills to teams needing to have advanced digital, advanced multimedia, brand PR, and increasingly today, data and analytics skills – the demand for communication has never been stronger.

On CommsTech: The first challenge of CommsTech is defining CommsTech - The tools, tech and data that allow communicators to precisely target, measure and shape perceptions and behaviour at the individual level... Using AI, analytics and Natural Language Processing to mine insights and then apply those insights into communication strategy to reach an audience where they are.

On the opportunity in 2022: The pandemic, for all its hardship and tragedy, has created this moment for communication to take centre stage in the organisation and claim its position as fundamental to business performance and business success. The number one item on the agenda in the coming year is not to lose that momentum – how do you institutionalise those changes made during the pandemic.

At its core public relations is reputation management. Building, protecting and repairing brand reputations is what we do. Research shows that organisations with better reputations outperform their peers, better attract and retain talent, inspire deeper loyalty and develop louder advocates. A brand’s reputation is built by both what it does and what is says – making communication a fundamental building block of reputation
It is in that context that I picked up with interest the 2022 Global RepTrak 100 which ranks the corporate reputation of the world’s leading companies.
In this episode I am joined by Oliver Freedman who heads up RepTrak in Australia and APAC to discuss all things reputation. In this report, which RepTrak describes as the definitive ranking and analysis of corporate reputation, the reputation research firm searches the globe for the world's best corporate reputation.
At its core a good reputation is an emotional attachment that individuals have towards a company – the level of trust, admiration, respect and good feeling. Oliver talks through the seven drivers of reputation - products and services; innovation; financial performance; employee wellbeing; its citizenship in the community; corporate conduct and governance; and leadership - as well as some emerging themes from across the globe:

1. ESG is only increasing in importance... the public is only becoming more disappointed. There is a desire – and a sense of expectation - from the community for companies to put the community in front of profits and drive real change.... But while there are a lot of commitments there remains growing disappointment that real change is not happening quicker.
2. Media and reputation are symbiotic. How news outlets discuss organisations impacts reputation, how corporate reputation is perceived impacts how news outlets discuss those organizations, and so on.
3. You’re not competing against your competitors for attention, you’re competing with everyone, everywhere, all the time. Gone are the days you compare performance against just your competitors; you’re not just competing with other companies, you are competing with politics, you are competing with COVID. It is about being smarter, using the right channels to reach the right audiences with the right content.

So which brand has the best reputation in the world?
Surprisingly it is not the new and cool tech companies that may come first to mind. Rather the list features companies that have been around for many decades, but despite the world changing dramatically, have stayed true to who they. Many are also luxury brands - Rolex, Mercedes, Ferrari, Harley-Davidson – they are classic, but the innovate and they are aspirational.
Take a listen to hear the who else makes the list and why.