2009 – Get Flexible!

And no I’m not talking about that New Year’s resolution to exercise more!

2009 is going to be a challenge for most, especially small businesses  – just before Christmas, ISME said 2009 was going to be ‘bleak’ for its members.  But 2009 is also a year of opportunity for the Public Relations industry, opportunity for the industry to reinvent itself and do a bit of PR for PR, get rid of the rip-off image some firms have adopted.  It’s time for PR consultancies to get off their high horse and provide their clients with a bit of flexibility when it comes to billing clients and setting out budgets.

In my opinion, the old ‘retainer’ chestnut is not going to fly this year.  Sad, I know – as an industry we certainly milked that one while it lasted.  And no herd was milked more then the public sector.  This was plain for everyone to see when Brian Lenihan announced last July, that the government would no longer be shelling out to stiletto-ed, clip-board brandishing suited ladies.  All over the country, small PR consultancies buckled under the pressure.  Jobs were lost. More hang in the balance as their client books say goodbye to the infamous ‘quangos’ and local government contracts.

Now don’t get me wrong, had the government ‘retained’ a little PR expertise at that very moment, they wouldn’t have found themselves steeped in post budget angry OAPs and seething students.  I’m not saying professional PR advice would have stopped them making such decisions (remember it was all about patriotism) but they certainly would have communicated it all a little better.  People would have known where they stood and crucially they would have felt they had been consulted and listened to and this, I believe, would have softened the blow.

Wasn’t it the case that the public sector never batted an eyelid at retainers?  Ah, back in the old days… you could pick a figure out of the sky, an estimate of how much time you’d spend on an account each month, and those lovely, accommodating people in Dublin 2 would happily sign up.  What fun was had preparing the statement of hours at the end of the month… ‘charge this under account director, charge that under account manager’.

But alas, in 2009 the government will spend less then half of what they spend last year and we wave goodbye to all but a few retainers (Lidl, Aldi, Ryanair…).  The private sector follows, SMEs are under pressure and it doesn’t stop there.

Its time to take all that creativity, an abundance in the PR profession, and apply it to coming up with innovative ways of costing campaigns.  Disposing of retainers for those clients who can achieve their goals without paying a set amount per month.  Those who think outside the ‘€120 per hour for a junior’ box will be the ones to survive 2009.