@TomMartin, hmmm, you really want me to start beating up the ad world too??

I have spent my entire career on the agency side of the world – advertising and pr.

You should do us all a favor and keep our soapbox handy, pull it out every so often and blog.

But expand your conversation to include advertising agencies too. Last year I did an analysis of the Top 25 Commercials of the last 25 Years, http://budurl.com/AdAgeTom and not one was produced after 1999. Hmmm… wonder why that is… yes, you guessed it. Because just like the PR folks, the Ad folks too are cow towing to demanding clients.

Both PR and Advertising agencies could stand a little backbone replacement. Would make the practice of both better and in the long run, more effective.

Tom Martin’s last blog post..Social Media Makes Big Companies Small Again

Well, I’m incredibly late to the game, but I’ll jump in for good measure. Just remember that my opinion and five cents will buy you a nickel’s worth of bubble gum, for what it’s worth.

You should know where my perspective comes from first. I’ve only worked on the agency side – at four agencies. I’ve worked on major brands and small, regional brands just starting out. As I see it from my experience, the root of this age-old problem is three-fold.

1. It’s been mentioned here, but clients are definitely part of the problem. Many understand the value of building relationships. Many don’t. Many do, but don’t care because the have to justify their jobs to bosses who only want to see big numbers. And I mean BIG numbers. So they put massive pressure on their firms to smile and dial or e-blast. They want to see “call reports” and they’d better be long and chock full of details. The bigger the client’s budget, the more push they have with their agencies since most agencies aren’t in a position to lose a big client. These clients don’t care about the long-term rewards of relationship building because they won’t have a job at the end of the year if they haven’t produced impressive numbers.

2. The client lead on the agency-side isn’t standing up and saying “no” to the client. For many reasons. They’re worried the client will go elsewhere and no one wants to be responsible for losing a client. The truth is that telling your president that the client left because you wouldn’t call as many reporters as possible won’t be met with “atta boys” from most said presidents. It’s unfortunate, but true. Unless they see a true “ethical” dilemma, most aren’t willing to say “no.” Another reason they don’t say no, in my opinion, is that these client leads on the agency side aren’t the ones pitching reporters. They don’t have to hear the frustration on the other end of the phone or receive the frustrated reply emails. They call in their junior-level team members and doll out the commands to smile and dial. Frankly, the client leads don’t want to hear about “relationship building” and taking time to research reporters and bloggers to target your pitch.” There’s no time for that. After all, the client wants a call report on your 400-person media list by Friday.

3. I see many folks bashing junior-level account people as being the culprits of this. That pisses me off. The only reason they get busted for it is because they’re the ones making the calls and clicking send on the emails. Most of them aren’t willing to tell their agency bosses “no.” They’ve only been working for a few months or years and they’ve always been told “this is how we do it.” They’re scared of losing their jobs, so they do it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a junior-level pro share frustrations about a pitch their boss is making them do to a crazy number of media contacts because the client wants it.

I can vouch for that. When I started out, I cut my teeth “smiling and dialing” because it was the culture at my agency. It’s hard to take time to build relationships when you’ve got hundreds of media contacts to pitch for each client, and you have 4 or 5 or 6 clients. In fact, it’s nearly impossible. And I’ll tell you that I was judged on media hits, not on building relationships. I was never asked about what I was doing to build relationships with reporters. It was always “what hits have you landed today.”

I don’t agree with this philosophy, of course. And now that I’m the lead on most of my clients, I’ve had no qualms about recommending we NOT pursue a story they’re asking about. To date, they’ve all accepted the counsel, but that won’t last forever, I’m sure. It should get interesting the first time that changes.

For what it’s worth…

David Mullen’s last blog post..The One Thing I Would Change About Marketing