Business Strategy and PR

If you work for a PR agency or hire PR agencies, ZDNet blogger Jennifer Leggio's recent report on PR firms and social media is a must-read. The report summarizes the results of a survey that Jennifer conducted between November and January. Six hundred forty-two people responded to the survey. "The primary targeted respondents were PR decision-makers at companies with 1,000 or more employees, with small business / start-up owners as secondary targeted respondents."

The heart of the survey examines how well PR firms understand and take advantage of social media. It's relevatory data, but I'd like to call attention to another question the survey touched on: how well PR activity aligns with a company's business strategy.

I've written elsewhere how important it is for a company to create an annual strategic plan, complete with measurable objectives. Once adopted, this plan should direct all major activity in every division and department.

So I was intrigued to see the survey responses to the following statement: "Agency understands how PR needs to fuel entire business strategy, not just news coverage."

Less than a quarter of respondents agreed with this statement (22%), and only 12% strongly agreed with it. Another quarter were on the fence. And fully half of respondents reported that their PR agency did not understand how PR could support the company's business strategy beyond merely getting news coverage.

This breakdown in strategic understanding and execution could explain why, elsewhere in the survey, only 44% of respondents reported that their overall experience with their PR agency had been "good."

What's preventing PR firms from understanding how to support business strategy? I expect the answer is different at different agencies and different clients. But here are some likely explanations:

• The PR form is working by rote. Take product news, take messaging guidelines, craft press release, pitch, brief, distribute. Repeat. Critical analysis and planning isn't part of the process.
  
• The PR team doesn't have a solid understanding of business strategies beyond the strategy of getting coverage.
  
• The client has not adequately explained its strategy to the agency. If the strategy is conveyed at all, it's conveyed by:
  
  
  
  • A VP or CXO stepping into a conference room for 15 minutes to brief the PR team and a couple of marketing people on the company's direction for the year.
    
  • A slide deck that covers high-level trends and initiatives that is emailed over to the PR team.
    
  • A couple of sentences in a messaging document.
    
  
  

In other words, the problem likely lies sometimes in the capacity of PR agencies. Other times, it likely lies in the poor job the client is doing explaining its strategy in the first place. And other times, it's probably a combination of both.

Ideally, a company should be able to presents its strategy in a 5-20-page document that summarizes 5-10 key objectives for the company and supports them with measurable milestones. The document may include a few pages of background material upfront. The objectives should be bold (perhaps BHAGs, as described by Porras and Collins).

A company should be able to present this strategic plan to its PR agency, as well as to every internal employee. It should review its progress against the plan at least quarterly. Of course, it should also review the PR agency's activities against this plan.

There's nothing wrong with a VP or CXO stepping into the room to explain the big picture to the team. And there's nothing wrong with sending lots of background material in the way of slides and white papers to educate the agency. But the more clearly a company enunciates its strategy (through a formal strategic plan), the more likely everyone involved in the company—from internal teams to external agencies—will able to act effectively to achieve important strategic goals.

Pop quiz: If you had detail your company's business strategy to a new PR agency or a new internal hire 15 minutes from now, would you be able to do it?


Big arrow photo copyright, some rights reserved, Mikl Roventine.