You can put the best face on an organisation with PR, but if there are fundamental problems with the product or service, it ain't gonna help much to have a good reputation if the fundamentals continually let the organisation down.
But a good reputation also sets up service expectations and this is an area where small businesses have an edge if they can outgun the big boys with outstanding product and/or service delivery.
A good example of this has just happened to me today. I had my expectations badly shattered by Sainsburys. They have gone from high quality provider to something much worse in our household having caused three lost days off work by botching arrangements to deliver a fridge freezer to my elderly mother-in-law. She's in hospital just now, so we have a round trip of 1.5 hours and a 4 hour daytime wait in her flat each time they make a delivery promise. That's effectively, a day off work, and thanks to both my husband and I running our own businessess, there's no kind employer picking up the bill.
In my book, three strikes and you're out. Sainsbury's Kitchen Appliances failed to contact me as promised between 5-6pm last night to give me the time slot for today's guaranteed delivery (having botched it up twice before, they swore blind it would be sorted this time).
I rang to see when they were coming first thing this morning. No explanation. Nothing. They just stated that it definitely would not be delivered today and "all they could do was re-schedule the delivery". Thanks, but no thanks.
I cancelled the order and asked for an address to direct a letter of complaint and request compensation for 3 lost work days. And this is where it gets interesting. Despite the Sainsbury's logo being plastered all over the website, I was told that Sainsbury's Kitchen Appliances are actually run by a company called DRL Ltd in Bolton. They gave me their address to write to as Sainsbury's Kitchen Appliances c/o DRS, plus the email address as enquiries@sainsburyskitchenappliances.co.uk.
Apparently the fact that you are dealing with DRL Ltd is stated in the T&C which, they smugly informed me, "we expect customers to read." Well, yes, I did skim the T&C, but I trusted the Sainsburys name so it didn't occur to me that I was looking out for a fundamental change in the company I was dealing with. I actually read the DRL reference as DHL, and assumed Sainsbury's were devolving delivery to that well-known carrier. The good reputation of Sainsburys, and the fact that they deal with grocery deliveries so efficiently in 2-hour time slots, was a major factor in choosing to buy from them. I actually feel conned as it took a lot of unfruitful contact with the delivery telephone line to finally discover who we were actually dealing with. I've never heard of DRL.
Up until now, we had been surprised that we were getting mucked about by Sainsburys - and mucked about is a mild description. The last time we arranged delivery, my mild-mannered and gentle hubby came back incandescent with rage after a 5-hour wait. He had arrived at the appointed hour to be told by the resident manager at my mum in law's flats that the delivery guy had been and gone some 15 mins earlier than arranged. It didn't help to be told the guy was instructed to wait 15 mins every time he couldn't gain entry.....
The supplier's co-ordinator said she would ring the driver to turn him back, forcing hubby to hang on, but she didn't get back to him. Eventually he rang them when the end of the agreed time slot had passed to be told they that they couldn't reach the driver.... .
This was the second time they'd messed him around, having earlier agreed a time band for delivery which they tried to change on the delivery day itself. As hubby had shunted his work commitments to spend the morning fruitlessly kicking his heels, he was committed to turning up for work, which happened to involve catching a ferry to interview someone for the BBC. There's no way he could further alter that schedule.
There's no amount of PR that can whitewash over basic service delivery (or lack of) problems like this. It needs a fundamental overhaul if the communications, management and incentive/disciplinary systems are failing to control drivers who ignore contracted arrangements and delivery promises. Then that overhaul needs to be communicated clearly to ensure that people who have suffered realise that something effective is being done, so they stop sounding off about it, as I am doing just now.
Small businesses have a much shorter line of communications, and even if they do outsource something, they can put senior people on to fixing it or offering an alternative, instead of a call centre operative repeating that 'all they can do is re-schedule." If all small businesses conducted their businesses like this, no larger companies would have evolved from them! And I believe that DRL are missing a major trick by not pulling out all the stops to grow a good business on the back of one of the strongest brand names in the UK retail sector.
Research in the pre-internet days showed that a badly disgruntled customer's tale reached 200 people by the time friends of friends passed on the story. More if the complainants contacted a consumer watchdog body or the media. Now, the story can follow a company all round the world thanks to online tools like these. And mud sticks.
The trick is to understand that the best PR is to keep an eye out for matters of real substance that are affecting your business and always veer towards substance rather than spin.
Let's hope Sainsbury's take real action to tackle any problems being perpetuated in their name
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Friday, October 27, 2006
PR Agency time bombs
Today's PR Week, the UK PR trade weekly reports research by Time Act Solutions that a 'typical' 50-strong consumer PR agency spends 44.9% of its time on account management. That's not focusing on their finances, you understand. It's time spent on managing client relationships. On top of this, there's an additional 17.8% of time spent in formal reporting back to clients.
Many clients will be shocked to learn that less than 20% of the time was spent on media relations. While media relations isn't the only PR trick in the book, it is the one that many clients prize (I listed 30 low cost promo techniques in my book: DIYPR, including media relations, although some strayed into marketing territory as it was designed for small business owners who rarely the luxury of separate PR, marketing and sales specialists).
The study was based on analysing the staff timelogs from 50 agencies.
PR Week doesn't duck the obvious: if the findings are right, then larger PR agencies appear to be wasting much of their time. But it tries to soften the blow by pointing out that, where an agency is engaged in strategic consultancy, they won't be devoting so much time to communications delivery. Only trouble is, the survey shows just 0.6% of time devoted to strategic counsel....
Admin and staff management account for under 15% of the time logged, and as financial matters are not listed separately, we must assume they're lumped in with admin. The only other time shown in the PR Week article is 1.5% spent on business development. This seems extraordinarily low, unless some of that 44.9% account management time is actually devoted to following the eminently sensible business maxim: it's always cheaper to sell more to an existing client than seek out new customers.
Small is Beautiful
Not surprisingly, it looks as if smaller agencies manage to reverse the goods delivery v talking about it trend. PR Week showed the 7-strong Oxford-based Brazil team's timelogs spent 42% on media relations + 15% on writing press releases and account management + admin taking up 21%.
Our own timelogs at (the small, but beautiful) PHPR are roughly split between client service delivery on the one hand, and marketing, admin, staff management, finance and training (which, interestingly, the report didn't seem to track despite a push to develop professional skills in the industry from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations www.cipr.co.uk). At least the PR industry now seems to be taking timelogs seriously. When we started in 1986, most clients had never seen a timelog for PR agency staff, and I still hear new clients say we're the first to offer them transparent timelogs and invoicing. Seemed like good PR to me...
More on small agencies' reactions to the survey at www.PRWeek.com/uk
Many clients will be shocked to learn that less than 20% of the time was spent on media relations. While media relations isn't the only PR trick in the book, it is the one that many clients prize (I listed 30 low cost promo techniques in my book: DIYPR, including media relations, although some strayed into marketing territory as it was designed for small business owners who rarely the luxury of separate PR, marketing and sales specialists).
The study was based on analysing the staff timelogs from 50 agencies.
PR Week doesn't duck the obvious: if the findings are right, then larger PR agencies appear to be wasting much of their time. But it tries to soften the blow by pointing out that, where an agency is engaged in strategic consultancy, they won't be devoting so much time to communications delivery. Only trouble is, the survey shows just 0.6% of time devoted to strategic counsel....
Admin and staff management account for under 15% of the time logged, and as financial matters are not listed separately, we must assume they're lumped in with admin. The only other time shown in the PR Week article is 1.5% spent on business development. This seems extraordinarily low, unless some of that 44.9% account management time is actually devoted to following the eminently sensible business maxim: it's always cheaper to sell more to an existing client than seek out new customers.
Small is Beautiful
Not surprisingly, it looks as if smaller agencies manage to reverse the goods delivery v talking about it trend. PR Week showed the 7-strong Oxford-based Brazil team's timelogs spent 42% on media relations + 15% on writing press releases and account management + admin taking up 21%.
Our own timelogs at (the small, but beautiful) PHPR are roughly split between client service delivery on the one hand, and marketing, admin, staff management, finance and training (which, interestingly, the report didn't seem to track despite a push to develop professional skills in the industry from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations www.cipr.co.uk). At least the PR industry now seems to be taking timelogs seriously. When we started in 1986, most clients had never seen a timelog for PR agency staff, and I still hear new clients say we're the first to offer them transparent timelogs and invoicing. Seemed like good PR to me...
More on small agencies' reactions to the survey at www.PRWeek.com/uk
Thursday, October 26, 2006
PR & Spin
Every time I see 'spin' used for PR, it makes me mad.
It may be a reflection of how public sector PR (and in particular, government PR) operates, but it is far removed from most routine business PR.
The reason there's such a divergence between private and public sector PR is because the public sector, by its nature, is involved in decisions that are taken on behalf of us all, even if they don't directly impact on everyone. Consequently, new public initiatives will almost always affect more readers/ viewers/ listeners than any private sector initiatives. So public sector PROs are fending off huge waves of media interest and some have become quite times cynical in their disregard for the media.
The private sector PROs have to be extremely inventive in order to get a media look-in. But inventive doesn't mean making it up. The big trick - and it's one that any business can copy - is to find ways to hitch your news stories to bigger issues, names or celebrities. Whether it's climate change, health, education, the environment, defence, travel, jobs, work-life balance, etc the more you think in terms of wider context, the more your press releases will appear to echo genuine news reports and will stand a much better chance of being carried. Plus your reputation as a social commentator starts to build up. Play that card regularly and well, and you will start to find the media comes to you for a comment and your organisation gets a name check every time you are quoted. Being seen as an expert in the media will go a lot further in enhancing your organisation's reputation and prestige than a few obviously commercially-motivated plugs. That's where skillful follow-up with sales approaches and distribution of marketing materials (on or off-line) pays off. When PR, sales and marketing are worked together like this, the results are dramatically greater than veering from one to the other. Good luck with your integrated PR, sales and marketing campaigns.
It may be a reflection of how public sector PR (and in particular, government PR) operates, but it is far removed from most routine business PR.
The reason there's such a divergence between private and public sector PR is because the public sector, by its nature, is involved in decisions that are taken on behalf of us all, even if they don't directly impact on everyone. Consequently, new public initiatives will almost always affect more readers/ viewers/ listeners than any private sector initiatives. So public sector PROs are fending off huge waves of media interest and some have become quite times cynical in their disregard for the media.
The private sector PROs have to be extremely inventive in order to get a media look-in. But inventive doesn't mean making it up. The big trick - and it's one that any business can copy - is to find ways to hitch your news stories to bigger issues, names or celebrities. Whether it's climate change, health, education, the environment, defence, travel, jobs, work-life balance, etc the more you think in terms of wider context, the more your press releases will appear to echo genuine news reports and will stand a much better chance of being carried. Plus your reputation as a social commentator starts to build up. Play that card regularly and well, and you will start to find the media comes to you for a comment and your organisation gets a name check every time you are quoted. Being seen as an expert in the media will go a lot further in enhancing your organisation's reputation and prestige than a few obviously commercially-motivated plugs. That's where skillful follow-up with sales approaches and distribution of marketing materials (on or off-line) pays off. When PR, sales and marketing are worked together like this, the results are dramatically greater than veering from one to the other. Good luck with your integrated PR, sales and marketing campaigns.
Making Money and Small Business Blogs
This blog is in response to two claims made this week by well respected business observers with their finger on the small business pulse.
The first is the Daily Telegraph's Business Club's programme director, the redoubtable David Sumner Smith, who says in his latest email to members (24th October 2006) that he (and his bright nephew) have tried and failed to find examples of UK businesses making money out of blogs.
It seems incredible after all that's been written about blogs, and the millions of corporate blogs on the go, but he say that, "apart from http://s1.e-srv.net:80/?s2=01-4-4CWvbgNvkbviLu0-38377, credible stories are rare. "
No doubt, they'll follow up if some good examples are persuaded to crawl out of the woodwork as a result of his email. In the meantime he wants to "make the Business Club a 'launch pad' for business blogs. Reporting frustrations. Discussing problems. Sharing solutions. And hopefully driving business successes too!"
That's very close to the heart of a comment make by a good friend, Simon Allen, MD of Shopfitter, the low cost e-commerce solution, who told me he's yet to spot a good blog on what it's like to run a small business so that people can learn what works.
So, here goes....!
Taking David's point first, businesses may be about making money, but that's not directly what blogs are for. They are about communicating with a business' audiences to deepen understanding and foster a greater feel good factor. And that's exactly the same thing PR does when it focusses on media relations, sponsorships and speaking awareness programmes. It's that feel good factor that creates the climate in which sales and marketing work. In fact, it's so good at turbo-charging sales and marketing that it's commonly claimed that sales go up 50% if the prospective client has heard positive things about the company before the sales or marketing approach.
Of course, sometimes PR is so oversold as a low cost publicity solution that small business owners think they just need to find a PR budget and nothing else. Sadly 50% of zero sales and marketing input is still £0. The sales and marketing effort and spend must be there to benefit from the PR uplift, otherwise you'll just get a sporadic few enquiries from a good editorial piece. Which would be a criminal waste as you'll be failing to capitalise on the thousands of prospective customers that have read the piece and are warm to the idea of doing business with you, but haven't got round to actually contacting you directly. But if you were to follow up that editorial mention by contacting them.....
So maybe it's good business not to be obviously trying to make money from blogs? Certainly, covering the blog in money-grabbing ads is unlikely to improve its effectiveness although it might generate a little Adsense income.
Like everything in the indirect PR approach, the effect of good, honest, clear and relevant blogs will build up over time. Don't expect overnight miracles, but, like PR, look for a good uplift on your sales and marketing efforts over 6-12 months.
Now that leaves Simon's point about the lack of a blog to give the inside track on running a small business. I suspect that most small business owners are too busy running their businesses to stand back from them. Certainly, my business coach, Phil Olley, and many others point out that most businesspeople are too busy working in the business, instead of addressing the important issues by working on the business.
Why me? I'm the first to admit that I run the business to provide interesting jobs and work with reputable clients, so no-one's going to learn how to make millions from me. But I have make a comfortable living in a competitive environment where few last 10 years, let alone the 30 I've enjoyed. In that time, I've worked for banks and had run-ins with banks. I've gone solo, employed people, set up a limited company, written a best-selling book, won awards, punched way beyond my size working with top companies and the public sector, tried to teach others how to do PR, learned about new aspects of business constantly, found a husband through business networking and expanded into a whole new business activity with him, done my bit for charity, operated a transparent business policy, and had a green policy in place since 1986 - long before 'green' was anything other than a colour. As a fellow communicator said, running my business is the best fun you can have with your clothes on. I am still having a fascinating time doing it. I'm well short of perfect, but I do sleep easily at night.
So, I'll have a go at dealing with common business situations I encounter on a weekly basis. Watch this space.
The first is the Daily Telegraph's Business Club's programme director, the redoubtable David Sumner Smith, who says in his latest email to members (24th October 2006) that he (and his bright nephew) have tried and failed to find examples of UK businesses making money out of blogs.
It seems incredible after all that's been written about blogs, and the millions of corporate blogs on the go, but he say that, "apart from http://s1.e-srv.net:80/?s2=01-4-4CWvbgNvkbviLu0-38377, credible stories are rare. "
No doubt, they'll follow up if some good examples are persuaded to crawl out of the woodwork as a result of his email. In the meantime he wants to "make the Business Club a 'launch pad' for business blogs. Reporting frustrations. Discussing problems. Sharing solutions. And hopefully driving business successes too!"
That's very close to the heart of a comment make by a good friend, Simon Allen, MD of Shopfitter, the low cost e-commerce solution, who told me he's yet to spot a good blog on what it's like to run a small business so that people can learn what works.
So, here goes....!
Taking David's point first, businesses may be about making money, but that's not directly what blogs are for. They are about communicating with a business' audiences to deepen understanding and foster a greater feel good factor. And that's exactly the same thing PR does when it focusses on media relations, sponsorships and speaking awareness programmes. It's that feel good factor that creates the climate in which sales and marketing work. In fact, it's so good at turbo-charging sales and marketing that it's commonly claimed that sales go up 50% if the prospective client has heard positive things about the company before the sales or marketing approach.
Of course, sometimes PR is so oversold as a low cost publicity solution that small business owners think they just need to find a PR budget and nothing else. Sadly 50% of zero sales and marketing input is still £0. The sales and marketing effort and spend must be there to benefit from the PR uplift, otherwise you'll just get a sporadic few enquiries from a good editorial piece. Which would be a criminal waste as you'll be failing to capitalise on the thousands of prospective customers that have read the piece and are warm to the idea of doing business with you, but haven't got round to actually contacting you directly. But if you were to follow up that editorial mention by contacting them.....
So maybe it's good business not to be obviously trying to make money from blogs? Certainly, covering the blog in money-grabbing ads is unlikely to improve its effectiveness although it might generate a little Adsense income.
Like everything in the indirect PR approach, the effect of good, honest, clear and relevant blogs will build up over time. Don't expect overnight miracles, but, like PR, look for a good uplift on your sales and marketing efforts over 6-12 months.
Now that leaves Simon's point about the lack of a blog to give the inside track on running a small business. I suspect that most small business owners are too busy running their businesses to stand back from them. Certainly, my business coach, Phil Olley, and many others point out that most businesspeople are too busy working in the business, instead of addressing the important issues by working on the business.
Why me? I'm the first to admit that I run the business to provide interesting jobs and work with reputable clients, so no-one's going to learn how to make millions from me. But I have make a comfortable living in a competitive environment where few last 10 years, let alone the 30 I've enjoyed. In that time, I've worked for banks and had run-ins with banks. I've gone solo, employed people, set up a limited company, written a best-selling book, won awards, punched way beyond my size working with top companies and the public sector, tried to teach others how to do PR, learned about new aspects of business constantly, found a husband through business networking and expanded into a whole new business activity with him, done my bit for charity, operated a transparent business policy, and had a green policy in place since 1986 - long before 'green' was anything other than a colour. As a fellow communicator said, running my business is the best fun you can have with your clothes on. I am still having a fascinating time doing it. I'm well short of perfect, but I do sleep easily at night.
So, I'll have a go at dealing with common business situations I encounter on a weekly basis. Watch this space.
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