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