Big PR agencies normally have 5-10 pitches and RFP responses every week. Now the RFP responses and pitch presentations that we give and what we include in them vary from client to client. Some clients give out clear briefs on what they expect from the PR agency in the initial meeting. Now others don’t have any specific brief. They leave it all to the PR agencies. Now lets talk about this second variety and list down what we present to them.

Agency Credentials - Introducing your agency is something you cant skip.

Relevant work experience/ case studies - companies you have worked for in similar vertical.

Team Profiles - Some agencies make it mandatory to include the profiles of their key people.

Industry Understanding - You can create a good impression if you talk something good about the industry in which the client operates.

Media dipstick - Proactive agencies run a short media dip stick survey on the industry and the client vis-a-vis competition and put the results as part of their presentations. Something that the clients loves.

Headline Recommendations - Recommending some top notch ideas for the client on how to take the PR campaign forward.

Timelines - Some agencies go into length and define the timelines and monthly activities in detail about say how to launch a campaign, etc.

Financials - Approximate quote of the PR agency based on the scope of work the agency envisage.

Is there anything else? Please leave your feedback on the comments. Also, what do you think is the most important factor for a company while choosing a PR agency? I know there cannot one single factor, but do give your vote to the one you think is most important in the poll below.

My team and I develop PR pitches for our prospective clients. This is one of my KRAs. Planning requires, besides understanding the client’s business and requirements, a lot of research on the industry, the competition, and the current image that the client has in the market. This involves primary researches like speaking to journalists and domain experts. But before that we need to conduct a host of initial secondary research that involves scanning through a lot of print and online media. I am sure this is the same with every team in any PR agency.  So what are the various sites we visit on the internet to gather our initial understanding of a subject or vertical? The requirements and solutions depend from client to client but on an average, these are some of the top sites that you can start off with.

1. Search engines - Google is the obvious answer, and there’s no contesting that.  Additionally, we have Google News Search, if you want to scan through news reports; and Google Blog Search, if you want to scan through blog posts. These are pretty useful search engines that you can use in case you don’t find much headway on a normal Google web search. I also use an addon like Customise Google on my Firefox in times of absolute desperate situations when I need to run a query on other search engines like Yahoo or Live, as sometimes they throw up different results.

Sometime, when these search engines are not sufficient, there are specialized search engines like Truveo and Blinkx for video and audio search, Pipl for people search, and Twing for search within Internet forums.

You can compare Google and Yahoo search engines with SearchBoth. See screenshot below:

2. Wikipedia - We all know Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia contributed by everyone. Now the credibility of Wikipedia has been debated by many before, but I still think that it can be a good resource for reading up on a new technology, place, person, or a subject e.g. public relations. I understood more clearly about PR from Wikipedia than any text book I read in school.  You can also use Wikipedia to get media profiles.

3. IBEF -The Indian Brand Equity Foundation site is a credible site to get information on various industries in India. Take a look at the links on the left side of the page. You can read up the summary and latest news reports of various verticals including automobiles, auto components, aviation, banking, biotechnology, cement, financial services, food industry, gems and jewelery, healthcare, information, technology, insurance, IT enabled services, media & entertainment, oil & gas, pharmaceuticals, real estate, retail, semiconductors, steel, textiles, telecommunications, and tourism & hospitality.

4. India in Business - This is an Indian government site created to help foreign investors in India but you can take advantage of it as well. There are essays on the Indian economy, different industries in India, and alot on foreign investment regulations.  There are sections on the Union Budget and Economic Survey of India.

5. Indobase - This is a good site to get the names of major events in India categorized according to industry and cities.

6.  Industry association sites - Industry association site like CII, FICCI, NASSCOM, and ASSOCHAM are good places as they keep on publishing free reports that you can quickly download and read. There are good content on the sites themselves. Besides these four, we can go to sector specific association sites. For example, for anything on online and internet data in India, we can go to IAMAI. There are associations for each sector.

Do you  know of any good research resource? Share it in the comment.

Much have been discussed about PR agencies’ yearning desire to protect their intellectual properties they share with a potential client during a pitch process. Typically the problem starts when a company starts inviting say 15 PR agencies for a pitch, ask for rounds of presentations to finally select one agency. This sounds ideal from a hiring company’s point of view. they get to select the best agency and gets tons of free ideas and tips for their communications requirements. But for the rest of the 14 agencies that didn’t get selected, imagine the time and resources wasted.PR agencies have not been able to make much headway into addressing this issue. Earlier a post on Open RFPs and a reader commented that charging a pitch fee could be a solution. The comments is as follows:

RFPs which look at the PR consultancy’s understanding of the business environment a client is operating in is a good idea. As far as RFPs with ideation are concerned, Consultancies should ask for a pitch fee which if the account is won by the consultancy can be adjusted against the retainer, and if not, it would be fee earned for work done. Putting this into practice will also enable PR consultancies to gauge the seriousness behind an RFP and clients will also understand that for PR consultants time is money!

It would be great to see clients apply the same methodology towards their advisors such as KPMG/PwC and the like.. surely they would not put forth a strategy without agreeing on fees and signing on the dotted line!

I couldn’t agree more. I think it is high time there is a serious discussion on whether PR agencies should start charging clients pitch fees. One factor that seem to have work against this is the intense competition in the PR market and agencies feel that if they are the only one to ask for a pitch fee, they might lose out on important RFPs. This could be addressed if PR associations like PRCAI and PRSI take this pro-actively and if some of the bigger agencies start charging. That could be a start.

On a realistic note, I know it’s easier said than done. Unlike the ad industry, there are no ‘INS accreditation’ tag that agencies would fear of losing. So nobody would listen one another. But there is no harm dreaming.

I would love to hear what some of the industry leaders say about this.

Tech for PR blog lists some good points for PR agencies pitching for new clients. These tips come straight from the PR agency selector in the client’s office and include:

1. Use spell check/grammar check - First impressions are key. Paying attention to spelling and basic grammar indicates that you can write well.
2. Correct names - This goes to attention to detail. Spelling my name and my company’s name correctly tells me that you care about me as a potential client.
3. Deliver what you promise - I have a tight budget and demanding deliverables. Be truthful about what you can or cannot do with the budget I have. If you promise me the moon or my budget, I’ll hold you to that. My expectations have been set.
4. Staff appropriately - I think the biggest concern I have about PR agencies is the number of accounts an account person manages/staffs. This goes back to being realistic. Smaller accounts require less people who can devote more hours on the account. If you can’t support this, don’t pitch the business.
5. Simple measurements - It’s key to provide recommendations on how to consistently and simply measure PR. This will provide a foundation on how to track this back to my organization’s marketing programs.

Additions from my little experience so far:

1. Getting the client brief right - nothing is so embarrassing as coming up with a plan and the client saying this is not in sync with my requirements.
2. Quoting a reasonable fee- Seek out who else are involve in the pitch and quote a sum lower than the rest. Often the fee quote can be the deciding factor in many companies and one time projects.
3. Personal relationships are influential - whether we like it or not - yes in big companies too.
4. A big name in the agency works wonders - I have seen clients going to a particular agency just because of one name, even if that particular name wouldn’t be involved in handling the account anytime.

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india