Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Public Relations vs. Budgets

Sorry; am one of the many patients infected with the World Cup bug but career challenges still linger.
Too often we get calls from multi-million brands who want to spend a few thousand shillings a month after having had bad experiences with other pr agencies. Let me understand – You have failed with other PR agencies to date by spending so little, and now want to continue to spend very little, but expect your next PR agency to succeed? Could that be part of the issue? Succeeding requires time (and therefore budget).
I simply cannot understand why companies spend so little on Public Relations: A recent client who spent 15 Million on advertising over a short term period complained constantly about the six hundred thousand shillings they spent with us over a two month period…This despite the fact that they agreed we did great work and had a major impact on their business.
Companies spend hundreds of thousands on trade shows, but don’t spend on their PR firm to support them at the trade show. Many companies spend tens of thousands shillings on an advertorial, but won’t spend those fees on a 6 month campaign because there is no guaranteed ROI. Of course, there’s no guaranteed ROI on advertorial either, and multiple opportunities to succeed with Public Relations… but “Oh, well”.
Companies spend thousands of shillings to develop logos, color schemes and graphics… but won’t spend for anyone to actually hear of the company in the media. Public Relations done right is a vital component in corporate success, but needs to be afforded proper resources and respect to win the right way. PR is often the most cost effective and reliable way for a company to utilize marketing budgets, but allow your PR firms the resources to win.

5 comments:

Kemboi said...

The only way we can achieve this is to have the PR department independent from the Marketing Department.the moment you have PR as a small unit under marketing then the budgets will continue being fractions of the advertising and Marketing budgets.

khiki said...

unfortunate but so so true.
My organisation is a total culprit. question is how do we get our goood ideas to the bigshots and make them understand the significance of the industry to companies?

Paul Barasa said...

@ Kiki and Kemboi gthe only way you can justify your budget is proactively sharing and distignushing the PR activities from Marketing.for instanced when the marketing team is promoting a certain product employ your PR skills and get the media to do a product review of the said product.that will show the Top Management that you are indeed adding value to the organisation.

Mike said...

As we strive to prove the relevance of PR in our organizations, we are threatened by social media which is even much cheaper than traditional media.What does this mean?

Paul Barasa said...

@ Mike social media is here to stay;we need to focus on how we can tap into it.Do you have a face book,Twitter, link-in account for your company.....
That's the first step of getting your organization into social media.