GratesPresentation2005 HandoutsView

Growth is issue #1 for business today
• After years of cost cuts and lay-offs,

A Formula for Growth businesses today are expected to grow
¾ Revenues
How Corporate Communications departments
¾ Margins
and outside PR firms
¾ Market share
can work together more effectively
January 28, 2005

Gary F. Grates
2/11/2005 Copyright © 2005, The Institute for Public Relations

PO Box 118400, Gainesville, FL 32611-8400
www.instituteforpr.com
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Copyright © 2005, The Institute for Public Relations
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What else is keeping businesspeople

The corporate world today awake at night?
Non-stop pressure for revenue growth • Corporate governance, • Breaking through the
Talent acquisition, transparency and clutter, cutting through the
Globalization issues development and reputation noise
¾ Off-shoring, out-sourcing retention • Brand awareness and • Knowing where the bar is in
¾ Manufacturing competitiveness comprehension terms of quality, usability,
Costs, health care and • Focus, clarity and excitement
¾ Pricing pressures
pensions are bigger consistency inside the • Third-party endorsement
¾ Political implications organization • Credibility of corporate/
items on the agenda • Addressing non- product/service
Staying ahead of performance performance
the innovation Need for focus and clarity • Market valuation (stock • Margins in a climate of cost
¾ Are people doing the right things? price) controls
curve
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Alignment The PR agency business today
How are your ideas, proposals, New competition from

point-of-view and metrics aligning management consultants Reduced client
and other places budgets
with today’s business realities?
Staff churn
Consolidations
“Lack of imagination” and “fear of innovation”

¾ More focus on billing than new ideas
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What are PR agencies selling? What are clients buying?
“Arms and legs” On a tactical level:

Media contacts ¾Capability
¾Competence On a strategic level:
Methodologies ¾ Perspective (“brains”)
¾Chemistry
¾Cost ¾ Insight and ideas
Add-on services ¾ Point-of-view
“Plans”
¾ Execution
Execution
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The tactical “buy” The tactical “buy”

Capability Competence
• The right skill sets • Agency track record in doing what it’s asking
• The right people to do
• The right areas of service • Right experience and expertise (both
agency and its people)
• Point-of-view in area of competence
• Depth of competence (i.e., not just the senior
people)
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The tactical “buy” The tactical “buy”

Chemistry Cost
• Ability to work with the people • Competitively priced services with measurable
• On the same wave-length cost-value
• A feeling of comfort • No matter how smart or differentiated you
• Similar attitudes about the business and the are, someone else will offer the same thing
assignment cheaper
• You must be able to convince your client of
the value of your services in a way that they
can convince others
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The strategic “buy” The strategic “buy”
Perspective Insight and ideas
• Clients want more than arms and legs — they Think beyond the assignment
want brainpower, too • The “insight memo”
• What’s going on outside the client’s world? ¾ Provide some unique insights to the client
• What’s happening in other industries, other ¾ Help the client connect some dots
companies that provide relevant examples of ¾ Think and write clearly
challenges, opportunities, ideas? • Go beyond what the client expects
• Go the extra yard • Remember…
¾ Ideas win
¾ “Don’t sell me — show me”
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The strategic “buy” The strategic “buy”

Point-of-view Execution
• Agency must be there, even when… • Think about the path as much as the proposition
¾ There is no budget ¾ Who are you talking to?
¾ You don’t have a project ¾ What’s motivating them?
¾ It’s not in your realm ¾ What do they really want out of this relationship?
• Always be thinking about what’s going on • Answers will determine which path you take
¾ Add value, bring in new ideas and new thinking • This is a thinking business, not just a step-and-fetch-it
type of business
• Make the commitment to sniff around
• There are dynamics in your client’s business that are
• Be pre-emptive standing in the way of your revenue growth
• Act before it becomes problem ¾ It’s up to you to identify and neutralize them
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Agency People: Corporate People:

What you should do What you should do
• Immerse yourself in your client’s business, • If your outside agency earns your trust, treat
industry, markets them as confidants
• Know your client’s business strategy • Invite constructive disagreement
• Know who’s buying their products — and why ¾ No “yes-men” need apply
¾ And who is not buying their products — and why not • Use their brains, not just their arms and legs
• Understand your client’s #1 internal issue • Value, use and learn from their external
perspective
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From a former agency guy… From a former agency guy…
Lessons from the client side Lessons from the client side
1. “Strategy” overused, underutilized, misunderstood 1. “Strategy” overused, underutilized, misunderstood
2. Noise is challenge #1
• Strategy supports business goals
3. Sense and Respond
• Strategy composed of tactics
4. Pick your spots
¾ Successful completion of tactics help fulfill strategy
5. Selling vs. solving ¾ Fulfillment of strategy helps meet business goals
6. Three critical questions • Strategy not a static thing — strategy must adapt to
7. Who’s the real audience? change
8. Are you building plans, or relationships? “Strategy was not a lengthy action plan. It was the evolution of
a central idea through continually changing circumstances.”
9. Act like a vendor, be treated like one
Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
10.Defy convention Prussian military thinker
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2. Noise is challenge #1 3. Sense and Respond
• Volume and frequency of messages and information is • Become a social scientist
overwhelming today • Discern what people are looking at, listening to,
• Our challenge is to cut through the noise with messages believing in
often critical to future livelihood and health of business • Take cues from what people do in their personal lives
• We do that by: • Observe and interpret… then make sure that your
¾ Crafting messages carefully messages are linked:
¾ Choosing most appropriate vehicle ¾ To actions that people can find and understand
¾ Discriminating between “push” and “pull” information ¾ To the realities of their everyday world
¾ Being mindful of recipients’ environment
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4. Pick your spots 5. Selling vs. solving
• Follow CEO’s agenda and determine where strategic • Be there with the client
communications can drive business forward • See competitive marketplace and working environment
• Compromise is a necessity in large corporate in ways that allow client to better address the situations
environments • Listen and feel client’s reality
¾ Be sure to compromise on the right things • Focus on finding the solution instead of packaging the
sell — profitability will follow
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6. Three critical questions 7. Who’s the real audience?
• “What does this mean?” • Avoid seeing your audience as a monolith
¾ Understand client’s business thoroughly • Discern the fine details and identify the right audience
¾ Don’t be afraid to ask for the right message
• “What will our audience hear?” ¾ E.g., a productivity message should target managers who
¾ Put yourself in your audience’s reality to anticipate how can actually make a difference, not the workers
they will receive your messages/information
• “Now what?”
¾ Continue to drive for results
¾ Demonstrate an unquenchable thirst for excellence
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8. Are you building plans, or relationships? 9. Act like a vendor, be treated like one
• Too much focus on “plans,” driven by client’s desire for • When agencies focus mostly on their own business
a plan or a program interests (profit margins, selling more services, etc.),
• Not the plan or program that will succeed they’re seen as vendors — and treated as such
• Ability to spend more time on the relationship allows • Clients don’t need vendors
better understanding of nuances and quality of • Clients need the advantages of an agency that offers…
messaging, environment, history
¾ New ideas
• Spend time assimilating, acting and doing what has to
¾ Perspective
be done
¾ Fresh thinking
• Results achieved through a number of routes, not just
plans
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From a former agency guy…

Lessons from the client side Clients need…
10. Defy convention • Ideas, options and recommendations relevant

• Defy the banal to where their business needs to go
• Beware of falling victim to the rhythm of the ¾ Not just ideas out of thin air
organization and its stale processes ¾ Not just ideas that make you look and feel smart
• Don’t fear trying new things — or dumping tired old • Ideas that are relevant to the client’s
ways of doing things
challenges, opportunities, strengths and
• “Disruptive people are an asset” — Bob Lutz
weaknesses
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So where are we,
What does it mean to you and me?
and where can we go?
• The agency must earn its way in Today, we must…
• Clients still suffer from being too close to see • Be well read
¾ Politics and bureaucracy still prevail in corporate
world • Be self-motivated
¾ Client still needs agency people to be their eyes and • Be dissatisfied with the status quo
ears
• Move beyond the givens
• Clients must define and be clear about what ¾ Media relations, research, etc.
agency is there for
¾ Must have a point-of-view • Write (a lot) to become a better writer
¾ Clients must be able to find you ¾ Commit to write a professional article each year
¾ One-size-fits-all PR firm is out
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How can we grow? Best Reads
• “Tough Calls,” by Dick Martin

You Client Agency • “Good To Great,” by Jim Collins
• “Re-Imagine,” by Tom Peters
• Know the current business
situation, strategy,
• Listen and invite new ideas • Have a point-of-view • “What the Best CEOs Know,” by Jeffrey Krames
• Be ready to pay for new ideas • Build a bridge so that the
challenges, etc. (SWOT)
clients can find you • “The McKinsey Way,” by Ethan Rasiel
• Be more open-minded to
• Know how communications
can address those issues
outside ideas (overcome the • Become more aggressive in • “Responsible Managers Get Results,” by Gerald Faust,
“not invented here” terms of encouraging new
productively
syndrome) ideas inside the firm Richard Lyles & Will Phillips
• Earn your right to be inside
through your insight,
• Let the agency into the tent
and let them participate in
• Build depth of talent and
perspective across the firm
• “Profitable Growth is Everyone’s Business,” by Ram
perspective, point-of-view
meetings and discussions Charan
• Build your business IQ
• “Double Digit Growth,” by Michael Treacy
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“To look is one thing.

To see what you look at is another.
To understand what you see is a third.
To learn from what you understand is still
something else.
But to act on what you learn is all that really
matters.”
Source unknown
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35 Copyright © 2005, The Institute for Public Relations

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Growth is issue #1 for business today

• After years of cost cuts and lay-offs,

January 28, 2005

2/11/2005 Copyright © 2005, The Institute for Public Relations

What else is keeping businesspeople

Alignment The PR agency business today

How are your ideas, proposals, New competition from

“Lack of imagination” and “fear of innovation”

“Arms and legs” On a tactical level:

The tactical “buy” The tactical “buy”

The tactical “buy” The tactical “buy”

The strategic “buy” The strategic “buy”

Agency People: Corporate People:

From a former agency guy… From a former agency guy…

From a former agency guy… From a former agency guy…

From a former agency guy… From a former agency guy…

From a former agency guy…

10. Defy convention • Ideas, options and recommendations relevant

How can we grow? Best Reads

• “Tough Calls,” by Dick Martin

“To look is one thing.

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