Escherman

The Inquirer has taken great exception to Lighthouse PR’s press release regarding the quality of recent senior PR job applicants.

Describing the firm as "a beacon of pomposity in an ocean of spin", Evil Doctor Spinola continues by saying:

The bunnies complain about receiving podcasts, soft porn photos of
applicants and teaser campaigns where candidates sent items of
underwear over the course of a week. Four percent of applicants
admitted that they had either faced disciplinary action or been sacked
from a previous role. Peculiar pastimes cited included: ‘Wicka and
Occult Magik’, ‘Nudity and Naturalism’, ‘Ferret-legging’ and ‘Cheese
Rolling’.

Now, call me old fashioned, but surely that’s precisely the kind of
imaginative approach required to stand out from the grey, faceless
no-hopers who make up the mainstream of the PR industry?

The use of podcasts, etc, does indeed show a level of creativity – but like much in our shiny new PR 3.0 world, if not done well, can prove more hindrance than help.

Perhaps Lighthouse ought to share with the good Doctor some of the material received – he might take a different view when confronted with the hard evidence.

One of those questions that journalists have hated since the dawn of time – and still do. Depressing that the practice still seems to occur with such alarming regularity. A useful reminder here, courtesy of Strumpette, of the reasons why it was and is a bad idea to ask a journalist whether they got your press release.

While perusing Glyn Moody’s fine blog on all things open source, I chanced upon this little item.

As Glyn says, "this insightful presentation
by Brent Williams, a self-styled "(temporarily) Independent Equity
Research Analyst" is unusual because it manages to combine a good
understanding of the open source model and world with some grown-up
economics."

It was the section on the economics of software as commodity that set me thinking about the parallels with the PR business. Talking of commodity markets generally, Williams says:

No switching costs to buy from a different
producer (other than the notice period, there is no cost involved involved in firing an agency).

Market prices are a function of changes in
supply and demand -producers can’t affect demand, only supply.  (Hence during the dot com boom, agencies could hike their prices due to demand – but can’t stimulate demand in a shrinking market)

Pricing moves quickly to find a point of supply/demand equilibrium (hence the average day rates of agencies are falling – even if agencies try to keep them high, overservicing to satisfy client demand brings down the real rate)

“Excess” profits quickly disappear and producer profits revert to the mean of the economy as a
whole (which is why PR agency profitability is generally very low)

Lowest-cost producer wins in a commodity marketplace, because they can sustain “excess”
profits longer than all other producers. (Except with commodity PR, the biggest cost is people. So trying to squeeze costs on staff ie get them to do more for less, leads the well documented issues of morale and lack of quality personnel).

And given most agencies are operating in commodity mode, then the long term outlook for most of them is not exactly rosy.