Good news for BT shareholders

All BT shareholders I am sure will join The PRologist in congratulating Peter Morgan, the BT Group Director of Communications, who is currently conducting a review of PR agencies. He is doing this because BT is spending too much money on PR. So has Peter Morgan just joined and in the heady heights of the first 100 day plan? No, Peter Morgan has been at BT for nearly five years!

The article in PRWeek states that “Morgan denied the review was a direct response to worsening financial conditions”. Why? That would make more sense, as one conclusion that could be arrived at is that it has taken him so long to realise that BT are paying too much out to agencies.

Unfortunately this behaviour is all too familiar. Why is there so little trust and respect between the in-house PR team and the PR agencies? When the going gets tough the PR Heads get going on their ‘agency reviews’ – it’s easier to get rid of an agency to demonstrate cost cutting than it is to strip bear an in-house team. Rather than shoot from the hip, the role of the head of PR is to ensure that value for money be had all the year round for all time and they should be in a position to defend the spend on any agency they use to the Board. It’s Good Business.

The relationship with a PR agency should be through both the good times and the bad times. If the relationship is managed in a professional, transparent and diligent manner, evaluating the work that is carried out and providing feedback then this would never happen. The PRologist remembers stripping out an agency in the first 100 days that had consistently charged a six figure sum year on year with little value delivered and replaced it with a smaller, nippier filly. The results were astounding and long lasting.

However, the issue also reminds The PRologist of an overheard story of a Marketing Director in Coq d’Argent talking about the companies she worked at – for no longer than 18 months. When asked she said “Well, when I first join I am in the honeymoon period so I am allowed several months to get to grips with what is going on. Then once I have done that I then do an agency pitch and sack all the old agencies and get new agencies in which takes a few more months. Then the new agencies take a while to be briefed and brought up to speed and of course I get schmoozed a lot. By the time the first campaigns have been delivered and the evaluation starts coming in – it will then have been 18 months since I joined so I have to leave before they realise how incompetent I am!”