April 27, 2009
A league of its own (making)…
When almost half of the Top 50 agencies decline to submit numbers you have to question the validity of the PR Weak Top 150 League table, n’est-ce pas? The annual ranking was published last week.
Companies that submit numbers have to have them signed off by an auditor ensuring a degree of rigour. Alternatively an agency can plead non disclosure under Sarbanes Oxley in which case PR Weak estimates fee income and headcount, based on, umm…we’re not sure. Guessing how much business an agency’s won and lost, I suppose, or how much existing clients might have increased or cut budgets…and maybe standing outside the doors of a Monday morning and counting ‘em in?
Then there are companies that are missing altogether: Bite, Diffusion, Firefly, Lewis PR, Metia, Ruder Finn and Wolfstar to name a few. We could go on. The number of agencies not participating grows every year. For some it’s simply to hide a desperately poor performance. Best for me, though, was the CEO of one leading tech agency who told me that he hadn’t submitted numbers this year because, as he said to PR Weak, “he couldn’t be arsed”.
PRCA Director General Francis Ingram says that once again the league table will provide a useful reference for all of us that work in PR. No it won’t mate - a huge chunk of the data is guestimated or incomplete.
In his commentary editor Danny Rogers claims that industry turnover is up 10 per cent and staff numbers are down by 210. Alternatively PR Weak’s estimates could be wrong and the numerous agencies that have boycotted the table could tell a completely different story. But then we’ve absolutely no way of knowing.
That league tables and awards can be a useful promotional tool for agencies is in no doubt. Though surely a league table measuring quality over size would be more useful? Ask any client whether they’d prefer to work with the biggest agency or the best and there’s only one answer.
According to a separate feature in this week’s edition of PR Weak there are eight things that clients want to see in an agency. They’re presented in ‘no particular order’ but, funnily enough, the first one is ‘Awards and League Tables’…two of PR Weak’s biggest annual money-spinners…
Comments
Walt:
Not sure I’d expect Diffusion to be in there anyway. Their name is a regular in PR Weak, but that’s due to Daljit’s profile, rather than their extensive client base. Don’t get me wrong, I like the concept of the company, but I wouldn’t put them in the ranks of Lewis and Metia quite yet.
Not that it matters, because the rankings are pointless anyway.
countryboy:
Why do clients get so turned on by awards? Surely most awards are for, well, writing a really good award entry. In Red’s hey day when they were winning almost every award going, one of the Directors told me they went through a very long, arduous and painful process putting award entries together, taking up a lot of senior time. It’s like being in one of those ‘top 100 companies to work for tables’. All it means is that you could be bothered to spend a load of time filling in forms.
Steve Loynes:
Yes countryboy, and the same Red chap (well, someone in his team more likely) later went to Midnight and won them a bumper stack of silverware (in the spray-painted plastic sense at least) too.
Fair point you make, but prospects, clients and staff all love awards and it’s a sad night at the Weak awards when all you walk away with is a 1/4 of a bottle of someone else’s red wine and an empty pack of Marlboro lights.
As Stuart Smith used to say, “the world’s run by those that turn up,” and I’d dare say he’d add that “it’s those that bother to fill in forms that win awards.”
Anonymous:
Rather than relying on people to submit information they’d be as well going to someone like Experian and getting the turnover figures last published at Companies House.
david brain:
http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=603
http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=656
On this Mr WL you are well out of order. It is not PR Week’s fault that figures are hidden from them, it is the pathetic bean counters and advertising chaps that run the marketing services groups and hide behind the convenient veil of sarbanes oxley. These are the same groups for whom you can read in Ad Age the precise numbers for their ad agencies…regulated by the same Sarbanes Oxley. Now this is not the UK based leaders of these firms who hide the numbers lest you think I am criticising them. It is their bosses bosses; those faceless number crunching bean counters and loafer wearing ad men who don’t realise that you cannot be in a business that advises clients on the value of transparency and proper governence and then act in a different way.
Don’t know why Wolfstar and the others aren’t in but if they are interested in something that helps clients make decisions then they should send Danny their numbers.
...the world's leading...:
“Well out of order”? What, us?
OK, maybe sometimes. But not here.
I understand that the agency bean counters who decide to hide numbers behind Sarbanes Oxley are idiots - and there’ll always be a few agencies that don’t submit numbers to hide shabby performance - but the fact is they can and they are and it’s become so prevalent that it’s rendered the table almost meaningless.
So shouldn’t your mate Danny take the lead in (a) more aggressively having a pop at the agencies not providing numbers (what? biting the hand that feeds..?) and (b) thinking about a league table that has more meaning to the industry?
Or does the supplement still atract the advertisers so the actual content doesn’t really matter?
And yes, we know that Edelman submits numbers and you lots did OK…well done.
Once Bitten...:
I’ve always ahd a bit of a problem with the PR Week tables, and we’ve never submitted our numbers.
This is because
a) every agency I worked for before I set up my own manipulated the numbers in a way which made collateralised debt obligations seem simple and transparent
b) Who cares anyway?
Leave a comment