Association For the Big Guys?
Firms with net incomes under $1 million won't be able to join the newly formed trade association, a handful of executives learned at Counselors Academy last week. The PR association is a spinoff from a years-old Counselors Academy plan.
That didn't sit well with Robert J. Fisher, president of Fisher & Associates, Woodland Hills, Calif. Fisher asked Gary Myers, president of Morgan & Myers and one of the trade association's key planners, to consider alternative criteria for smaller firms to gain representation on the 18-member board. For now, membership fees will vary according to the participating firms' income levels.
Thus far, those forming the association have devised a three-tier membership plan:
- 1. Companies with annual net income over $50 million;
2. Companies with annual net income between $7.5 and $50 million; and
3. Companies with annual net income between $1 and 7.5 million.
"That [structure] has been set so no one big firm is going to wag the dog," Myers explains. But Myers also acknowledges that the trade association is being formed to generate industry participation from leading PR firms which haven't been "enamored" with the Public Relations Society of America nor the academy because of their reluctance to take on broad-stroke issues, such as promoting the role of PR to CEOs or lobbying.
Fisher - who said that his PR company was among the "most quoted" during the O.J. Simpson trial and resulting controversy - challenged the structure of the start-up association whose clout appears to be its backing by major PR conglomerates. The Association of Public Relations Firms, New York, has appointed 18 agency leaders to serve as its founding board of directors who will be sworn in during the association's inaugural board meeting on June 30.
They are:
Margi Booth, M Booth & Associates; Louis Capozzi, Manning, Selvage & Lee, Inc.; Kathy Cripps, Sciens Worldwide Public Relations; David Drobis, Ketchum Public Relations; Robert Druckenmiller, Porter Novelli; Robert Feldman, GCI Group; Gary Grates, Boxenbaum Grates, Inc.; Thomas Hoog, Hill & Knowlton; Andy Hopson, EvansGroup; Rich Jernstedt, Golin/Harris Communications, Inc.; Gwin Johnston, JohnstonWells PR; Chris Komisarjevsky, Burson-Marsteller; Cathy Lugbauer, Weber PR; Michael Morley, Edelman; Gary Myers, Morgan & Myers; Robert Seltzer, Ogilvy; and Patrice Tanaka, PT&Co; and Sharon Van Sickle, KVO.