The tide's turning - and PR's getting a bigger slice of the financial pie. That's according to a just-released survey that reveals in-house and agency budgets have increased 30 percent in the past year.
The survey, released by Thomas L. Harris & Co., Highland Park, Ill., will be analyzed in greater detail in the Oct. 13 issue, but in general shows that internal budgets rose 10 percent and external budgets for agency outsourcing jumped 44 percent. The findings were gleaned from responses from 2000 execs at client companies of a range of PR firms, including giants Burson-Marsteller, Ketchum PR and Porter Novelli. These firms also cosponsored the study, which has been coined "the largest client survey ever conducted in PR."
It's generally been the case in PR that corporations and the agencies they work with aren't that forthcoming about PR budgets because they've historically been steps down from the millions earmarked for advertising.
Among other key findings were these:
- The use of PR firms for strategic counsel increased 10 percent (over the 1996 survey) to 77 percent;
- Clients listed media training, a new item in this year's survey, as runner-up in the work given to PR firms; and
- Internal communications remains the lead dog for the genre of work that's handled by communicators within corporations, followed by corporate reputation management, which jumped from 81 percent to 87 percent. (Thomas Harris, 847/266-1025)