PR pros and the company executives they collaborate with often become friends. After all, working closely on everything from brainstorming to crisis communications can be incredibly bonding. It’s easy to see how friendships may develop.
But what about the reverse situation? What does the in-house PR pro do when a friend from within the company becomes an executive you’re assinged to handle? Similarly, in the agency setting a conundrum occurs when a friend approaches your firm to represent her; she’s now a client.
Knowing a great deal about the person you are working with, beyond the scope of a campaign, could be challenging. On the other hand, such a relationship could lead to tremendous accomplishments.
One of these variations happened to us. Our relationship went from colleagues to friends to client-agency. We’ve gone from one managing the other, to the other way around.
Here are tips for navigating such relationships. While the examples we use are from our client-PR firm experience, many are germane to in-house communicators who provide PR counsel to colleagues they already consider friends.
1. Strike a Balance
Knowing how to walk the line between friend and client, or friend and agency, is one of the most important things to master. Striking that balance and compartmentalizing to an extent will help keep your social life separate from work.
For instance, are the weekly team calls really the time to firm up brunch plans? Or to see if either of you heard about a mutual friend’s career change?
Keep working hours for work, and off-hours for friendship. Also important: reserve certain forms of communication for work-related issues. Keep business emails business-related. Use other channels, texting or a personal email account, for social things. Some channels are less obvious. Twitter, for example, can serve for business and personal topics.
2. Don’t Skimp on Details
After working with someone for years, you share many experiences. It’s easy to think, “You know how this works, you’ve been there too, so I don’t need to explain it to you.”
This may be true – in so far as that you don’t need to patronize the other person to explain issues, such as why customers are important for PR, or, conversely, why customer testimonials are hard to secure. But, this is a dangerous mindset.
It remains important for a PR agency to show the reasoning, strategies and tactics behind a campaign. Similarly, the client should explain why it chooses to pursue one activity over another. If only to continue honing your practice and refining your strategic approach, that would be enough.
In addition, it’s important to realize that the buck doesn’t stop with you. Your plans for a campaign often are passed up the chain to practice partners who lack your joint knowledge or share experiences.
3. Work Isn’t an Inside Joke
“Remember that time we tried doing that thing for that client and it worked really well?”
“Yeah. Let’s do that!”
Conversations like this are easy to bring to a PR campaign with a close friend. And while it’s great to use past experience to influence current strategies, you must think beyond your insulated world, as we noted above.
It’s important to bring others into the fold and frame your experiences in the appropriate context. You don’t want to risk alienating team members – agency and client peers alike – by treating the relationship like one big inside conversation.
4. Know You Don’t Know Everything
The client and the agency are business partners, but are not in the same business. True, that seems obvious, but it’s another important point to keep top of mind.
In our case we each have things happening behind the scenes that we are unable to disclose to the other – only what’s critical to help each other do our jobs and collaborate effectively. So, we need a certain level of trust, but also some degree of transparency.
We will both do better with more insight into what’s happening – whether it’s internal restructuring or difficulties getting ahold of certain media. After all, knowledge is power and we can only help the other overcome obstacles or brainstorm approaches if we’re up to speed on what’s going on, within reason…That’s why you sign NDAs.
5. Do Your Job
We know better than most how the other likes to work, or what drives her up a wall, or what really impresses. And, we can certainly use that to each other’s advantage, but it only gets you so far.
No matter what you’ve been through together, the work remains central. In addition, regardless of how much understanding or shared experiences, you still have a job to do. If you don’t, be prepared to face the consequences.
That goes both ways. While the agency may be on retainer and up against a specific scope of work, the client must provide information, time and resources to enable the agency to move forward. If not, it could stall and become unproductive from both viewpoints.
Walk the Line
PR teams would do well to treat clients as friends, bringing the kind of relaxed, confident and open relationship that can take years to build. But, knowing how to walk the line is important. Reading the situation, understanding factors in play and knowing who else is involved influences how an agency-client friendship can play out.
CONTACT: @sajackman1 [email protected]