Good PR work does not come cheaply. A typical mid-sized company might spend between $20,000 and $30,000 a month for agency work, according to Bridgeman
Communications (Boston), while in-house PR can run even higher, once salaries and benefits are factored.
So you wouldn't think an extra $25,000 in the budget would matter much. Think again.
When PR News asked several PR professionals whether a $25K windfall would rev up their campaigns, they answered with a hearty affirmative. Here's how a few of them would
spend that kind of scratch if given the chance:
Isobelle Surface
Vice president and director of communications at Odyssey House, a private, non-profit, social-services agency based in New York City, Surface works with an annual budget
of about $20 million and a two-person PR shop.
"I would put it into my Web site," she says, referring to having an extra $25,000 in the budget. "We do a lot of media work and we do a lot of brochures, but I would want to
put it into my Web site to make it more interactive, more user friendly and to ramp up the online-donation aspects of it. All those things take money."
A hot Web site makes it easy for donors to give but, more than that, it positions the agency as a legitimate brand. "Once you have the Web site, people expect it to be as
technologically current as any other site," she says.
Dan Snyder
Give Dan Snyder $25,000, and he'll be on the first plane he can catch. "There are things that you can't learn sitting in an office," says Snyder, a partner and deputy general
director at Porter Novelli's Washington, D.C., office, who specializes in the food and nutrition industries. "Maybe it means going to [clients'] stores or going to
conventions. Wouldn't it be great to have that money just to fly around the country, talking to experts about a lot of subjects?"
But Snyder isn't talking about shmoozing over hors d'oeuvres. He's talking about acquiring depth. If he had the money to travel, "it would mean having the luxury to focus not
on an immediate problem," he explains. He might, say, attend the annual meeting of the American Dietetic Association or visit with researchers at New York
University or conduct hands-on research at a local grocery store.
Snyder has his own nest egg - "investment accounts" money set up to research a client's general areas of interest as opposed to its specific goals. This type of spending can
sometimes amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it's worth it.
"It shows the client that you are sincerely invested in the business and it makes you smarter, " he says, "so you are better able to serve the client."
Andrew Smith
Director of public relations at Temple University Health System (Philadelphia), Smith works in a system that employs 8,000 people and generates $900 million in annual revenues.
The PR budget is about $500,000, most of which pays the salaries for six staffers.
You might think $25,000 would hardly matter to Smith. Not so. "I'd hire a freelance writer," he says. He's done it before, and it has been some of his best-spent PR money: "It
was like batting practice in baseball. You would throw it to him, tell him you needed it in a week, give him a name and number, and a week later you would have the story."
Newsletter content, news releases - whatever the assignment, the freelancer could do it because he was independent of the Big Machine. "He didn't have to answer any phone
calls; he didn't have to answer any e-mails; and he didn't get bogged down in the day-to-day stuff," Smith says.
Alan Wallace
Vice president of corporate communications at Smarter.com, a comparison-shopping site, Wallace is a one-man PR shop, with some help from Rubenstein Public Relations
(New York City).
Wallace says he would use the money to brand his bosses, company founders Harry Tsao and Talmadge O'Neill. "For years, when you bought a Chrysler, you were buying Lee Iacocca.
When you buy Apple, you buy Steve Jobs and when you buy Microsoft,you buy Bill Gates," be says. "You are buying the strength of the brand but, ultimately, you want
to believe in the person behind the brand."
He would drop the cash on satellite media tours and more radio tours. If he could book the top executives on 20 TV stations and 20 radio stations during a hot shopping season,
"that could be potentially very powerful." He would also get top executives to hit more press events. "You show up with the boss and get right down to business," Wallace says.
"For $25,000, you can book three to five of those, and it would be well-worth it."
Another plus in favor of the media blitz: It enhances your professional credentials.
"In most of my past companies, $25,000 was my budget, and you needed to do a lot with that," Wallace says. "Sometimes, if you are in a cycle where you have to prove
yourself, you have 30 or 60 days on a project to convince them that they need to keep you on board. In a case like that, I need instant PR. When that happens, I am going
with a satellite media tour, because then I have all these clips to put in front of my client and convince them to write another check."
Contacts: Andrew Smith, 215.707.8229, [email protected]; Dan Snyder, 202.973.5833, [email protected]; Isobelle Surface, 917.817.3739, [email protected]; Alan Wallace, 626.932.1111, [email protected]
Liquid Sky
While some PR execs would love to have an extra $25,000 to spend on their campaigns/projects, others make a figure like that seem like a grain of sand on the beach. Here are
some ways to spend huge sums of cash:
- In 1996, an activist group named Save Our Everglades Committee authored some environmental legislation in Florida and spent $14 million to promote it, with the Florida
sugar industry kicking in another $24 million, making it the most expensive public relations campaign in the state's history. - Teen band 'N Sync tried a new [PR] tune by sending singer Lance Bass into space. Sadly, the effort was scrubbed. The PR stunt was to have cost more than $20 million, but the
Russian space agency ultimately nixed the deal when the cash failed to arrive. - USAToday reported in January that the Bush administration spent at least $88 million in fiscal 2004 on contracts with major public-relations firms, compared with $37
million in 2001. Overall, the Administration spent $250 million on PR contracts during its first term, compared with $128 million spent by President Clinton between 1997 and 2000. - Ronald D. Utt of the Heritage Foundation reports that, in the past five years, the Fannie Mae Foundation has pumped $500 million into highly visible and heavily promoted local
projects and grants in an effort to sway public opinion and to shape federal regulations.