Who Should PR Agencies Report To?

Agency Leadership Podcast

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss whether PR agencies should report to the head of communications or the head of marketing. They reference a LinkedIn post by Parry Headrick, which suggests that PR agencies should ideally report to the communications lead.

Chip and Gini explore various considerations such as the size and structure of the client’s organization, the types of projects being handled, and the importance of having someone who understands PR work. They also emphasize the need for agencies to adapt and possibly integrate the PESO model to better serve modern client needs.

Key takeaways

• Chip Griffin: “It’s our job as agencies to make sure that we are working with people who understand what we do. Either because they knew it coming in or because we’ve helped educate them, preferably during the business development process, so that they have a clear understanding of what we can and frankly, what we cannot do as an agency, what results are reasonable to expect.”
• Gini Dietrich: “If we’re going to report to the CEO, do they really have time to work with us, or are we going to be left sort of flailing around trying to do it ourselves? Ideally, we have somebody internally who can sort of be the gatekeeper project manager, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a communications person.”
• Chip Griffin: “When it comes to measurement, I think we also need to realize that on the marketing side of the house, it’s easier to produce numbers. Whether they are truly measuring anything that matters is a whole different thing.”
• Gini Dietrich: “You can have really smart, sophisticated executives like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who believe in the value of PR, but because you can’t measure it in the same way as marketing, I think we’re going to always fight that battle.”

Resources

• Parry Headrick’s LinkedIn post

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, I’m trying to figure out who I should report to. Who should be, I mean, I guess probably the agency owner. I probably shouldn’t, oh, I should report to you always. Yep, right. For those of you not watching on video, Gini was very helpfully pointing all of her fingers at herself.

So, yes. I mean, look, we all know that I report to you, particularly on this show, at least.

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: But what we’re going to talk about is who, who PR agencies should be reporting to, because this is a topic that was brought up on a LinkedIn post by Parry Headrick and of Crackle PR, and he puts out lots of great content on LinkedIn.

Some, some, some less great content that I disagree with, but you know, most of it I agree with. And, and this one here I think is, is an interesting topic for discussion. And so it’s very short, so I’ll read it. “Just spit balling here, but shouldn’t PR agencies report to the head of comms instead of marketing? The former speaks our language.” And then of course he finishes with his trademark. “This is the way.”

Gini Dietrich: This is the way.

Chip Griffin: With a, with a fist bump or something like that at the end. We’ll, we’ll dispense with that. I mean, you know, I do “it depends” at the end. So we can all have our silly way of signing off, I suppose.

So the, the real question here though, is in 2024, should PR agencies be reporting to the head of communications and should they avoid reporting to the head of marketing?

Gini Dietrich: I mean, in an ideal world, yes, but I don’t think that they’re, There are lots of organizations that don’t have a head of communications.

There are lots of organizations that don’t have a chief marketing officer. There are lots of organizations that have, you know, a marketing team of one or a marketing team of 10. there are lots of organizations that don’t have anything. And so they, they might, agency might report to HR, which is terrible, but it happens or to a chief financial officer, again, terrible, but it happens.

Also, if it’s crisis, well, that’s what I was going to say, if it’s crisis work or public affairs work, they might report it to legal. So, I mean, to use your phrase, it depends, right? But in an ideal world, yes, we should report to their head of communications.

Chip Griffin: But, I mean, to me, I think part of this is very agency specific.

And when I work with clients to put together their ideal client profile for their agencies, One of those things to consider is who do you work best with? Because I think there are certainly PR agencies who almost have to work with a head of communications. There almost has to be an in house PR team for them to be effective and to, to accomplish the results that they set out to do. But I think, I think it depends on the specifics of your agency, the services that you provide, the market that you serve, and I don’t think there’s a one size fits all. So I guess I suppose it does depend, but I think, I think part of this goes to the question of what is a PR agency in 2024?

Because, you know, I, I think that the PR agencies as you and I knew them when we were getting started, it’s not the same today in part because of this thing called, what is it, the, the PESO model or something like that, that I’ve heard of that, that may be changing how communications and marketing, for those of you who, you know, have been living under a rock for the last five years we’ve talked about it before here, but Gini is the creator of the PESO model. And please, dear God, credit her. If you talk about it.

Gini Dietrich: Otherwise, wrath will be had.

Chip Griffin: At least do not claim it is your own, right? Even if you forget to credit her, please do not pretend that you created it because apparently people have a habit of doing that, which is unfortunate.

Gini Dietrich: Anyway. yeah, you’re absolutely right. It does depend. And, you know, for my agency. Typically, what we see is almost, almost never do our clients have a head of communications.

And part of that, part of the reason for that is the type of businesses that we work with. We do really gritty B2B stuff, manufacturing, that kind of stuff. So they may have one or two marketing people, but they don’t, they definitely do not have a communications team. But because we implement a PESO fully integrated PESO program, we work really well with sales and we work really well with marketing.

So there’s, you know, for one client, we, we work directly with the sales team and we integrate everything that we do into the work that they do. And for most of our clients, I think only that that one is sales. We have one that we report into HR because we’re doing a lot of internal and employee comms.

And then everybody else were reporting into either marketing or the CEO directly.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I think you’ve highlighted something important here, which is that the structure of organizations very much varies very much based on the industry, the size of the firm. I mean, you know, the smaller the firm, the less likely it is that you’re going to have completely separate communications and marketing functions.

And even in the largest organizations, oftentimes. Communications is, you know, a subsidiary of marketing, right? So you may still have a head of comms, but they may themselves report to the CMO. And so, you know, I, I don’t think it’s, it’s that simple cut and dry, you know, absolutely you should be going out there trying to, integrate with the communications team.

And honestly, even in the largest organizations, most of them are, are looking at communications in a more integrated fashion and not looking at it in terms of just traditional PR earned media, that sort of thing. And so even if you don’t offer the full PESO suite, you need to be in a position where, you know, how to integrate well with that.

And so oftentimes even if you are reporting to the head of communications, you need to be playing nice in the sandbox with others and coordinating and achieving those results together.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And, you know, I think, I think Parry’s post raises a good point to consider, which is, and he says the former understands what we do.

And I think that’s true. you know, much of the work that our marketing brethren do, is measurable in ways that we can’t measure our work. You know, a lot of the work that we do, even in a PESO model program is brand awareness, credibility, authority, and trust. Things that you know, If they’re working and things that you know, they’re not things that, you know, you have and things, you know, that if you don’t have it, but it’s incredibly hard to track it directly to sales, like you can do with marketing and advertising.

So when you’re reporting into communications, the communications expert inside the organization understands well those things can go to bat for you in executive leadership meetings and staff meetings and all hands and all of those places where it’s where you typically aren’t hanging out. Right. when you’re reporting into marketing, you will typically go to bat for yourself, but the marketer doesn’t traditionally understand all of the stuff that we do that helps the helps raise the business up.

And so it’s harder for them to go to bat. So I think that was the point of Perry’s post. If I’m reading it correctly, which is, yeah, in an ideal world, we would all report to somebody who understands the work that we do, understands the value of it, and can go to bat for us. When, when the CEO is like, well, this is great.

We spent 5, 000 last month and didn’t get a single sale from it.

Chip Griffin: Well, I think you’ve touched on a, an absolutely vital thing here, which is that it’s, it’s less about the title and more about the understanding. And so it’s our job as agencies to make sure that we are working with people who understand what we do.

Either because they knew it coming in or because we’ve helped educate them, preferably during the business development process, so that we have a clear understanding of what we can and frankly, what we cannot do as an agency. What results are reasonable to expect. And you want to make sure that you have that alignment of expectations.

Obviously, that tends to be easier if it’s someone who’s got the title of head of communications. But honestly, I’ve worked with plenty of heads of communications over the years who are nitwits, who, who don’t have the proper expectation. And, and so working with them just because they have the title doesn’t make sense.

But I think, I think when he talks about speaking our language, I think that is the key piece of the argument. You know, the, the hook is the title, but the, the reality is it’s that understanding that you have of each other and what can and cannot happen and what reasonable expectations are. That’s what you have to focus on when you’re looking for clients.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I would say to your, to counter your nitwit comment, there have been some chief marketing officers that I’ve worked with that Have taught me ways to go about communicating to the leadership team on, on how to measure the work that we do because they’ve been so good at, like we, I worked with one at a client for two and a half years.

There’s probably one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with and he could say to you… he would say to me, okay, this is really interesting, but it’s not quite there I want you to extrapolate it to do this and once I made that tweak the CEO was always like, oh, okay I got it. and had I not had him coaching me through some of that, I don’t think I would have gotten it all the way there.

So, I, to your point, like, there are some that are great and there are some that are not, and it’s, it’s in finding the right fit for the work that you’re doing and the work that your agency does to be able to get you across that finish line, I think.

Chip Griffin: Right, and I think when it comes to measurement, I think we also need to realize that on, on the marketing side of the house, it’s, it’s easier to produce numbers.

Whether they are truly measuring anything that matters is a whole different thing.

Gini Dietrich: Fair, fair.

Chip Griffin: And I think that, and, and look, I, I love numbers as much as the next guy, probably more, and I know from having been in politics that you can make numbers say anything that you want them to say. We can all look at the same data set and come up with two different, actually, and that was true, you know, 20, 30 years ago, that’s not a new phenomenon, despite, you know, the, the alternative facts and all of the things we’ve talked about over the last decade.

So this is, this is something that’s always been there. But I think the other thing from a marketing standpoint is because particularly in the digital marketing world, it is so easy to accumulate data today, it becomes just as easy to confuse numbers with meaning. And so just because we can track all of these clicks on ads and visits to a web page and time on site and all, do they matter?

And there’s still a lot of things that even on the general marketing side are hard to track, like people who view an ad but don’t click on it. And in the old days, that was something that Ad agencies thought about a lot, you know, you put a TV ad on, you know, you don’t know if someone acts immediately on it.

And there’s a lot of research that says you have to see an ad multiple times before it has an impact. So if I’m running Google ads and people aren’t clicking on them, are they totally useless? The answer is probably not because people are still seeing it as they’re going through the results. And so it contributes at some point down the road and they may come to you through something else.

You don’t know that that Google ad still had an impact. But it did. And so we need to be careful that we don’t just say only the things that we can explicitly track are the things that matter. And I think when it comes to PR, we give up the battle too easily on the marketing side because they’ve got such easy access to data.

And we have a tougher time getting the things that can prove trust and reputation and all of the things that we’re focused on primarily on the PR side.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think the biggest challenge on that, from that perspective is

And I, I fight this one a lot, but I think the biggest challenge is an executive can say to marketing, I want to know that if I spend, and I just had this conversation with a client in December, he said, okay, we spent 4, 000 a month in Google ads, and we were able to generate X amount in revenue. If I double my, my spend to 8, 000 a month, will I be able to double my revenue?

And the marketing team said, yes. And then he said, turned to me and he said, okay, if we double our spend with you, can you double our revenue? And I was like, I have no idea. . I mean, I didn’t say, I have no idea, but I have no idea. Right. I can’t, I can’t definitively say yes like they can. And so there’s a lot of that.

Chip Griffin: But, but they’re wrong when they definitively say yes.

Gini Dietrich: Right. But they do say…

Chip Griffin: Because they don’t know.

Gini Dietrich: They don’t know, but they are, they are, they do definitively say yes. And when I say,

like, I can’t say if you spend 8, 000 a month with us, you’re going to get X number. And I can guarantee that you’ll get X amount in revenue and a marketer will say that. So I think that that’s the challenge that we face is that executives, marketers will say, can definitively say, will definitively say that whether or not it’s right.

Or wrong. And an executive expects the same from, from us. And that’s the bigger challenge is it’s less about, you know, I mean, you can have really smart, sophisticated executives like Bill Gates who believe in the value of – Warren Buffett, who believe in the value of PR, but because you can’t measure it in the same way, I think we’re going to always fight that battle.

Chip Griffin: Well, but I think that’s, that’s in part why agencies shouldn’t be focused purely on PR and earned media anymore. I think that model

Gini Dietrich: Totally fair. That’s totally fair.

Chip Griffin: I think there, there are certain specialized niches that exist where you still do that in 2024, but I think the vast majority of PR agencies ought to be incorporating, if not all, most of the PESO model into the work that they’re doing.

Yep. And that’s, you know, that’s not me blowing smoke because you are my co-host. It’s, it’s what I actually believe because I mean, there’s so many factors at play here, right? I mean, because of this flood of data, executives are making decisions based on all of these other things, and so if you’re not playing the things that people want to spend money on, it’s hard to grow a business. But at the same time, we’re looking at a media environment that is continuing to shrink, at least in the traditional outlets.

There’s an expansion of other things that sort of are hybrid. I mean, influencers have become sort of some hybrid between an advertising outlet and a media outlet. And you see all these people on YouTube who are doing product reviews and things like that. And in the past, you would have dismissed them.

Today, you have to treat them almost the same as you would a magazine or newspaper reviewer because they have just as many people paying attention, if not more in many cases. And so because of all of these changes that are taking place, agencies need to be adapting along with it, and they need to be looking at who am I serving?

And, and what else could I be doing that is helpful to them? Not by spreading myself super thin, but because I understand them and I understand how I can make it easier to generate press coverage or how I can amplify that press coverage or how I can get things done when the press coverage isn’t available, but I can still show results for clients.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think, you know, going back to your comment a few minutes ago about figuring out who your ideal client is. When you’re doing that work, it’s less about the title to your point and more about the person who understands what you do. So when you work with your coaching clients. How do you help them get to the goal of determining who their ideal client is?

Chip Griffin: So, I mean, I start by looking in the mirror, right? We can learn a lot from the past. So, if you sit down with your list of clients that you’ve had over the past three years or so, and you look through and say, Okay, well, let’s look at not what industry they’re in or the specific set of services, but let’s think about the organization itself.

Where’s that organization in its lifecycle? What is their internal structure? The person that we were working with? Is it someone who was new to the role? Had they been there a while? Is it a client that’s worked with agencies before or hasn’t worked with agencies before? If they have worked with agencies before, are they like my agency or are they different?

The more you can dig into those characteristics that aren’t those, they aren’t the top level ones. Some of them, you know, you can’t just plug into a database and build a list of prospects based on it. But you need to understand the nature of that organization in order to figure out whether it’s a good fit for you.

And generally speaking, when I sit down with clients and do this, and they look through their own client rosters, there tends to be a fair amount of similarity in there. And you find two thirds of them were a head of communications, or it was someone who was relatively new to the role or was someone who had a lot of experience, right?

I mean, we all tend to fall into comfort zones. We all have similar people that tend to, you know, work well with us. And, and, and when we meet them, they’re like, yeah, you know, this is, this is the kind of person I’m looking for to work with. And so you want to find those opportunities and, and that tends to exist outside of the, how big is the company?

How much revenue? What’s their headcount? What industry? Those are all nice. You got to have those. But it’s digging into those other factors that help you to understand if it’s going to be a good fit or not.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think, yeah, a really good point is it’s less about the title and more about the work.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And it’s, I mean, you know, I mean, is it a big team or a small team, right? I mean, I, I have clients who work best if the, the client they’re working with has a huge team and they’re really just a piece of it. They’re, they’re, they’re covering one aspect of it or they’re providing largely strategy or something like that.

But then there are others who we just want to do everything, right? You know, we work best, we’ve got someone who’s 50 percent focused on PR and that’s it. And, and we’ll handle, you know, all of the day to day. But those are two different structures and generally agencies thrive in one or the other, but not both.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I mean, for us, we would prefer to work with, you know, at 30, at least a 30 million size company that either has one or two like mid level marketing people or communications experts, and that’s it. Because then we can come in and we can build the marketing processes and team for them. We do a lot of

hiring, helping them hire and on board and coach, like train all of that. And then we exit and we go on to the next. So that’s where we excel, like doing all implementing the PESO model internally like that. So if somebody, what we have found is that when they, when an organization has a large, large marketing communications team, they have their silos, they’re stuck in their way.

They say they want to implement the PESO model, but they really don’t, or they can’t get out of their own way to do it. And we’re just not as successful in those kinds of companies. So I think that’s a really good point.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and so the more you understand that the better. And so to Parry’s point, if you can, if you’ve got that, that alignment of language on both sides.

And, and you have that alignment of vision and that alignment of expectations, you’re going to be successful. To me though, it isn’t about the title. The title might be a first step to trying to sort of figure it out, but I wouldn’t worry nearly as much about the title and I would focus much more on the substance of the conversations.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s really, if we’re going to report to the CEO, do they really have time to work with us, or are we going to be left sort of flailing around trying to do it ourselves? Ideally, we have somebody internally who can sort of be the gatekeeper project manager, keep things moving internally kind of thing, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. a communications person.

Chip Griffin: Just make sure you’re all on the same page. That’s the, that’s the best advice I can always offer really any organization working with any client. You don’t have to be an agency. You just want to make sure that you’re on the same page before you get started with the relationship. And you’ll be in a much better place if you do that.

Gini Dietrich: And go through Chip’s list when you’re figuring out your ideal customer.

Chip Griffin: There we go. So on that note, we will draw this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast to a close. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.