David Brain, CEO of Edelman Asia Pacific, provides concise tips for running a PR firm simply through ruthless application of common sense. Some key tips include: focusing on what clients want and your people can do rather than complex strategies; hiring the best people and empowering rather than micromanaging them; basing pay on talent rather than benchmarks; being transparent about revenue to budget accurately; and maintaining a happy office culture with no "assholes" or "gunslingers."

1. The ruthless application of
common sense
or
how to run a PR firm
David Brain, CEO Edelman,
Asia Pacific
March 2011

2. No great books on business management have been written
by PR people, We are traditionally crap at it. We rise to the
top of the PR agencies by being good at PR not
management. Then we get given an office, with people,
clients and a budget. And that’s when the wheels come off.
Which is a shame, because running a PR business is just about
the ruthless application of common sense and is a far simpler
thing (intellectually at least) than formulating advice for a
client in a crisis or finding a creative way of giving a dull
brand some interest and competitive differentiation.
I have run practices, offices and regions for three of the global
PR brands and two small independent companies in both EMEA
and Asia Pacific and the wheels have indeed come off once or
twice. They probably will again, but if they do it will not be
because I made the mistake of thinking this was a complex
business model. PR agencies are simple businesses. They have
inside them often difficult people doing some (occasionally)
clever things, but they are simple businesses.
Here are my top tips.

3. save the clever strategising
for your clients

4. ideas that work for a PR business of 2,500 people will often not for an
agency of 30 people – filter out the crap from head office

5. deciding what you are not going to do is as
important as deciding what you are going to do

6. when you are deciding what to do - focus on what your clients want
and need and your people can do and like doing – please no gap
analysis

7. don’t buy a dog and then bark yourself – hire the best people you
can; train, mentor and support them, but never micromanage

8. salary benchmarking is the work of the devil – hire, promote
and pay people on talent and value - if you stick to
benchmarking and salary banding your best will leave and
the dull, feckless and lazy will seek you out

9. Darwin was right…the fittest do survive, so over-hire at intake
and junior levels and be honest that not all will make it (the
survivors will raise the standards of those above and around
them)

10. always know your future revenue (so you must know
how to value your pipeline)

11. keep total staff
costs to 55% of
revenue
or below

12. no sandbagging – you can hide revenue and ‘surprise’ me
once……after that you are insulting me

13. zero base your cost
budget each year

14. if you have steady or increasing
revenues, making appropriate
margin is only a matter of will power

15. and making an appropriate
margin is a matter of self respect

16. be the best at at least one thing – excellence in one
offer or specialism will rub of on the rest of the firm

17. have a point of view – on media, society, community, business,
politics, culture, whatever, but for god’s sake have a point of view

18. nurture your sixth sense – whether
paranoiac or paranormal

19. don’t bury your head in the sand – it’s always best to make the right
decision of course, but sometimes you just have to make a decision

20. size matters – because an office of scale can specialise and
clients value more highly specialist knowledge and skills

21. …client conflict is a given,
how we handle it is our choice

22. get serious about digital

23. growth is not an excuse

24. never under estimate the motivating powers of
alcohol…whatever it takes run a happy office

25. no assholes

26. no gunslingers

27. walk about more

28. …always give me good news on a Friday, bad news on
a Monday - never, ever the other way around