Sure most journalists have had at least one negative experience with a PR professional. That’s a given.

But there are a lot of corporate PR folks who have also had negative experiences with PR. The most common complaint I hear—and pretty often—is “Yeah, we need an agency, but the last one I worked with charged a fortune and didn’t do anything.” Then there’s the chirpy “We’re happy with our agency; we don’t want to consider that there are other activities we could be doing to drive our objectives.” Or: Just no!

Different sides of the same coin. On one hand are the skeptical who don’t trust agencies at all, as in ever. On the other, when corporate PR folks find an agency who delivers anything whatsoever they’re hesitant to raise the bar for fear it’ll revert to nothing. To ask that agency to continually prove what they do and to look at additional services available from other sources is just too much trouble.

That said…for those who have experienced a bad experience with agency X the natural course when considering hiring agency Y is to look for specifics. That means specific hours allocated, specific team members, specific media targets…and sometimes, a few realistic specific guarantees.

You corporate PR seekers are probably thinking “Yeah, and what’s wrong with that? You hiding something from me!? Not working those hours you’re billing? What? Can’t deliver The Journal?”

Agency folks are rolling your collective eyes till it hurts.

As this newsletter never tires of repeating, PR is an art and a science. Key word: and. This does not mean we cannot be specific and offer guarantees (oops, I’m certain to be de-carded from The PR Club for Men & Women), but we won’t and should not guarantee specific media placements. That’s just lying. Not a number of placements, sorry, and not placements in specific media outlets. If this is what you seek, you should be delivered quickly to an ad agency. We can recommend one…though they’re a little pricey.

When I say we can be precise, I mean unambiguous about what we are doing with your time. Which brings me to my biggest pet-peeve: Stop asking us to write plans before you’re paying us. Proposals, sure, we love that—proposals that are specific to a prospect’s obvious and hidden needs. We can give you insight into how we think, how we work, and our level of expertise, what we are going to do to solve your problems. Once you see we are professionals who know from whence we come, and have done it for a decade and a half (wow), and if you get that PR has value in a marketing program and can drive your objectives overall, you can safely commit to a relationship.

Sometimes corporate people who’ve been burned ask for weird contract clauses like the ability to wake up and cancel after a bad meal reacted on them. These impossibly short time frames (2 or 3 months) are illustrative of a kind of misunderstanding that exists about PR (not to mention business, but I don’t have space in your e-mail box for that).

Once you know that an agency does PR the right way (another article) and offers services with a direct line to your bottom one, treat that agency like the professionals we are. Remember that we know what we’re doing or we would have been swallowed up by the Bad PR Gods. Your past crap experience could have been a result of any number of factors and if you have come so far as to not damn an entire industry don’t make unreasonable business demands on a new partner. And oh yeah, please know: Long-lead publications work three to four months out.

One last thought one upon which I will expand in the next issue of the Full Frontal PR Report…

Many of our clients have in-house PR divisions. Often a part of our mission as their agency of record is to help these people get the visibility they need and deserve in house. You know, where they work. As PR has evolved over the past 10 years into something particularly innovative, it has become in some ways more credible (e.g., PR “groups” inside smaller firms and PR “majors” at universities). In many ways it has become less trustworthy (witness that notorious article from the 1990’s titled “Lying for a Living”). This dichotomy is frustrating because media professionals—whether we dial from an agency, creatively build up the corporate side or toil every day at a news organization—are in this together.

With that, I bid you only unburned fingers next time out.

Erin Mitchell is RLM’s Group Director, hoping the burns are all better now.