PRMan

PR Expenses

I was speaking to a colleague over a couple of beers recently about journalist relationships. The issue was over the maintenance of relationships and specifically who fits the bill for journalist entertainment in the agency world. By this I mean where entertaining journalists becomes part of a PR person’s job or objectives.

The interest in blogging about it came from our difference of opinion on the subject. From my perspective, as I’ve never known any different, meeting with and developing relationships has always been part of my job role. As a consequence paying for lunches and drinks, within reasonable grounds, has been chargeable to employers. Contact is made with important journalists and maintained for the benefit of clients and the organisation I work for and as such payment from company coffers seems reasonable. It is only where these relationships extend, i.e. I really get on with a journalist and meet them more frequently as a mate, where this changes. In this circumstance, it seems reasonable that I or any PR person concerned should pay/split the bill with the journalist, as a friend rather than business acquaintance.

The other side of the coin is that some agencies have a policy of not paying for such meetings unless directly relating to clients or actual client-press briefings. Executives are expected to pay for lunches and drinks out of their own pockets, on the premise that such relationships are an investment in one’s own capability/ability to work with the press and are inherently valuable throughout his or her years in the industry. This is true but neither system apears perfect.

The core reason for the emergence of these bi-polar policies, though I’m sure some inbetweeny ones exist (would love to hear about them), is precisely due to the possible abuse of journalist-related expenses as journalist contacts become more friends than business acquaintances. Some agencies seem happy to take the risk that reasonable expenditure will be maintained to create good journalist relationships as a legitimate investment of client income. Others, perhaps due to numbers and the difficulty of policing these expenses, chose a ‘we won’t pay for anything’ approach.

There are problems with either approach though:

The we’ll pay approach:

• How sincere are relationships created when the journalist knows it’s all being paid by the agency?
• Are all journalists fully aware of this fact? And should it be disclosed?
• OK for smaller companies but how can larger organisations effectively police something with such potential for abuse

The we won’t pay approach

• How prepared are PR executives to spend sizeable amounts of their hard-earned cash on meeting with journalists that they may or may not get on with
• Wont such a system simply encourage a generation of office bound execs with minimal relationships beyond email and twitter?
• PROs will surely demand to be paid more to cover such expenses but if this is agreed to, how can agency bosses be sure the funds are being used for this purpose

There are many more arguments to be had over this point and many more questions to be posed. I’m practicing the age-old skill of sitting on the fence here as I still haven’t fully decided myself. In the interest of disclosure, I’ve currently only experienced the ‘we will pay’ approach and have found it to work well.

I’d love to hear what readers think so please chip in if the subject’s of interest to you. Any other comments always welcome too.