GO Communications is a consultancy. Like all
Public Relations practitioners, our job is to act as an intermediary between an
organisation and its public. However, unlike in-house practitioners, our organisations
are our clients. If we don’t ‘win’ their accounts the agency simply cannot
exist - no pressure but…
One of the positives of this system is the freedom to work with more than one client at a time. This jumping from one project to another breeds a diverse and a fast past environment that suits my personality well.
BUT from what I have observed, there is also a darker side. Given the fact we work on clients’ accounts (i.e. organisations give us large sums of money) there is always a temptation to do exactly what the boss wants despite the strategic and/or moral implications. Not only does this leave room for an ethics debate, it also raises the question is the customer always right?
I won’t name any names to prove my point – always keep you clients confidential – but I will explain a scenario I experience the other day. An organisation wished to improve their following on all their social media accounts (accounts that we manage) and we suggested hashtags as a tactic to achieve this goal. They decided against this recommendation, not because hashtags aren’t a good idea, but because they didn’t understand how they work.
This got me thinking a.) What’s the point of hiring a communications agency and then putting your foot down every time they attempt to do their job? And b.) Was it right of us to relent so easily given the fact that we – and every Twitter user out there – know that the only way to drastically increase your web traffic is to use relevant and engaging hashtags?
What do you guys think? And have you ever experienced something similar in your P.R careers?
No comments:
Post a Comment