Synergy Events Recaps BullDog Reporter's PR Agency Management Summit

Synergy Events sponsored BullDog Reporter's PR Agency Management Summit last week in New York City. Keynote speaker Margery Kraus, founder and chief executive officer of APCO Worldwide put it best: the Summit was a place for PR industry leaders to "get together, learn and interact."

The conference, aimed at senior-level PR professionals, featured workshops, round table discussions and speeches by more than two dozen industry thought leaders. The sessions were terrific and part of the fun was hearing vastly different opinions-which led to some great discussion- on the same subject. 

Here are a few of my favorite takeaways from the two-day conference:

Trying to get honest feedback from clients can be difficult, but is worthwhile, according to Capstrat President Karen Albritton. She recommends having a client "check in" every quarter. The company also creates an annual survey to help them find out one question in particular: "How likely are you to recommend?"  Based on the results, Capstrat breaks down their clients into three groups:  advocates, neutral or detractors. An advocate, she explained, is a company that scores a "nine or ten" on a 1-10 scale based on their responses. Through the results, Capstrat hopes to move those neutral companies to advocates.  

More tips from various speakers:

 

• "Never let a client divide your internal culture," Gil Bashe, Executive Vice President, Healthcare, Makovsky & Company.

• Margery Kraus also mentioned that APCO seeks to hire the "best people," regardless if they are traditional PR professionals or experts in another practice area.

• According to Dan Orsborn of Orsborn Partners, companies will still respect you in the morning (OK, I made up the "in the morning" part) if you decline to participate in a RFP. Other RFP tips, which we wholeheartedly agree with at Synergy Events, include requiring a budget or a budget range before participating in the process, along with having a senior-level decision maker available to answer any questions you have during the process. We agree with these points...it's the "garbage in, garbage out" theory. The more info we receive for a RFP or experiential marketing event, the more we can help the client or potential client. Dan also gave some pitching tips: make sure everybody who goes on a pitch has a role, be sure to engage everybody in the room (not just the perceived decision makers) and if the potential client is coming to your office, treat it like an event.

• More from Dan: The best ideas or companies don't always win pitches; the chemistry between agencies can often be the deciding factor.

• This point was echoed by Robb High of Robb High Associates (Robb is very entertaining, by the way. I'm pumped to go to his workshop in NYC on April 27). As he says on his website,  "Clients will always say it was the 'thinking' or the 'creative' that determined their choice because they feel like they need to make their selection based on a 'professional' measure. The reality is that they decide based on the people. . . 'I like them and I trust them to do the job.' That's why casting is 90% of winning. And why you need to always put the best actors/ presenters on the pitch team. No exceptions."

• Robb also drew a parallel between business development and dating and how each is a process of establishing a relationship.

• Miles Nadal, Founder and CEO of MDC Partners: "Only partner with people that you trust, like, admire and respect...and who respect your time."

• I always enjoy hearing Sandra Fathi of Affect Strategies speak about social media and how it has helped her company and clients. Sandra spoke about Affect's Social Media Six-Pack of tips, which can be found here.

• Rich Lukis, president of Coyne PR, (Synergy Events client) explained how it is company policy for everyone to have their own blog. This surprised some people in the room, (from a bandwidth perspective) but I think it's cool.

Overall, the Summit was another great event by BullDog Reporter, which does a fantastic job of bringing together thought leaders in the industry several times a year. Well done!