The PR Surgery

North Pole/South Pole

Dear Doctor Spin,

My boss referred to North Pole/South Pole in relation to a client the other day - but he didn't explain what it meant. Can you help?

North Pole/South Pole is code for the relationship between the client's expectations and the client's budget - "jeez, his expectations have just passed Greenland and his budget is nestling with penguins."

Placing a value on journalist relationship?

Dear Doctor Spin,

A client has asked us to put a monetary value on the relationship we have with a journalist. I'm a bit stumped as I don't know where to start. Do you have any pointers?

An interesting question. Any PR company will tell you they have great relationships with the press. When was the last time you heard an agency say: "We know a few people, but if you rang up most journalists, they wouldn't have a clue who we were. Or if they do, they hate us."

How does one go about assessing the value of a relationship with a journalist? And exactly what does "relationship" mean in this context?

Here are some initial thoughts:

- how well does the journalist know members of the PR team at the agency? ie if asked, would they know who you were? How well do they value the interaction and/or information provided by the agency?

- Is there a measurable correlation between the apparent good relationship the agency has with said journalist and positive stories appearing by that journalist about the agencies' clients? If the good relationship never translates into a result, why place a value on good relationships?

Imagine a website where all media facing PR people are logged and journalists can rank their view/value of them? That would certainly provide an objective way for clients to assess whether the relationship the agency claims to have with a journalist really exists.

Anyone for www.rank-a-flack.com?

Should I go freelance?

Dear Doctor Spin,

I read on a blog somewhere that the average PR freelancer earns around £60K a year and gets 20 weeks holiday. It seems like a no-brainer that I should throw in the towel with my current agency and go it alone. Any tips on how should occupy the 20 weeks holiday a year I will now have?

Before telling your current employer where to stick it, I would offer some words of caution. The calculation for the average freelance wage has a technical description known as a BOAFP (Back Of A Fag Packet). The CIPR only estimates that the freelance market is worth £200m a year and that  there are 3,300 freelancer PRs. Remember, this is a trade body for the PR industry - so any figures quoted should be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism.

There may well be freelance PRs out there earning £60K, but I doubt very much whether you would attain that healthy income in your early days. First and foremost, you need to have people prepared to hire you to do the work - unless you already have a high profile within your potential client base, you may find that your first 20 weeks are spent trying to drum up business rather than browsing through exotic holiday destination web sites.

Nevertheless, freelance PR does suit many people - however, you should examine your motivations more closely before taking the plunge.