If all else fails, low-ball it
In a recession competition increases. There are more agencies chasing fewer client accounts. This is generally a good thing. Clients might see one or two more firms, agencies might work harder, and hopefully the right…
Agency life
The time of your life
You may not realize it, but this is the time of your life. Deep in the depths of the darkest recession I hope we will all face in our lifetimes, you will discover your true…
The big O – organized
But it’s important to wage war on that stuff – the piles of mags you haven’t read, the freebie crapola you were given at a show, all those conference passes, that folder of reference information, and… the filing. … But it is important to acknowledge that ‘being organized’ doesn’t stop at having an updated To Do list, or even a tidy desk – it needs to extend to other aspects of your life to produce a sense of control and calm.
Get fit, or get out
CEO as PR firm?
Jason Calacanis has posted some helpful tips for CEOs of startups about how to maximize PR. Oddly he feels these negate the need for a PR firm. Most of them involve dedicated networking, building personal…
Timesheets – bane or boon?
No-one particularly likes filling in timesheets – why would you? But whatever their model, fundamentally agencies are selling the time of their teams. They may package it in different ways commercially but being consultancies, time…
Blog stress
Just wanted to reassure all those of you who have read today’s New York Times piece, that my prolific blogging is in no way impacting my health. Running a PR firm’s a killer though. Technorati…
Ten ways to reduce stress
PR is inherently stressful. It’s highly task- and deadline-oriented, fast-paced, collaborative and rapidly-evolving. Any situation where a group of people need to cooperate with several other groups around detailed information within tight deadlines is a…
The fiction of work/life balance
I’m not sure who first coined the phrase ‘work/life balance’ but it’s an unhelpful misnomer. Work is an integral part of your life. If you don’t see your work that way, you should find a…
How to manage email
Email has increasingly become the workhorse technology of PR. It makes a good servant but a poor master. Once you start to get above a certain level, which for me is about 200-250, productivity suffers….