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By Levin's PR Report
Are Small PR Firms Really Better?
When hiring a PR firm or evaluating your current firm, consider these factors:
Small, medium or large. Smaller means more owner involvement, more caring, fewer layers, lower overhead, less chance of getting "lost" and undervalued.
Single - or multi-office. Single-office firms can handle contacts world-wide without plane rides. If you must have face-to-face contact in many places at once or continually, you need a multi-office firm.
Manhattan used to be where the action is. Now suburban locations can be just as close to media people and influentials. Overhead is far lower for suburban firms, and they don't have the chutzpah to charge anything like Manhattan fees.
Key questions: Where are you in relation to your firm? Can they stay in close touch via phone/fax without in-person contact? We have clients based in Rhode Island, England and Tokyo; we rarely see them but speak (or fax) to them almost daily.
Narrow or broad expertise. The more people in the firm, the more likely it is you'll get precisely the PR specialty you need (investor relations, product publicity, environmental counseling, government
affairs). However, you're paying overhead of a broad staff all the time.
Specialists or generalists. PR people in smaller firms handle more varied assignments than their colleagues in departments of larger firms.
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