Tomás Keane, The Keane Partnership Niamh Boyle, Corporate ...

The days when the PR consultant
resembled a hired gun, drafted in to
help manage a crisis or organise a
one-off publicity campaign, have
long gone, according to Tim Kinsella,
chairman of the Public Relations Consultants
Association. Nowadays, public relations
represents a key link in the
operations of many major businesses.
Says Kinsella: “If you are at a senior level
in the PR profession, you are liaising with
executives in client companies at pretty
much a peer to peer level. It’s rare nowadays
at a corporate level that
public relations firms are looked at only as
suppliers. They’re seen as key business
partners. Many companies depend on a variety
of stakeholders for their existence,
from the general public through to their
own shareholders and they put a big priority
on communications. They have to plan
ahead and know how what they do impacts
on those people and keep them informed.”
Kinsella is a principal in MRPA
Kinman, a leading corporate PR practice
formed from the merger of two firms in
2005. He likens a public relations consultancy
to an outsourced communications
department. An increasing number of
firms are these days opting to go for the
external route because of the advantages it
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SURVEY: PUBLIC RELATIONS
Delivering The
Right Message
Public relations is less about spin doctoring and more about maintaining a
quality information flow between a company and its stakeholders, PRCA chairman
Tim Kinsella tells DICK O’BRIEN
confers. “What a large PR firm brings to
the table is a wide variety of expertise. If
you look at the bigger firms operating in
the market, you could have directors
skilled in public affairs, financial communications,
IT or healthcare. Around them,
they have teams of PR consultants with expertise
in that arena and who work with a
number of different clients,” says Kinsella.
“Bearing in mind the level of experience
they have, they can bring an awful lot to
the table in terms of helping companies
‘PR is mentally
and physically demanding’
manage the issues that they face. It’s not
spin doctoring and it’s not media manipulation.
In as much as we have a role in
communicating to the press and other
audiences, we also have a role in advising
and assisting clients about the realities
of dealing with the media. There are no
exceptions to providing accurate and reliable
information and if you can’t provide
it, you don’t and you explain why you’re
not providing it.”
Business Plus May 2007
As PR consultants become increasingly
plugged into their clients’ day-to-day
operations, they have also begun to pay a
higher degree of attention to their own
image. According to Kinsella: “One of the
things that is a bugbear of mine is that
there is still a lot of stereotyping about
public relations and what we’re trying to
get across is the absolute professionalism
of the business.”
The PRCA is backing words with deeds
by setting standards for its members. Says
Kinsella: “One of the key things that
PRCA members have adopted is the Consultancy
Management Standard. This is an
independently audited quality management
process and it serves as a hallmark
for professionalism to clients. In order to
be a member of the PRCA, you have to
gain the CMS. If you are dealing with a
CMS accredited firm, there are systems in
place to ensure that you get adequate
reporting on the time put in on your
account. There are proper financial and
accounting systems in place to ensure a PR
firm is doing what they say they’re going
do for you.”
The PRCA has 35 members who
between them employ 500 people and
generate fee income in the region of
€50m. Not all PR practices are PRCA