By Claire Ayles
The latest spin from inside the wonderful world of PR is that flat organisational structures – where all agency staff have the same job title regardless of their seniority, experience or ability – are the way to go.
The reason for this? Well, according to one Soho-based tech agency, employees ‘should be judged on what they know rather than what it says on their business cards’.
Apart from this totally missing the point that job titles ARE a reflection of how much you know, I'm also rather cynical about the motives behind this trend.
For one thing, there's a major shortage of good tech PRs at the moment, so some firms may be tempted to employ people and pass them off as more experienced than they really are. After all, when everyone's a 'Consultant', how can you really tell if their experience amounts to ten years of strategising for blue-chip clients or a fortnight's work experience photocopying press cuttings?
But why should agencies be scared of clients not valuing less experienced staff? New execs can bring fresh ideas and energy to accounts and shouldn’t have to be hidden behind generic job titles.
Clients know agencies employ staff with a mix of experience, so why not just be open and honest about it? After all, homogenisation can easily work against you. For instance, if I was a client and I was given a PR team where each member had the same title, I'd just assume this was because everybody was junior rather than brimming with experience.
Finally, good agencies are built on motivated staff – and one sure way of improving performance is the carrot of promotion. We all want external recognition for our personal successes, but celebrating the fact that you've been promoted from 'PR expert' to, err, 'PR expert' is just laughable.
The crux of my problem with this is that the PR industry already has a dreadful reputation for peddling half-truths and this only adds fuel to the fire. The last thing we need is to become even less transparent to our prospective clients.
Come on name and shame? Is it us, or Mantra PR? If so we'd love right of reply.
Posted by: Stephen Waddington | 02 August 2007 at 12:02
It's not all about Rainier you know. That works for life in general, as well as this blog in particular ;-)
Posted by: Claire | 02 August 2007 at 15:33
"You're So Vain"... Eat your heart out Carly Simon.
Posted by: Stephen Waddington | 06 August 2007 at 14:57