PR Incentives: Start Spreading The News
September 26, 2008
Public relations agencies are using incentives to inspire high performance and innovative thinking from their publicists
By Alex Palmer
Engaging people. Motivating behavior. Making big impressions. All are goals of incentives, of course, but also the aims of public relations agencies as they plan events, work with the press and attempt to spread the good word about their clients. So it makes sense that PR agencies are embracing incentives in a big way to strengthen the performance of their own employees and improve their bottom line. Their tools? Travel, gift cards, merchandise and experiential awards.
These companies are using incentives to inspire creative thinking and raise the level of engagement with their publicists' work, resulting in a win-win-win for the client, agency and employee.
There's No Such Thing as "No Press"
New-product promotions or announcements of new initiatives form the biggest part of PR companies' pitches to editors and media representatives, but even the most active clients might have a slow news week, or quarter. That doesn't mean their PR agency can just sit back and wait for something noteworthy to promote.
"What do we do in the absence of news?" Ilene Adler, CEO of San Francisco–based Vantage Communications, asked her staff in 2007, as they were considering how to better serve their clients, some of which didn't have regular product rollouts or events that would lend themselves to press blitzes. The staff came up with holding "pitching contests," where employees could suggest ideas for how their client might appeal to the media beyond just the latest "new and improved" announcements.
"We always tell our clients that there is never a time that you should be quiet," says Mike Harris, Vantage's director of media services. "There's always something to talk about."
A notable campaign that was first brainstormed in one of these pitch contests was for a client with a software tool designed to help employers manage their network servers, monitoring how much bandwidth was being used. Not a particularly sexy product, but one of the employees thought of promoting the testing of the system during CBS Sports' live online streaming of the 2007 NCAA basketball tournament, so companies could monitor employee Internet usage (which reportedly spikes during March Madness, consuming telecommunications resources as well as decreasing productivity).
The idea was a PR coup, with ABC, USA Today and the Washington Post all mentioning the program, eventually earning Vantage a "Stevie Award" for best communications for a PR campaign in the 2008 American Business Awards.
This proactive approach to creating news where it might not at first seem to exist is an example of the sort of "stretch goals" Vantage has instituted and rewards its employees for. Each team sits down every month and comes up with the stretch goals for their account, which vary by client and by the month in question. If there is a trade show taking place and the team expects to book about 12 meetings, they try to stretch that to 18. If they are working to improve a client's Web presence, they might try to get the client onto social networking sites like Facebook, in addition to producing YouTube clips for them. The groups that reach their stretch goals or devise winning ideas are treated to experiential awards like car racing, chocolate making or an in-office back rub at the hands of a professional masseuse.
"A big part of it is that by the end of the day on the thirty-first or the end of the month, [the stretch goal] has to be done," says Harris. "So they're not only coming up with creative ideas and finding ways to get that extra briefing, they're making sure that they get it done on time."
Harris says it's turned the employees into enthusiastic self-starters, seeking to accomplish their goals with minimal pressure from the company leadership. He emphasizes that these goal competitions are framed not as zero-sum games, where some win at others' expense. Here everyone is motivated to succeed in the goals they set for themselves.
Vantage has seen tangible returns on its experiential incentives. Comparing the number of press briefings for three clients between 2006—before the program was put in place—and 2007, the leadership found increases of 20 percent for the first client, 18 percent for the second and a staggering 97.6 percent increase for the third.
"[This company was] very happy with what we were doing for them, but they weren't a client who was generating a lot of news," Adler says. "But when we got so creative with tying what they do to trends and tying what they do to larger news items, we just blew them away with what they were getting." Adler says that setting and rewarding the monthly stretch goals had a lot to do with this improvement.
 Keeping It Meaningful from Miles Away
Team outings aren't really an option for PerkettPR, based in Marshfield, Mass. Each of the company's employees works from a home office and communicates with the rest of the team through BlackBerry, instant messaging and e-mail, with no physical office space where the staff gathers (the company's CEO, Chris Perkett, says it's a "virtual office"). This unconventional approach to the workplace is appropriate for an agency with clients that are on the cutting edge of technology and telecommunications, and offers flexibility, which is key in an industry that requires high energy and multiple skills but that, perhaps for these reasons, has a high turnover rate.
Perkett helps prevent employee burnout by offering as much as five weeks of vacation for employees in their first year, as well as birthdays off and paid leave for community service work.
In addition to these benefits, Perkett bridges the distance between its employees through the frequent use of meaningful rewards, particularly their MVP of the Month awards for top-performing individuals or account teams. These employees may be honored for an event they organized (like TechCrunch, pictured at right), a successful media tour or client coverage.
Almost all of these awards come with a personal touch. An employee who moved into a new home received a Home Depot gift card, a "shoe fanatic" received a Zappos gift card and one person who complained about a cold office was sent a pair of cashmere slippers. A whole team received wine-of-the-month club memberships, and a new parent was sent a monogrammed baby blanket. Though bosses might not work next to staff, Perkett's leadership shows how well it knows its employees through the incentives given out.
"We use [individual awards] if it's a case of, 'How did you get that BusinessWeek cover story?' or one of their team members is out sick or they have to really step up," says Executive Vice President Heather Mosley. "It really encourages them to be creative."
 Motivating with a "Merci"
Pierce Mattie Public Relations, based in New York City, elevates MVP-style awards to an annual event. A company of about 30 employees, specializing in fashion, jewelry and other lifestyle products, Pierce Mattie PR honors its top publicists at the end of each year for such distinctions as Best Media Placement, Best Media Event, Most Original PR Campaign, Highest Placement Frequency and the Ultimate Platinum Service Award ("for the person who has throughout the year gone above and beyond the call of duty," according to CEO Pierce Mattie).
The winners are awarded American Express gift cards, iPods and, of course, recognition for having had an outstanding performance, as judged by the executive team. Mattie points out that to many of the publicists, it's this recognition that can have the longest-lasting value.
"When they go on to work at other agencies or if they leave PR or if they go on to start their own projects," says Mattie, "to have that title at this agency is a really good feather in their cap."
But the real off-the-charts award is for Publicist of the Year. Unlike the other honors, Publicist of the Year is not chosen by the executives, but rather is voted on by segment producers, bloggers, online media correspondents and others who work with Pierce Mattie's publicists. The company sends out an e-mail toward the end of the third quarter each year, with a bio and description of every publicist and the accounts that they've worked on, and inviting everyone to vote, giving the award a significance that expands well beyond the office walls.
"We always have maybe two publicists who are neck-and-neck, that may be off by two or three votes," says Mattie. The votes help to show who the stellar performers are and who needs to have improvement for the following year, and, according to Mattie, the voters usually get it right. "Every person who's won has really been the publicist of the year: the go-to person, the beacon for everybody at the company."
The winner of Publicist of the Year receives a trip to France with a guest, including airfare, meals, hotel and tours.
Though the destination is chosen ahead of time, virtually all of the other aspects of the trip are chosen by the winner, from which hotel and how they spend their days there to whom they take with them. Interestingly, every winner had never been to France prior to winning the award, making it a particularly memorable experience.
Aware that the younger generations may have shorter attention spans than the older, the company offers employees—who tend to be young— shorter-term incentive programs. During the quieter periods of the year, the executives initiate 30- or 90-day promotions where publicists can win a cruise weekend (through Norwegian Cruise Line), American Express gift cards or merchandise rewards for accomplishments like highest number of product launches or best-attended event.
Mattie sees incentives as a valuable part of the company's business plan. Though public relations is a service industry, which may be harder to quantify than sales, he points to the value in measuring and rewarding great customer service.
"We're not selling a quantifiable product, but we are always selling and reselling ourselves," says Mattie. "Anyone, regardless of what industry they are in, really has to look at the customer service side of everything. There are so many more facets to this business model outside of just getting the dollar."
Send comments to alex.palmer@incentivemag.com.
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