My agency probably walks away from more potential new client opportunities than we actually consider taking on. Why? Because of what I like to call The Dog That Won’t Hunt. The Dog That Won’t Hunt is the client who is absolutely impossible to get media coverage for. Yeah, they might be doing something that nobody else is doing, but from a “newsworthy” perspective, it’s just a dog. Just because a company has raised a lot of venture capital, doesn’t mean it’s newsworthy. Newsworthy means a blogger, broadcast segment producer and/or print editor thinks it’s of great interest to his or her readers and/or viewers and is worth covering.

For those of you on the client-side reading this and saying, “that’s what we pay you to do,” I suggest you take a deep breath and hear me out. Don’t get me wrong, I believe it’s the responsibility of the PR agency to create news where there is no news. And believe me, we do this day after day as do many other PR agencies. However, in spite of all the strategic creativity and pitching on the part of the agency, there are still hundreds, if not thousands of kennels full of barking, biting and whining Dogs…That Won’t Hunt.

Here’s a good example. K&P received a call just last week from a B2B Web 2.0 company about doing its PR. This was a very well-funded, venture-backed company. The woman who called us, started the conversation by saying the executive team wanted a lot more business coverage and that they were dissatisfied with their existing agency because they weren’t able to get them in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BusinessWeek, et. al. I know their current PR agency. They are terrific and go totally balls to the wall for their clients. I told my head of Biz Dev the company was the poster child for The Dog That Won’t Hunt fraternity, and I didn’t want to take them on as a client because we would be doing more harm than good.

I think other PR agencies need to consider taking the approach of walking away from new business opportunities if the client is a dog. Whoring yourself out to any client that is willing to pay cheapens the perception of our entire industry. The subsequent scenario is as predictable as Sarah Palin using the terms “Joe Six Pack,” “Hockey Mom” and “You betcha!” in a single sentence: The client will pay the agency six months of retainer, the agency will fail to garner the level of coverage the client expects and the client will fire the agency’s ass. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. The client then walks the earth preaching hate around all PR agencies because of the bad experience they had. I would argue this is the biggest factor that contributes to the client-side’s negative perception of the PR industry.

PR agencies enable the dysfunctional behavior of the dog clients when they sit across the table in a new biz meeting and nod in agreement at the client’s unrealistic expectations. We need to stop the madness, don’t go ugly early and just say no. Be a dog yourself. Take the time to sniff the dog’s ass and really determine if The Dog Can Hunt. You will be doing everyone a favor in the process. The media will start to love PR agencies because there will be less annoying, non-newsworthy stories being pitched. The clients will love us because we won’t be making false promises and they can look to leverage other higher ROI marketing tactics to raise their awareness. The employees at the PR agencies will love us because we are not asking them to pitch some ridiculously non-newsworthy client that causes them to get repeatedly bitch-slapped by the media and the client.

Is your tail wagging after reading this or do you want to bite me?

Tweet This Post