When PR practitioners claim that the industry is thriving despite the recession, you may not believe them. Elisabeth Lewis-Jones, CEO of communications consultancy Liquid and past president CIPR says: “The intrinsic difficulty for a PR practitioner in outlining whether our industry is faring well in the economic climate is that, well, we’re expected to say that the glass is at least half full. Try to suspend your disbelief when I tell you that there are strong signs for optimism.”

Lewis-Jones says that over the past four years, fees and activity may have oscillated as the private and public sectors struggle to break free from the general gloom, but there are rays of hope: “The main sign for optimism is an increased demand for specific, specialised services, such as crisis communications, integrated consultancy and delivering and deploying strategy. Smart businesses survive and thrive by demanding that their PR works hard, not just to build awareness and create positive perception, but also to engage stakeholders and contribute to growth. This is where public relations has fared better than our siblings in advertising and marketing. Not only are we cost-effective, we also take a 360-degree approach, addressing the needs of the full spectrum of publics, not just clients and prospects.”

Simon Turton, owner of agency Opera PR, agrees that PR has an advantage over other marketing sector agencies as it looks at the bigger picture, but he still sees areas where PR expertise have not been asked for, and the campaign has suffered as a result: “Unfortunately, we still see too many examples where PR clearly hasn't been involved. Take, for example, the energy companies whose door-to-door salesforces were brow-beating consumers to change suppliers. I can't imagine any PR professional advising that there would be anything but trouble for that kind of aggressive sales approach.”

Giving an overview of the whole of the PR industry, Francis Ingham, PRCA chief executive, says that for the majority of the PR industry, the recession “could have been worse“. Ingham adds: “Unlike in previous downturns, we did not see a sudden collapse in business. What we did see was a recession that hit different sectors and different parts of the country at different times. And that led more to a lack of certainty than to a lack of work.”

Ingham claims that other marketing sectors have fared much worse and that PR has stolen a decent amount of advertising’s revenue over the past few years. Reasons he give for this is include the rise of digital, the over-pricing of adverts, and the painful, slow death of print newspaper circulation.

Looking to the future, Ingham says that from PRCA data collected, the recovery appears under way, for both agencies and in-house teams alike. He concludes “PR has emerged from he recession stronger, bigger, more efficient – not many industries can say the same.”

A case study
 

You might think it madness for set up a new agency during a recession, but one small agency based in Portsmouth, explains how it has managed to succeed despite the tough economy.

I Am Now Media (IANM) is a PR and media agency with nine months of trading under its belt. “It was certainly challenging setting up in a recession,” says Cheryl Gibbs, IANM’s PR director. She says the agency has managed to grow quickly and win new clients because it focuses not just on coming up with creative strategies, but also on proving the worth of campaigns with strong analytics. Making sure that pricing is competitive has also been key. Gibbs says: “Our blend of team skills and backgrounds enables us to deliver innovative PR, events management and TV production capabilities. But there’s also sound business thinking behind everything we do.”