Over the years, I’ve been asked the same things time and time again. So, once a month, I will become an Agony Uncle – Uncle Tom – and do my best to answer your questions.
Georgina from Northampton writes. Dear Tom, I’ve just had the most awful experience – we have a large strategic site on the edge of big town. Of course we expected opposition from the locals, so we did the right thing and hired a public relations firm recommended by the Chairman’s wife. (For your background, she is his third wife and she was formerly one of our top sales people.)
The company was useless. They don’t know the politicians, they ran up enormous bills running public exhibitions, where only 20 angry residents showed up. They produced brochures and videos which nobody looked at. The site didn’t even get one vote for the Local Plan. I’m now £150,000 plus down and my job is on the line.
Uncle Tom writes. As King Charles said when he met Liz Truss: ‘Dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ When I started out in the political and consultation business some years ago (not saying), there were only two or three companies with any knowledge of local government: PPS (Hi Stephen), Remarkable (Hi different Stephen), myself and a few other dabblers. Now there are 70 and, of course, some bad ‘uns have crept in.
Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest men, put it well when he said: ‘You don’t ask a barber whether you need a haircut.’ Like any consultancy – planners, lawyers or architects – they need to get business, and the PR company kindly recommended by your Chairman’s wife weren’t going to send you packing.
It must have been difficult, but you should have pushed back and insisted that you run a proper pitch process. A short brief should be prepared, and three companies invited to send you proposals.
Now I’m going to tell a ‘tale out of school’. When I was invited to pitch, I would get a mass of research done on the project and the site – to maximise our chances of winning the business.
The good news for you is that you then get all this information during the pitch for free. Heee Heee. Heee.
So how do you pick the companies? That’s where PRWatch.co.uk comes in. We have a Master Database® of almost every company in the field of council politics and consultation. We know where they are strong in terms of local and political knowledge and how robust and cost-effective their consultation programmes are.
So, if I were you, I would fess up. Say ‘a mistake was made’ – you can’t blame your Chairman or, even worse, his wife – and say that lessons have been learned and next time, you’ll follow the advice in the Netflix series Breaking Bad and ‘Best Call Tom’.
Have a good weekend.
(Uncle) Tom
by the Planning PR guru 