Business Acumen for Strategic Communicators by Ragas Matthew W.;Culp Ron;

Author:Ragas, Matthew W.;Culp, Ron;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2021-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

PART V

BUSINES MODELS

10

Strategic Communication Agencies and Consultancies

It was the cold call that started a relationship which helped build one of the world’s most valuable consumer brands and one of the largest US-based public relations (PR) agencies.

In 1957, a then 28-year-old Al Golin cold called Ray Kroc. Kroc, a milkshake mixer salesman turned entrepreneur, had only several years earlier bought the franchising rights to a promising, but still fledgling quick service restaurant concept called McDonald’s. Golin pitched Kroc on PR being an economical way for him to help rapidly grow McDonald’s locations around the country. After inviting Golin to pitch him in person, Kroc was so impressed with Golin’s ideas that he hired the small agency, agreeing to pay a $500-a-month retainer, which in today’s dollars would be worth around $4,500 (GOLIN, 2017; Roberts, 2017).

Kroc praised Golin and his now eponymously named firm, GOLIN, for being key to the growth and success of McDonald’s (Golin, 2006; Roberts, 2017). In Kroc’s (1992) memoir, he says that Golin and his agency “deserve a lot of the credit for making McDonald’s a household word” (p. 100). For example, Golin is credited with helping develop many of the community-focused initiatives for which McDonald’s is still known, including expanding Ronald McDonald House nationally and creating the McDonald’s All-American High School Basketball Game and the All-American High School Marching Band (GOLIN, 2017).

The agency–client relationship between GOLIN and McDonald’s has endured for more than six decades and has been critical to the agency’s own sustained growth and success (Golin, 2006). At the time of Golin’s passing in 2017, GOLIN, a unit of Interpublic Group (IPG), had become one of the world’s 10 largest PR and communication agencies, employing more than 1,200 people in more than 50 offices around the world (GOLIN, 2017; Roberts, 2017).

At its core, agencies and consultancies are all about relationships: building, sustaining and growing relationships with clients and helping clients to build stronger relationships with their stakeholders and society. Underneath these relationships are the reality that almost all agencies and consultancies are structured as for-profit entities that must create enough value for clients to generate the revenues needed to cover the agency or consultancy’s expenses and produce a healthy level of profits. However, not enough time is spent in many college and university programs helping young professionals to learn “the business of the business.” Much about agency and consultancy business models is often learned over time on the job.

“When you work at an agency or consultancy, you get to help run a business – you get to sell your ideas, work with dynamic clients, manage projects and help build a business,” says Kathy Cripps, senior counselor at Prosper Group, a consultancy that advises owners of agencies. Cripps, a former president of the PR Council, is an agency veteran, having founded, built and sold a mid-sized healthcare PR firm (personal communication, June 3, 2020). “The agency business marries creativity, management and strategy. Aspiring and new agency pros who roll up their sleeves and really learn ‘the business of the business’ make themselves invaluable.

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