Public Relations For Startups

A few random thoughts on last night’s PR for Start Ups event:

There is still a huge gap / void / disconnect between agencies and start-ups. This was most clearly illustrated by Sabrina Horn’s comment on seeking clients who have passed Round A and are bearing down on Round B, and Charlie O’Donnell’s reaction, best summed up as “WTF?!?” Most start ups aren’t getting to Round A these days. Some of this is due to the economy. Also, it’s just much cheaper to do business now than it was in the 90s when you needed VC money to even get your idea off of the envelope. So given that, who’s going to take a risk on the next AOL or Netscape or Twitter? Not any agency that sets a $15K limit in retainers.

Honestly, I can empathize with Sabrina. It’s brutally hard to even hold a conversation with someone if they have a great idea but no money now and no money for at least the first few months. Which is why most start-ups should take the best bit of advice offered by the panel which is to bring someone in-house who is clued to marketing and willing to work like a dog for the glory and infamy.

And frankly a lot of start ups do think it’s all about press and getting into TechCrunch and don’t understand (or don’t care about) the finer points of positioning and messaging.

On another note, I honestly had to bite my tongue to keep from shouting this thought out, but finally Peter Himler talked about knowing who your audience is and where they go for information. Too many people have great ideas for new products or services but no clue who they are trying to reach. This is one of my biggest jobs, to ask the obvious question of clients. Who is going to buy this and why do they need it?

To be blunt, the PR agency model of sucking down 10-15K a month in retainer is going to have to change or the industry will see even greater disintermediation than it has already. Most folks at start ups are pretty hip to using Twitter or whatever these days and can get themselves noticed a lot faster than in the past. And most reporters covering this space are already hunting for the next big thing on Twitter and the usual spots.

So what’s an agency to offer? Sure all that experience and perspective is a good thing (in fact a necessary thing), but not at those prices.

If we can get around all that, there seems to be a bright future developing. With media savvy CEOs of nimble start ups and smart PR people who can help them navigate the seas of a changing media.

Overall, it was a very good event with a very smart panel. In addition to Sabrina and Peter, Adam Isserlis of Rubenstein and Jonathan Kolbe of Weber Shandwick, as well as Chantelle Karl from Yelp! held up the PR side of the equation and did us all proud. Gillian Reagan of the Observer, MK Flynn of The Deal and Rose Gordon of PR Week rounded out the panel, representing the media. Also in the audience were Lee Odden, Allen Stern of Centernetworks and Jason Chupick of PR Newser.

And finally a big KUDOS to Kristin Maverick for throwing this all together.

David Parmet is a public relations consultant residing in Westchester County NY. He blogs about PR and social media at Marketing Begins at Home.