Thursday, August 25, 2005

Agency rankings

I have been trying to do some research on other PR firms so I can better understand the market we all operate in. Currently such research is a thankless task. It used to be quite easy. Until a few years ago you could look at league tables produced by people like the Council of PR firms and PR Week and it was easy to tell which firms were growing, which geographies were doing well and also what different sectors of the industry were fairing best. Not anymore. Thanks to the moves of the larger PR holding groups such as WPP and Omnicom to consolidate their PR revenues under one line in their annual reports (they use Sarbanes Oxley as the reason) we no longer have any meaningful tables.

Am I the only one that thinks this is bad for our industry? I believe it would benefit the industry to make public the performance of all the significant PR businesses that operate in the industry. Clients and potential staff would benefit by seeing which firms really were growing. Agencies would benefit by being able to see how well they were performing relative to their competitors.

I'll be honest I don't really understand the reasons why WPP et al are withholding their numbers. They say it is because of Sarbanes Oxley but I'm not sure I follow that logic trail. Having trawled through the various key sections of the act such as sections 302, 404 and 409, I can't see any good reason why an agency's revenues should not be reported. Indeed the only real requirement I can see under SOX that is perhaps an issue is that agencies would need to have good internal controls to ensure revenues were accurately being applied to the various subsidiaries. In truth given all agencies I know of, base their bonus programs to some extent on the revenue each agency generates, then unless they have bogus bonus programs, the revenue recognition is very likely recorded with great accuracy.

I'm willing to have someone tell my why SOX really does require WPP et al to report agency fees as one big number instead of breaking them out by agency but until someone does, I'll continue to hold the view that SOX has provided a fig leaf for holding companies to hide behind.

I'm I the only one who'd like to see that fig leaf be removed?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Blogger,

Saw your post on Agency rankings. We created a directory for
Google PR related sites on our website. You are welcome
to add your Google PR related blogs or sites, We get lots
of visitors so it should be a good opportunity for some
free advertising. See ##URL or click Google PR.
Cheers.

John

Get 10,000 free opt in leads right now.

Anonymous said...

I have been following a site now for almost 2 years and I have found it to be both reliable and profitable. They post daily and their stock trades have been beating
the indexes easily.

Take a look at Wallstreetwinnersonline.com

RickJ

Anonymous said...

Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen,

I took a look at your post
regarding free leads .

You are invited to place a link to
your blog on our website for free. See:

http://www.thefreeadforum.com


We get over 18,000 visitors per day.
Many are looking for free leads
related products and services.

We have a specific category for free leads .
Your listing will be spidered by the search
engines under free leads . Our pages
are made to be search engine friendly.
We hope you take a moment to take
advantage of this free advertising.

Cheers,

John

http://www.thefreeadforum.com
The Free Advertising Forum.

Anonymous said...

Where did you find it? Interesting read » »

Anonymous said...

That's a great story. Waiting for more. »