Sign of the times
Josh Morgan, principal at Morgan/Dorado PR, says he’s seen a spike in his agency’s “quick call retainer” program. The somewhat controversial program offers clients 10 hours of PR counsel a month for $750/month. If the client then wants services beyond counsel, the firm initiates regular billing.
“This allows us to keep up on what they’re doing and provide relevant counsel without a huge dollar commitment that a lot of companies are a bit fearful to make right now,” Morgan said.
The program started about two years ago and mainly targeted pre-revenue and pre-investor startups, but the recession has changed that. Morgan says now more mature companies are interested in the program.
“What we’ve found is that even if that’s not what [potential clients] end up using us for, it’s a demonstration of how we’re being flexible to work with clients,” he noted. “And they also see that we’re not looking to squeeze every dime out of them. It builds more trust.”
So far two “quick call clients” have graduated to the firm’s full-service offering.
Readers, your thoughts on this model? Are you hearing about other firms offering recessionary pricing?
