PR firms want 'pay for play'; editors denounce trend that has agencies collecting money for media coverage

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb, 1989 by Jean Marie Adngelo

PR firms want 'pay for play' * Editors take note: Some of the public relations and publicity flacks seeking coverage in your magazines may be getting a commission each time you run a story on any of their clients.

This new trend, tagged "pay for play," is upsetting many of the longstanding PR firms and further threatening the already-shaky alliance between editors and public relations people. The trend has taken hold at several new agencies looking for ways to attract clients.

One such agency is Results Only Communications, founded by Marjorie Borell. She offers clients an alternative to the traditional retainer system, by which clients pay the agency a set fee per month to handle their publicity and image-making needs.

"There is a need for a marketing-oriented approach to public relations, where people can see and measure the value of the services," she says. "In the past, some clients have felt that they paid retainers, but didn't feel they got the publicity. My clients say, 'I don't have to call you every day to see if you are promoting my product. I know you are motivated.'"

Borell, who represents cosmetic and beauty product companies, sets her fees according to the size of the tiem placed in the media, and the size of the audience exposed to the information. If one of her clients is written up in Modern Bride, for example, Borell might receive $800; coverage in Beauty Fashion, a controlled business publication, might cost $150, she explains. By contrast, an item on a local network news show might net $5,000.

'It implies we're saps'

Borell is not alone. At least a half dozen agencies nationwide offer a similar service, and are capturing their share of heated media coverage in PR business publications and other magazines. Newsweek staff writer Jonathan Alter filed a story in 1987 about Primetime Publicity and Media Consulting Corp., and in the piece wondered if Primetime should pay itself $19,000 for the write-up. After all, $19,000 was the agency's going rate for coverage in the newsweekly.

"I think [pay for play] implies that we are saps," Alter argues. "The thinking behind it is, if an article runs, it is because we were sold on an idea. Most of the time we think of our own ideas. Suppose I'm doing an article on a firm that has a PR firm representing them. Should they get $20,000 because I came up with a story idea?"

The new practice may also lead to ethical problems if editors are offered kickbacks for coverage. "It is hard to believe that there aren't PR people who wouldn't say to a journalist, 'You don't make much money, I can give you a piece of this,'" he says.

Alter is not the only leery journalist. "It smells bad to me," says Betsy Carter, editor in chief of New York Woman and an executive committee member of the American Society of Magazine Editors. The new system turns journalism into salesmanship, she cautions.

Editors would be concerned if they knew a public relations person would stand to gain, agrees Robert Sant Fournier, a managing editor at Cahners Publications and president of the American Society of Business Press Editors. "PR people do not have the highest reputation with us. They are known for being pushy, and this way of doing business might draw the line between public relations and editors. This will make public relations people even more aggressive."

Some in the traditional public relations field agrees that the policy demeans the public relations process. "The fact that you publish an article in a business magazine doesn't necessarily mean that people rush out and buy your product the next day," says Ruth E. Thaler, national editor of "PR Strategies USA Newsletter."

Pay for play has a chance of working only if an agency is honest and delivers the goods, according to Dan J. Forrestal, head of a PR agency and speaker at a recent conference of the Public Relations Society of America. He added, however, that the "so-much-per-inch idea seemed to tilt more toward quantity than quality. After all, in our business we are not selling salami by the slice."