Five Questions to Ask Before You Appoint a Communications Firm
A pitch tells you what a firm can do, but it rarely tells you how the firm will behave when the advice becomes uncomfortable. Whether the appointment is yours as chief executive or as head of communications, that second thing matters as much as the first, and it can be tested before anyone signs. These are the five questions we would put to any firm, ours included. One caution first. The questions favour judgement over scale. A small senior team suits a hard decision, but a larger network may suit execution across several markets. Decide which problem you are hiring for and weigh the answers accordingly. 1. Who will be in the room? The people who win an engagement are not always the people who deliver it. Ask which of the senior people you have met will attend which meetings, who will write the advice, and who will take the call at eleven at night when something goes wrong. A clear answer is useful. So is a vague one. 2. Will they tell us what we may not want to hear? Any firm wi...
