CIPR

Dr Reginald Watts, Hon Fellow and Past President of the CIPR, discusses what it was like as an Englishman working 15 years for a US consultancy.

It was a quiet evening. Home early from the small UK public relations consultancy I had joined five years before after being an economist in The City. Little did I think the phone call was going to change my life. It was out of the blue. The voice was distinctly American, Brooklyn perhaps. "My name's Bob Leaf," it said. "Could we meet up for some breakfast? I'm from a company called Burson Marsteller."

Not sure how to respond, not having heard of either name. Business breakfasts were not the norm in my life then. Such excitement had not reached the staid London scene. Anything for a new experience, I accepted.

At the five star hotel off Bond Street I quickly learnt not to order an English breakfast when, as it turned out, you are being interviewed for a job. Black pudding and fried eggs can be difficult when, mouth full, you try to sound intelligent. The said Bob Leaf turned out to be International President of Burson Marsteller and was based in Brussels. He was about to open a new office in London. "Would I like to join this new London operation?"

Sounded good to me so one month later, salary agreed, I turned up in Jermyn Street and reported to a receptionist. My previous consultancy not only had no receptionist but when I had first arrived there no one quite knew what to do with me. "Take a spare desk and someone will be along in a while," they said.

This time it was different. The receptionist had been briefed and the executive at my elbow said: "Hi, I'm your mentor for two weeks. First, I would like you to read our new manager briefing and see what Harold Burson says about the new venture. There is a timetable of meetings with the executive team already appointed". I realised with a shock I was about to be Americanised.

The contrast with my earlier company was patent. Modern consultancy heads will say "so what. We all do this." to which I might say, "not then they didn't" then add "not even now - see below". This was my first encounter with the US management style. The structured approach taught at their business schools with methodologies to match had been absorbed by Harold Burson and his partner Bill Marsteller who both realised public relations must become an integral part of any business's success.

This was more than sales pitch, it was part of the way they wanted to run their company. Within days I was being taught how to use time sheets, calculate time inputs and guided on methodologies for preparing client programmes. The fact that training began immediately was a norm. As one senior manager said: "sheep dipping does not work. It's no good sending managers off for a week's course, it has to be the ingredient of everything you do."

I soon realised training in BM lingo was about more than PR techniques. It was training in management. For example, when staff were promoted they had to be trained for the next level up. Even if they only moved from AE to SAE, it needed formal lessons. If the move is more senior it could need a full day to teach the management skills needed for the new position.

A few years later when I had ascended to Chief Executive, I, like other senior managers, spent time each year in the US or other regions taking part in training courses that always included strategy discussions with regional business leaders. Internationalism was more than an attitude to programme writing, it was also a family affair where managers often exchanged children's vacations and made friends and found partners worldwide. US consultants like BM treated the world as one market because their expansion had followed their clients who as Fortune 100 members had been part of the American MNC invasion.

That world has now changed and public relations is today ipso facto international - it knows no frontiers. It could perhaps be argued that US systems at that time tried too hard to implant the American way to the extent that if a client went to any BM office they would encounter similar systems and attitudes to process that even the layout of Contact Reports and Monthly Reviews were the same. In those early days my London office managers made regular trips to my room for translation: "I've had a client programme note from New York. It talks about `shelf stand-off values'. What does that mean and what's a Mall Intercept?" Just because I regularly crossed the pond it was assumed I spoke the language, too.

We may laugh but the effect of combining these two cultures made for effective client relations. It was not by chance that PRWeek was able to report that BM London was the first UK consultancy to exceed the one million pound fee barrier excluding OOPs for a single client.

The strength of the US system was flexibility. Because the time charges were transparent managers understand workloads and could build client relationships that were similar to the ones experienced with lawyers and accountants.

Harold Burson considered practitioners should not be restricted by outdated definitions. As he said: "Our role is to identify problems then decide how best to solve them. Not to say 'what can public relations do' but to consider which discipline is appropriate"...

Over recent years as a non-executive on boards of many PR companies I am saddened that many consultants still ask me how to apply time sheet systems, charge time-based fees. Consultant heads even argue to me that internal training is too difficult, preferring to spend large sums 'sheep dipping'. To me it is important to balance public relations techniques with management training. It is as important to understand how to manage a growing company as how to make use of the new message delivery systems.

I am grateful to Harold Burson and to Bob Leaf who both had the unenviable task of managing for many years a recalcitrant Englishman who always thought he knew best yet still regurgitates so much that he learnt from those cousins across the sea.