S6 E6: Accountability and Ownership in the PR Industry with Bradly Howland

Adrian McIntyre: 00:00:01

From the Public Relations Global Network, this is PRGN Presents. I'm Adrian McIntyre.

Abbie Fink: 00:00:07

And I'm Abbie Fink, president of HMA Public Relations in Phoenix, Arizona, and a founding member of PRGN. With public relations leaders embedded into the fabric of the communities we serve, clients hire our agencies for the local knowledge, expertise and connections in markets spanning six continents across the world.

Adrian McIntyre: 00:00:28

Our guests on this bi-weekly podcast series are all members of the Public Relations Global Network. They will discuss such topics as workplace culture, creative compensation and succession planning, the importance of sustainability and environmental, social and governance programs, crisis communications, and outside of the box thinking for growing your business.

Abbie Fink: 00:00:47

For more information about PRGN and our members, please visit prgn.com. And now let's meet our guest for this episode.

Bradly Howland: 00:00:59

Hi, I'm Bradly Howland. I'm the CEO of Alkemi Collective. We're an amazing integrated storytelling agency based in South Africa with offices in Cape Town and Joburg.

Abbie Fink: 00:01:09

The topic of accountability transparency has been top of mind for, well, handful of years for sure, but probably should be in business at all times.

And you know, as PR agency owners, we're constantly working with our clients to remind them about the importance of transparency and why it's important to be, you know, accountable for your business practices.

But we need to look at ourselves as well, and there's accountability and ownership responsibilities there as an agency owner and how we invite that concept into our own organizations and then ultimately out to our clients.

And Bradly, I'm so intrigued by this conversation about, you know, really, are we having a crisis of our own in the PR industry when it comes to accountability?

Bradly Howland: 00:02:01

I definitely think so. I mean, this is something we looking at in the PR industry because it has a lot more impact than you find in other sectors.

But this is something that you seen across the workforce at the moment is that there is definitely a shift in responsibility and ownership and that's good and bad. So that means whether it is a failure or success, there's not really as much ownership as they should be.

And what happens is that team effort, for example, gets diluted.

You see a situation where people defer to this idea of, well, we're collaborating, which means that there's no accountability measure or stop that's in place to say, okay, well who is the person who actually owns this?

Whether it's an amazing accomplishment, which then comes with reward, but more importantly, when there are challenges is nobody's really owning a project. And so it's this idea of, okay, but somebody else is busy with it.

It's something we experience in our agenc as well, where we have certain team members who often do that. And it's natural. I mean, you see this across the board where somebody will say, well somebody else was busy with that, I've done my bit.

So somebody else is busy with it. So there's no ownership. And then things fall through the cracks naturally.

So it is a bit of a challenge and it is a sort of a cultural thing that we also starting to see, especially with the younger generations coming in. And I'll sort of talk to you a little bit about that as well. In terms of my observations, it may be opinion, but I do think they play a role.

But then what we're also seeing is actually the converse of that on the client side. We're seeing a massive shift and I guess it's also, you know, economic pressures play into it, budget cuts, et cetera.

But clients are becoming a lot more stressed. They, meaning they expecting a lot more for less, they're delaying things. The briefs are constantly changing.

There's unrealistic expectations that we're seeing growing at the moment and that. And yet they still want the same level of results.

So there's no ownership on their side to say, well, how do we create an environment between the partnership between agency and client that's actually going to lead to a sort of a unified success on both sides. And so that then creates inefficiencies, tension and everything else that goes with it.

And so the idea is in terms of that relationship, specifically, it's about reframing it. I heard a very well known CEO in the local market actually say, oh, agencies need to realize they're still a service provider, they're not a partner.

And I was like, that makes no sense to me because we should be seen as partners. There should be some level of mutual accountability.

Obviously we've got to demonstrate that internally to ensure that that matches whatever we expect from clients. But it should also come from client side as well.

Adrian McIntyre: 00:04:42

Yeah, it's interesting. Even the word agent or agency implies a level of alignment in a relationship which probably isn't real, doesn't actually happen anymore. But you raise a really interesting point.

Before we get further into this, I just want to step back for a second and say, now wait a minute, isn't this just everybody pointing the finger at everybody else? I mean, accountability is a great idea for other people, right? I mean, if you look at the actual practices, are people who are accusing others of lacking accountability willing to put themselves on the line for the same thing?

Bradly Howland: 00:05:18

Well, I mean, that's how it should work, right? So I mean if you think about, let's just take it in terms of the sort of concept of leadership, for example is Leadership 101 teaches you that you need to first take ownership yourself so that you can role model it to others. Right?

So if we sort of play into the idea of well you know, we're expecting this from everybody else, you're missing the first step which is we need to demonstrate it first before we can even create that expectation. And I think that's quite critical.

And what just talking to the sort of thing of the generational issues and observations that I picked up, one thing I've noticed especially around the sort of dialogue or narrative around so the Gen Z workforce and how they change in the game and absolutely they are, they think completely different to us.

But at the same time what I've also noticed, and this is where those stereotypes come in, is that we also placating bad habits and behaviors and it's not just the Gen Z workforce, it's across the board but we're allowing it to happen to say well it's not my job, you know, it's somebody else's problem, it's somebody else's issue. I don't need to own this, I'm just being paid to be here.

And what that's doing is it's creating this culture that well nobody needs to own anything then and if there's a problem it's not my fault. And that can balloon quite quickly.

The other thing that I also noticed as well is that in sort of, I think in any business agencies we've seen a lot of this is there's this. You know, I often talk to my team about understanding your fears and your core fears in the workplace.

And one of the biggest things that comes out is a fear of failure. And so people are so afraid to make mistakes they think they're going to be punished, they think they're going to lose their job.

They think that somehow that's going to create limitation on them. And especially I mean when we talk about Gen Zs it is very prevalent there where they don't want to make mistakes and fail.

And so what they miss out on is this idea of actually if you make mistakes, it only becomes failure if you don't learn from it. I often say to my team is a mistake is a progress move.

It's something where you can actually develop something from and that's got to start with leadership. Right?

So to your point of who demonstrates it first, leadership's got to create that Culture create that safe space for people to say, yes, I can own this mistake. I can actually, if there's a project, I can own it. I can actually take that and turn it into something amazing.

So that's when we talk about the positive side of it. That's where reward comes in. But we're not giving that enough, in my opinion.

Abbie Fink: 00:07:53

I'm struck by the generational part of that because I think I was just in a presentation a couple weeks ago at a conference and the keynote speaker spent a lot of time talking about the generations, you know, and, and it was a, it was fascinating and, and everybody in the room is nodding their head depending on where they were in that category. Right? And then we're looking around the room going, uh huh, you. And that's what I thought.

But you know, as the workforce is shifting and you know, ownership of agencies is aging, right. We're getting older, our workforce is younger and but they, we want them to grow into this role. We want to help them get there.

If this mindset is so prominent about, you know, I was raised on failure, right? That was what we were told. And just as you said, the biggest mistake you will make is not making any mistakes. I mean, you're not gonna be perfect.

And learning from them and acknowledging them and taking responsibility from them was always gonna be better than trying to hide it. Cause you're gonna get found out. I mean, you can't really hide it. But there's going to be this real need to level set.

If our younger staff that are moving into the role of management has this mindset, how do we shift that? How do we encourage the take risks, take responsibility. I jokingly say, if it's not illegal, I'm pretty sure I'll back you up. We can figure out anything.

And we've all had those experiences where we've had to go back to a client and say, you know, we really messed this up and we'll own it and if it costs money, it's on us. And if we, you know, delayed something as a result of something we did and you know, almost always 99% of the time there's a way out of all of that. It's the hiding it in the maybe they won't notice. I think that gets, you know, gets us in trouble.

And you know, if as an agency, part of our responsibility is crisis communications, then we also need to make sure we're not creating our own crises by not doing these things right. So there's this real sort of circular issue that's happening Here, I don't know where it goes. I'm not sure what the answer is.

But I think the discussion around how do we create standards by which we all live by, how do we infuse this idea of, you know, ethics and responsibility is a good thing, and that it's important to understand that if we all live up to this level of expectation as an industry, we are better at the work that we do, that we provide to our clients is better. And then as owners and managers and as practitioners, we are better if we have this, you know, this standard that is out there.

I know in the States, we have the Public Relations Society of America. We have an ethical standards. We all agree to abide by those. If we are, you know, a practicing public relations person that is a member of that organization, we acknowledge and sign this ethical standards document.

I know you're working on something similar in your community, on really helping set accountability standards in a way that we can all work and strive to achieve. So talk a little bit about that.

Bradly Howland: 00:11:24

Yeah. So I think before we get into that, the one thing I wanted to just touch on, and you sort of spoke about it at the beginning, when it comes to the sort of the nuances in terms of the way that different generations behave, I think just as an interesting stat that I was told once and I've actually kind of mentioned to my team, is that this is the first time in history that you've got outside of sort of child labor, is this is the first time in history that we actually have five generations in the workforce at the same time, which means that the way of working of each generation is completely different from the next. And I think particularly from millennials down.

I'm a millennial, but I fall into this part of for millennials down, what you're seeing is that the idea of accountability hasn't really been something that's been completely ingrained in the workforce. And what I mean by that is that we often see there's a leadership deficit in the seniors in business.

And so what you find is that leaders are often failing to navigate a situation where a younger generation is looking for a mentor to lead them and guide them, to show them what accountability and ownership looks like. And I mean, you've seen all of those memes and stereotypes of a millennial boss is one who wants to be your friend. Right? But that's not teaching accountability and ownership at that moment, if everything is diluted.

And often you see, like, particularly with the younger generations, is they want collaboration, they want this inclusiveness they want this community, but what it does in its own right is blur the lines of responsibility and accountability. So if everybody's friends, if everybody's in it together, not using the word, we're a family, because we know that's a toxic phrase in the workforce.

But it's this idea of, okay, but at some point we've got to set clear accountability, we've got to set clear responsibilities and make that part of a company or agency culture. But sort of to the point around what are we trying to do in our region from an industry standards perspective?

We've, you know, I'm the incoming president of our industry association, the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa.

And one of the things that we've identified is that we've got things like ethical standards in play, but this concept of accountability and ownership seems to be lacking completely.

And what we've found is that whether it's sort of market trends that have caused this or, you know, economic pressure or anything else like that, we finding we're in a position now where we've become the victim of client bullies ultimately. So we bend over backwards because we don't want to lose clients, we don't want to lose money, especially when things are tough.

And so we start agreeing to everything at the expense of everything else. And that's demonstrated by the leaders and offering agencies, which then in turn gets mimicked by the team.

So it's, well, we'll do everything, we're all in it together, but we're not going to put that hard line in the sand.

You gave the example earlier in terms of, well, in a crisis, one of the best things you can do in Crisis 101, fall on your sword quickly because then you control the narrative, you can fix things and you can lead to a solution that doesn't seem to happen nowadays. Right.

And so the way that you sort of make sure that that is sort of managed better and people start seeing what the standards are, is to actually develop, at least on an industry level, this is what it should look like, whether it's in an agency from a standards perspective, beyond just ethics, but just in terms of how you operate, what you own, what that accountability looks like.

But then in turn, what does that look like in terms of relationship with your clients and the external world, because that's equally important, is that there needs to be some sort of shared accountability and responsibility. Certainly on one side, it doesn't really work so well. So that, I think is quite critical.

Adrian McIntyre: 00:15:14

This is a really important point because, Abbie, when you were talking about the Public Relations Society of America and the code of ethics, my thought was well that's all fine and good for the practitioners, for the people who willingly adopt this code of ethics. And it's the other side of the equation that sometimes is the source of the challenge or the disruption.

Bradly, can you speak to this? I mean, how do you develop or how are you thinking about developing? How is PRISA thinking about developing a charter that has those two sides that sets expectations both for agency members but also for clients?

Bradly Howland: 00:15:50

I'm going to give a bit of a long-winded answer but it does make sense, I promise.

Is one of the biggest things that in South Africa at least we're really championing, I know it is a bit of a global movement is to professionalize the PR industry. And what that means is that it's not just anybody can become a communicator. We know that Global alliance for example has submitted to be the.

I think it's the 18th SDG, Sustainable Development Goal, that it be responsible communication. And so what does that look like? It means all ownership and professionalization of our industry more than we've got at the moment.

So it's not just let's have an ethical standard and hope to abide by it but the clients don't really care about that. They're expected from us. But it's not going to be a sort of two sided thing.

Our thinking around obviously this charter being the start of that is to help us get to a point where we professionalizing the standards of our industry so that this becomes ingrained even on a contractual level and it does exist in pocket. So I'm not saying this is new but it's actually formalizing it so that it becomes the benchmark for our industry.

We actually saw this with sort of fellow association, the South African Freelancers association where it is very well known in the South African market that you go onto their website and if you want to know what freelancer rates are for any type of freelance in the creative and commerce space, it's there, right?

So somebody can't bamboozle themselves or ultimately mess around a freelancer by paying them poorly because those standards have been set and because it's so publicly known it sets the expectation for clients and other agencies who use freelancers to say this is the non negotiables that we have as freelancers. And it's kind of like if you think about it, I know there's always this conversation around never talk about your salary.

And it's sort of that corporate thing of, well, don't talk about your salary because then you might find out that somebody's being paid more than you. That's the principle. We want to create that transparency so that people actually see this is what the non negotiables should be.

This is how your contract should be set up. This is when we talk about accountability on both sides of a client agency relationship.

This is the bare minimum that you need to sort of agree to because anything else that you do is basically feeding into the problem of lack of accountability and ownership and the tensions that are often created.

Abbie Fink: 00:18:07

I speak with college students all the time and they always ask, you know, have there ever been a client that, you know, asked you to do something you didn't want to do?

And you, and you know, you use your gut instinct and you say, well, no, but yes, of course there's things that you, you, but I hear what you're saying about this, you know, this accountability track that's on both sides.

And in a lot of ways it will elevate the industry because it will allow us to say to client X, here's the standards we expect of ourselves and these are the standards that we expect of you in our client relationship. And we're going to contractualize those, we are going to agree to those. And this gives us the framework by which we're going to work together.

And any good, solid client that respects the work that we can bring to the table should have no issue with what that looks like. They should want an agency that abides by and follows those types of standards in the same way.

And I think the, you know, the challenge with these types of things, of course, is an enforcement, you know, where, you know, who oversees it, who makes sure that, you know, we, it's easy to sign the paper. It's another thing to actually implement what you just signed.

But it starts to have the conversation and it gives all of us the chance to go back to this agreement that we are going to be, you know, open, honest, transparent and accountable for the work that we're doing. And I think there's a lot that we learn from being able to have that conversation.

Bradly Howland: 00:19:45

So, I mean, to the point, there's two ways I sort of see it in terms of enforcement, right?

So if we look at it more from an industry perspective, what we're hoping in South Africa is that we get to a point when we talk about the professionalization of our industry, it gets to a point where you can't be a PR professional unless you have a license, which means that we're lobbying for this to be promulgated in regulation down the line, that's a bit of a long game because any sort of policymaking takes, you know, a good eight years or longer.

But the key thing behind that is that we, and we've seen this being very successful in other parts of Africa where certain countries have that level of regulation to govern PR professionals. So that if you don't follow basic guidelines, whether you on client side or agency side, it becomes a regulatory issue.

And this doesn't seem like a foreign concept because if you think about medical professionals, if you think about chartered accountants, they've managed to get it right.

And so if we start modeling a similar approach to our industry, it's simply going to elevate our standards in a way where people take a little bit more seriously.

My hope, because I know our agency is also signatory on that proposed SDG of responsible communication is that our hope is that when, if that STG is ratified by the un, what we see in South Africa at least is our legal and regulatory framework is governed in such a way where our law changes according to what the global and local requirements are. So I think it's slightly different with the American Constitution. Ours is a lot more flexible and it keeps evolving and adapting.

And often what we've seen is when a new STG or change to some global sort of standard is set, our laws change accordingly.

So my hope is that if there's responsible communication there'll be a absolutely, you'll see it with even in a year a requirement for South African businesses and agency owners to follow whatever the global mandate is.

And so we're hoping it gets to that point on the agency side and I think looking at a bit more of a sort of a micro view is that what I think is really important is using the sort of salary analogy is where I think particularly leaders in agencies and it doesn't have to be your agency owner is we need to start talking to each other more. And what I mean by that is a good example. Let me put it in practical terms.

What we learned is that, and I'm sure this happens everywhere would do spend weeks on end putting together proposals and plans for a client for a creative campaign only for the client to take the entire multi million rand or million dollar campaign and take it in house and maybe give us a press release if we're lucky. That's basically theft of creative ip. Right.

So what we've done is we've specifically engineered our contracts so that anytime that happens it triggers a specific clause within penalties are paid. Right now, people don't really enforce it. I know many agencies probably have them in place. But we're also afraid of, you know, pissing off a client.

Excuse my language. But it's that we. We don't ever enforce it. And at some point, somebody's got to start.

And so seen particularly in the local sort of region, is that the more we talk to each other, the more we realize if we all start doing it, it starts becoming an organic standard. And we started doing it a few years ago. Clients didn't like it at first, but now they understand it because they can't steal somebody else's idea.

It's kind of like the idea of all those sort of jokes on the Internet where you talk to a creative and you say, oh, paint me something and I'll give you some exposure by posting on social media. It doesn't really work that way. We still have to pay salaries and pay our rent and everything else in between.

And so from that perspective, you know, the more we hold clients accountable and show up in that space and talk about does start creating some baseline, unspoken standard that everybody expects from agencies in that relationship.

Adrian McIntyre: 00:23:59

Thanks for listening to this episode of PRGN Presents, brought to you by the Public Relations Global Network.

Abbie Fink: 00:24:05

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