PM360 March 2011

TRENDSETTERS: UPCLOSE

with Ken Makovsky, President of Makovsky + Company

BY JON BRULLOTHS

Kenneth D. Makovsky is founder and president of Makovsky + Company, one of the largest leading independent PR agencies in the U.S., serving global clients principally in the health, financial services, professional services, technology, and investor relations sectors. He’s a thought leader who shares his knowledge widely through his work with PRSA, the College of Fellows, the Arthur Page Society, Council of PR Firms, and the Institute for PR, as well as through speeches, seminars, and bylined articles, and his blog “My Three Cents.”

PM360: It’s often assumed that public relations agencies are good at bringing the creative inspiration to marketing initiatives but weaker in contributing to the larger strategic direction of a program. How important is it that agencies contribute to both aspects of a campaign?

KEN MAKOVSKY: It’s vitally important. My experience is that what we label creative thinking is really inseparable from so-called intellectual, left-brain functions. The more an agency understands the complex issues and challenges facing healthcare decision makers—efficacy, safety, access, and pricing—the more relevant its creative insights will be. One of our executives, for example, serves at a strategic level as a volunteer of the American Heart Association and another organization within the cancer community, so he is much better suited to bring exciting, on-target creative thinking to disease-oriented clients. In short, I want our agency to be as comfortable interacting with the director of marketing as with the public relations marketing director.

How does an agency achieve reputation in both creative and strategic thinking?

There are several ways. First and foremost, it’s an intention that has to be baked into the firm’s very business design. We are a specialized agency, dedicated to bringing deep expertise in a few growth industries like biopharma. These are areas where complexity and change are de rigueur and where knowledge is power. This is precisely what our tagline speaks to: “The power of specialized thinking.”

The second key is hiring people with both industry background and creative aptitude. Granted, this is not an easy task. But it is helped enormously by the fact that our leadership combines these qualities, which attracts kindred spirits. Also, if you view marketing as a recruitment tool, which we do, I believe Makovsky invests a larger percentage of our revenue in marketing/recruitment than any other PR firm in the industry.

Finally, we’ve worked very hard at creating an award-winning agency where quality employees want to come and work—where they feel supported and challenged. It’s highly gratifying to me that we’ve been a “Best Places to Work For” agency for much of the past decade and selected as the “Mid-size Agency of the Year” by several organizations in 2009-2010.

What is the key to forming long-lasting relationships with clients?

Let’s back up and look at healthcare today. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that what we are witnessing is a “rebooting” of an entire industry. Whether you’re a pharmaceutical company, hospital, device manufacturer, or any other constituent, the markets, the competitive dynamics, and the regulatory apparatus of tomorrow are going to differ dramatically from those of today. In this kind of environment, clients are hungry for tested insight. I think that only a few PR agencies are truly equipped to provide it. Those that can—and do—have an unprecedented opportunity to forge valued, long-term partnerships at ever higher levels of the client organization. For example, some of our recent work in healthcare is blurring the distinction between PR and business consulting: We are helping to guide conversations around access, social media, and pricing.

The other aspect of long-lived client engagements lies in day-to-day account management. Many a client is won or lost on things like delivering on promises, meeting deadlines, and anticipating a client need through a timely telephone call.

How do you ensure that client's needs are being met, especially on this day-to-day level?

We are a firm that believes in asking “How are we doing?”—not once, not twice, but many times during the year. And if there are problems, we want to know precisely what they are and get about solving them.

One of the keys in this respect is our Quality Commitment process. This was a pioneering application of the TQM movement to the public relations industry when we launched it in the latter 1980s. Today, it remains a pillar of our agency culture.

At least once a year, every agency client is evaluated through a comprehensive, one-hour review meeting with the account team and the agency’s executive leadership. Before that meeting, both the client and the account team have completed a multi-page questionnaire, which is reviewed by all participants. The discussions are typically lively and constructive— and often a font of new ideas. In addition to this meeting, we contract with an independent auditor who calls our clients about three times a year to determine if the agency is bringing value to their business.

Have you developed or instituted any new PR innovations to ensure clients' happiness or enhance your firm's abilities?

Many of the innovative programs we’ve adapted over the past few years are reflected in my belief that we live in an increasingly transparent world, and that there is tremendous benefit for both clients and our employees in thinking broadly about the role of communications in this rapidly changing society.

For example, a few years ago we co-sponsored a First Amendment Breakfast Series with the Columbia University School of Journalism. We sponsored a lecture by a noted professor from the USC-Annenberg School on the impact of digital communications. We linked with Stanford University on a study of best practices in website design. And we instituted a monthly multidisciplinary speaker program. We’re advising the Galien Foundation on their efforts to champion biomedical innovation.

As somebody who’s traveled the world on behalf of your business, have you learned any lessons from PR firms abroad?

We hear a lot about the power of the Internet breaking down barriers in the world. This is true; any local message is immediately a global message in today’s world.

But there is a countervailing trend. The world is still very much a collection of villages. Global themes have to be adapted to local market nuances—both from country to country and, in some cases, even within different regions within that country. However, disease creates a unique global connection between patients and their health providers— a nation unto itself.

Makovsky had taken a different approach to the international marketplace. Can you explain this?

We are the founding member of Iprex, a partnership of independent PR agencies in 30 countries throughout the world, consisting of 800 professionals and over $100 million in billings annually.

This partnership approach differs from, and is better than, the wholly owned agency model in several respects. First, it has been put together with cultural blend in mind, in terms of “Is there a fit?” for the organizations we bring into it. Second, there is a quick response within our organization, unlike anything that I’ve seen in the wholly owned model. I think one of the reasons is that many of the agency’s founding members are active and take great pride of authorship in their work; it’s hard to face your peers at international meetings each year when you’ve performed subpar.

There are benefits from a standpoint of discussions that are held between the partners in terms of technique, strategy, best practices, teleconferences, and seminars. All of this interaction increases the quality of work that we produce for our partners.

How are the lines blurring around communication disciplines, especially due to social media, for instance?

The history of mass media is the history of reaching more people in ever more targeted ways. The Pew research on rare diseases suggests there has been a significant change in the flow of healthcare information, and people living with rare disease are more likely to tap into the wisdom of their peer network. Social media is driving that evolution. Today, every client has unprecedented ability to identify tiny subsets of its constituencies and to dialogue directly with them in a personal way.