Time Is Money

 

Perhaps the real story in Tom Richman's "Beyond the Billable Hour" (August) is the billable hour itself.

Most major agencies seem to rely on some form of the hourly rate fee structure. That raises the question of what and who the client gets for its money. In many cases, the public relations professional signing up a new client is not the person assigned to service that account. The PR executive's time is considered too valuable to be allocated for anything but sales and supervision. As a result, the responsibility of producing on a new account is invariably relegated to a junior staff member with less experience.

There's gotta be a better way to run a railroad! Or a PR agency.