Once a Lakeland public relations agency accepted a client and inked a deal with him, the company is liable to whatever happens to a client’s reputation from the very second the contract was signed. The problem is, not all clients are good clients, which means they may not discuss sensitive matters with the public relations agent assigned to them. They may not be open about certain dealings he, she, or the company made. That makes it extra hard for the public relations agency to do its job of boosting the reputation of its client.
Think of it this way: the public relations company is basically like a lawyer for you. The agency will convince the jury or the judge (in this case, the public or a specific target audience) of your good reputation. A PR firm would have to stand by you even through the bad stunts you show in public and turn public outrage, for example, into a good PR move.
So, yes, there is a need for PR firms to investigate the client, though we believe it must be disclosed to the client. Not every client is distrustful, of course. There are some who actually go to a PR agency for the specific reason that he, she, or the business run through some bad PR stuff. But in many cases, the clients themselves don’t know which of what they did led to the target market hating on them. This is the reason why the PR firm would need to run a background check on their clients. It would solve a lot of questions and doubts for both sides.
The background check is very simple. It’s not like they would hack into your accounts or very sensitive personal information. What a PR agency basically needs to know is what happened that led to you needing to hire a professional to clean up your reputation. Or, what does the market you’re targeting wants and how can we restructure your company and your image to answer to their needs.
It’s not always about the individual or the company, of course. There are times that a background check would need to be done on the market that the business or the individual is targeting. What is the demographics? Where do they go for leisure? What do they do during their free time? This would help define what kind of PR strategy needs to be crafted for them.
