
QUARTER OF PR INDUSTRY IN FINANCIAL DANGER
This year’s PRCA in-house benchmarking report found that in-house teams are less concerned than they had been in 2012 about the communications budget. The CIPR’s annual survey showed that half of PR practitioners experienced frozen budgets and other symptoms of the recession, though an overall optimism pervaded the industry.
Plimsoll, a industry analysis company, recently studied the health of the PR industry. It found that about a quarter of PR consultancies require a financial restructuring in order to survive.
David Pattinson, senior analyst at Plimsoll, says, “It is clear from this study the PR Consultants market is going through a period of great change and the market is highly competitive. These 222 companies rated as danger are clearly operating under financial pressure and many risk being forced out of the market.”
Of the 903 consultancies surveyed, 480 were rated as strong with the remaining 201 falling in the median ranges. Thus, the industry is divided into two solid camps. The most financially stable companies are taking in the most capital and maintaining the highest margins per year while those in imminent financial danger are operating with high debts and with consistent profit losses.
Though the economic climate may be rebounding for in-house communicators and agencies as a whole, there remains a significant portion of communications companies in the UK that are failing to sustain their businesses in the post-2008 world.