Confidence dips in PR community due to public sector cuts
A survey involved 100 PR agencies has found that confidence among PR agencies with public sector clients has fallen dramatically in recent months.
The research, conducted by Daryl Willcox Publishing, has found that 85 percent of agencies contacted which had public sector clients said that budgets were being slashed, while 47 percent admitted to having lost clients as a result of the widespread public sector budget cuts.
Daryl Willcox, commented; “The impact on the PR industry by recent and future government spending cuts cannot be underestimated. The UK PR industry is seriously exposed to the government's attempts to curb public expenditure. PR agencies will need to find ways of making up for lost revenue otherwise they will have no choice but to cut back their cost base.”
It as also found that only 32% of PR agencies had confidence in keeping their public sector clients in the face of future cuts while all eight respondents who had lost their complete portfolio of public sector clients because of the cuts were not confident of gaining any new ones.
Before the cuts were made, five of those agencies said that public sector clients made up to 10 percent of their business, while the other three said that public sector made up to between 20-30 percent.