PR, IP and ideas theft

Well done PRCA for beginning to tackle the blight of ideas’ theft. It’s been going on within the PR industry for years. ‘Would-be’ clients ‘invite’ you to ‘pitch’ for their business. They gather up a shedful of ideas from a handful of companies then they either appoint the least expensive and ask them to run with the best ideas or they decide they don’t have the budget to engage the professionals, so they roll then out themselves (and fail most of the time!).

According to the PRCA almost 90% of respondents to the most recent PR Leaders’ Panel believe that ideas they pitched have subsequently been used by the client without the agency receiving any compensation. My guess is that this is just as rife in Ireland as anywhere. Within the report I found three things consoling:

1. Idea theft hasn’t risen as a result of the economic downturn

2. Around 50% of consultancies polled by the PRCA had actually been paid for their creative ideas which had been offered pre-appointment

3. Our official body is realising how disheartening and downright immoral this practice is and is going to use its best endeavours to get it sorted.

A thought: why not get all the representative bodies including CIPR; PRCA Ireland; and other marketing services’ organisations to join together, get a united voice and sort this out?