Recently Pierce Mattie was interviewed by Incentive Magazine on ways our firm maintains employee morale and motivates our team to give 110% to each and every client on our roster. Our Publicist of the Year award was the main focus of the interview. Read on for insight from Pierce:
Start Spreading the News: Public Relations Agencies Are Using Incentives to High Inspire Performance and Innovative Thinking from their Publicists.
Incentive Magazine September 2008
By Alex Palmer
Pierce Mattie Public Relations, based in New York City, elevates MVP-style awards to an annual event. A company of about 30 employees, specializing in fashion, jewelry and other lifestyle products, Pierce Mattie PR honors its top publicists at the end of each year for such distinctions as Best Media Placement, Best Media Event, Most Original PR Campaign, Highest Placement Frequency and the Ultimate Platinum Service Award (for the person who has throughout the year gone above and beyond the call of duty; according to CEO Pierce Mattie).
The winners are awarded American Express gift cards, iPods and, of course, recognition for having had an outstanding performance, as judged by the executive team. Mattie points out that to many of the publicists, it's this recognition that can have the longest-lasting value.
"When they go on to work at other agencies or if they leave PR or if they go on to start their own projects," says Mattie, "to have that title at this agency is a really good feather in their cap."
But the real off-the-charts award is for Publicist of the Year. Unlike the other honors, Publicist of the Year is not chosen by the executives, but rather is voted on by segment producers, bloggers, online media correspondents and others who work with Pierce Mattie's publicists. The company sends out an e-mail toward the end of the third quarter each year with a bio and description of every publicist and the accounts that they've worked on, and inviting everyone to vote, giving the award a significance that expands well beyond the office walls.
"We always have maybe two publicists who are neck-and-neck, that may be off by two or three votes," says Mattie. The votes help to show who the stellar performers are and who needs to have improvement for the following year, and, according to Mattie, the voters usually get it right. "Every person who's won has really been the publicist of the year: the go-to person, the beacon for everybody at the company."
The winner of Publicist of the Year receives a trip to France with a guest, including airfare, meals, hotel and tours. Though the destination is chosen ahead of time, virtually all of the other aspects of the trip are chosen by the winner from which hotel and how they spend their days there to whom they take with them. Interestingly, every winner has never been to France prior to winning the award, making it a particularly memorable experience.
Aware that the younger generations may have shorter attention spans than the older, the company offers employees-who tend to be young-short term incentive programs. During the quieter periods of the year, the executives initiate 30 or 60-day promotions where publicists can win a cruise weekend (through Norwegian Cruise Line), American Express gift cards or merchandise rewards for accomplishments like highest number of product launches or best-attended event.
Mattie sees incentives as a valuable part of the company's business plan. Though public relations is a service industry, which may be harder to quantify than sales, he points to the value in measuring and rewarding great customer service.
We're not selling a quantifiable product, but we are always selling and reselling ourselves," says Mattie. "Anyone, regardless of what industry they are in, really has to look at the customer service side of everything. There are so many more facets to this business model outside of just getting the dollar."
