What every client needs to know about hiring an agency

Now more than ever, chief communications officers and other senior in-house comms execs require smart external counsel from PR agencies to help them deliver on the multiple agendas they and their teams are expected to master.

Third-party counsel, dispassionate external views, a third eye of creativity, help with business and organizational transformation and the ability to flex up and down with the varying amount of work on clients’ plates are just some of the vital services agencies provide.

But it’s worth remembering that the whole edifice relies on client money and investment: without that, there would be no PR agencies (or firms in other disciplines for that matter). And those client budgets are under more pressure than ever and every penny spent is being scrutinized more closely than ever, with procurement departments digging into the weeds of areas they didn’t previously pay attention to – including PR and corporate reputation. 

Given that trend, and as marketing services holding companies face fundamental challenges and respond to the need for complete transformation in the marketplace, the task of assessing the value PR firms add is more important than ever. Midsize, small and specialist shops are also starting to prosper in an environment where clients desire direct senior level counsel for their buck.

For the past two and a half decades, PRWeek’s Agency Business Report has represented that guiding light to the respective services of PR consultancies and tracked the changes and rise and fall of the agency sector.

When PRWeek first came into the U.S. market in 1998, Edelman was number seven on the Agency Rankings league table, with revenues of $157 million. The top two firms were Burson-Marsteller, at $258 million, and Hill+Knowlton, at $206 million.

Edelman grew fast and significantly and took over at the top of the Agency Rankings. In 2022, it became the first $1 billion PR agency, coinciding with its 70th anniversary. Names such as BSMG, Shandwick International and The Weber Group rolled up under the Weber Shandwick banner in 2001, and last year became part of Omnicom PR when the John Wren-helmed holding company acquired Weber owner Interpublic Group.

The first Agency Business Report I worked on as editor-in-chief of PRWeek was in 2010, and a midsize but fast-growing firm called WCG (formerly WeissCom Group), posted revenue of $27 million, putting it well outside the Top 10 on the Agency Rankings.

Last year, Real Chemistry, the firm that evolved from WCG, became the biggest PR firm in the U.S. by revenue, at $616 million, with 1,727 staff in the world’s biggest PR market, versus 134 in 2010.

Times change and what clients require from agencies and the relative value of what each firm can offer also change. The PRWeek Agency Business Report 2026 will be the ultimate guide to agencies for smart clients. It will outline what in-house teams need to know about hiring a PR firm and how best to maintain effective working relationships moving forward that add the most value to their enterprises.

The report will dig into agency value and reputation as a quantifiable asset, agency impact through creativity and innovation, the future of the agency holding company model, and the agency AI value proposition for clients.

Agencies will still be profiled, but the deep dive spotlights will center around case studies with measurable evidence of the agency adding value, plus mission statements by agency CEOs that provide a pithy snapshot of why a client should hire them. They will also include revenue details for our Agency Rankings and other valuable data for each firm profiled that will help clients assess them.

All this information needs to be provided by agencies in the submission forms that are out in the field now. The process this year is different to prior years.

If you haven’t received the form yet then please apply for details here. And if any agency marketers, CEOs or senior executives have specific questions about the new format of the report and what you need to provide us, please contact me here.

The purpose of the freshened-up Agency Business Report is to provide clients with a one-stop shop guide to the specific value different PR firms can offer, as well as giving those agencies the chance to lay out evidence of their best and most effective work and outline the mission statement for serving clients effectively from the very top of the organization.

So make sure you send in your form to be part of the most valuable piece of agency analysis on the market and make sure you get your value proposition and service offerings in front of the stakeholders that matter most in the process — clients.