I’m not sure how many executives have extracted valuable leadership and management nuggets from the movie “Jerry McGuire”, but let me give it a shot. Tom Cruise’s lead character outlined in his memo, excuse me, mission statement, what client service should really be about:

Not more clients, he said, but fewer clients. And less money. Now I tried the “less money” approach for a while and that did not sit to well with members of my family who had grown accustomed to food and electricity. But I wanted to create a firm with an uncompromising commitment to client service and attention.

What has become increasingly clear is that tactics and metrics used to define public relations programs in the past (endless press releases, non-strategically blasting out news to massive media contact lists, narrowly focusing on traditional offline media outlets) have been rendered obsolete and are of little value to clients.

Organizations can throw darts at a phone book and find a public relations firm that churns out press releases without regard to strategy or objective. Or one that believes casting as wide a net as possible by blasting out emails to reporters to see who takes the bait will truly move the needle for clients.

The fact is that today’s communications program must be creative, nimble and strategic. It must be a trend story pitch that stands out from the 200 other pitches burning a hole in a reporter’s email inbox every day; a white paper that nails the target audience pain point to drive leads; an online campaign that is genuine and immediately resonates with influencers.

Lustig Communications believes that every day should bring new ideas that help clients differentiate, disrupt and lead.