Last week, PR Week revealed its Top 40 Tech PR Agencies in the UK based on revenue. It supplied some interesting statistics and having a closer look at them I felt I could take a different slant on it as I was interested in something else other than revenue. PR Week said:
The majority of tech agencies are adjusting to this changing landscape and consequently are experiencing rising fee incomes. The total tech fee income of PRWeek’s latest Top 40 Tech Consultancies sample is up almost 30 per cent on last year
So it appears its good news for us all that work in tech PR and I was pleased to see a lot of the usual suspects in here. However, on closer examination of the table it supplied, I felt it would be more interesting to look at what the average fee is per head in Tech PR in 2013 as nobody ever seems to reveal this figure and I don’t quite know why. Working in this industry we all seem to believe that it is underpaid, and the last few years have been quite a challenge for some PR companies, but it seems the top Tech agencies are deriving some great fee levels in 2013. The most interesting was the agency that came 12th in the original list received fees of £265,000 per head. Wow that is impressive and I tip my hat to their team as they must have been busy over the last twelve months. One can only dream of fees like that here at Prohibition. Edelman the top tech PR agency according to the revenue only secured around £100,000 per head and the agency with the lowest fee per head was Jargon PR at around £35K per head. Now I know this isn’t extremely scientific but if these figures are correct I believe that it shows that despite the downturn recently the industry is actually alive and kicking and we should all be quite optimistic. I have sorted the same table out below but now it is sorted by fee per head with each agencies original placing in the rank box far left. What do you think about average fees being £87,000 per head in tech PR?
| Original Rank | Company | Total PR income (£k) | PR Staff | Fee per head (£K) |
| 12 | Publitek | 2,126 | 8 | £265.75 |
| 37 | Orb Communications Group | 2,327 | 16 | £145.44 |
| 25 | Mulberry Marketing Communications | 1,748 | 13 | £134.46 |
| 11 | Pinnacle Marketing Communications | 2,146 | 18 | £119.22 |
| 22 | Ruder Finn UK | 3,266 | 29 | £112.62 |
| 15 | 3 Monkeys Communications | 5,571 | 50 | £111.42 |
| 1 | Edelman | 39,697 | 388 | £102.31 |
| 28 | Cuban Eight | 613 | 6 | £102.17 |
| 17 | Red Lorry Yellow Lorry | 1,381 | 14 | £98.64 |
| 7 | Nelson Bostock Group** | 7,094 | 75 | £94.59 |
| 4 | Brands2Life | 7,746 | 82 | £94.46 |
| 19 | Babel PR | 1,116 | 12 | £93.00 |
| 3 | The Good Relations Group* | 16,045 | 174 | £92.21 |
| 20 | Spark Communications | 1,080 | 12 | £90.00 |
| 24 | The Reptile Group | 1,513 | 17 | £89.00 |
| 9 | The Red Consultancy | 13,878 | 157 | £88.39 |
| 2 | Hotwire | 7,523 | 86 | £87.48 |
| 8 | Waggener Edstrom Worldwide | 3,474 | 40 | £86.85 |
| 10 | EML Wildfire | 2,337 | 27 | £86.56 |
| 18 | Marlin PR | 1,193 | 14 | £85.21 |
| 6 | Octopus Group | 5031 | 61 | £82.48 |
| 21 | Aspectus PR | 1,450 | 18 | £80.56 |
| 35 | Seven Hills | 1,756 | 22 | £79.82 |
| 33 | Say Communications | 1,751 | 22 | £79.59 |
| 14 | Liberty Comms | 2,015 | 26 | £77.50 |
| 23 | Atomic PR | 1,077 | 14 | £76.93 |
| 29 | Man Bites Dog | 1,140 | 15 | £76.00 |
| 16 | Speed Communications | 2,954 | 39 | £75.74 |
| 38 | de Winter | 600 | 8 | £75.00 |
| 40 | Freshwater UK | 3,146 | 44 | £71.50 |
| 39 | Fresh Public Relations | 132 | 2 | £66.00 |
| 13 | Berkeley PR International | 2,235 | 35 | £63.86 |
| 5 | Bite Communications | 6,310 | 106 | £59.53 |
| 31 | Citypress | 2,788 | 47 | £59.32 |
| 30 | iseepr | 402 | 7 | £57.43 |
| 34 | Dynamo Communications | 286 | 5 | £57.20 |
| 21 | Hope&Glory | 617 | 11 | £56.09 |
| 26 | Proactive International PR | 668 | 12 | £55.67 |
| 27 | Napier Partnership | 608 | 13 | £46.77 |
| 36 | Jargon PR | 213 | 6 | £35.50 |
| Average fee per head (£k) = | £87,000 |
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