Ready to agitate your clients?

I was recently speaking with one of our clients – Charlie Moss, founder of The Moss Group – about productive agitation. It seems too many companies shy away from the disruption and risk that generate success breakthroughs. If that’s the case, what can PR professionals do to push productive agitation inside client operations?

First, let me admit my fear of agitation. I’m not exactly up for being agitated these days, or introducing any more disruption into our current environment. Hasn’t the last two years been enough? I’m dreaming of calmer waters over here…

However, productive agitation represents a proven path to success. From Apple to Coca-Cola, superstar organizations have used what Charlie calls a combination of “creative tension and disruptive genius” to push success and innovation to the next level.

As PR pros, I believe our first responsibility is to the message – fundamentally ensuring the right message is communicated in the right way to the right people. It’s also our responsibility to provide a series of QA mechanisms that alert our clients when we feel the message is ineffective, stale or misaligned with a company’s natural evolution. Pushing our clients to view their message from an outside perspective, and challenging them to do better, is part of the job (even when those clients push back on us).

What do you think? In what other ways can PR pros tactfully introduce productive agitation into our clients’ business?