At Rainier, we have a particular philosophy regarding the dynamics between our account teams and our clients. And it might sound strange, but we try to be a lot like lawyers. Lawyers. Why lawyers?

Besides attorney, the most common synonyms for lawyer are counselor and advocate and both these apply perfectly to professional public relations practitioners. We are counselors and advocates.

Just like lawyers, our job as PR counselors is to proactively give our clients the most well-considered advice, based on our expertise, our experience and our knowledge. And likewise, as advocates we are here to serve as engaged and undaunted supporters, defenders and promoters of our clients’ causes, their ideas and their products.

Tech-industry companies come to us to add something to their own aggressive approach to doing business. Something that they can’t get organically inside their own organizations. After all we are experts at what we do, and it’s has always been our goal to be the best in the world at technology PR, content, strategy and marketing. That’s what we bring to the table.

But, you know, all too often I hear complaints from companies that have had disappointing experiences with previous PR agencies. They say they felt like their agencies were just “sitting around waiting for them to tell them what to do.”

That does not make any sense!

Can you imagine if you hired a law firm to handle a lawsuit for you and your legal team waited for you to tell them what to do? What you should write in the brief, what your legal strategy should be, what testimonial depositions to take, what precedents to cite, what the timing should be for filing it and in which court?

I suspect that law firm is not gonna last very long with you.

So why should the relationship between you and your PR agency be any different? At this agency, at Rainier, we basically take it as a sacred responsibility to proactively advise you and counsel you on positioning, messaging, narrative timing, and strategy, strategy, strategy. What story to tell, where, when and how to tell it. What competitive position to take. Who to influence. How to bring defensible audacity to the task and energy of executing of your PR strategy and telling your story to the world. You hire us as your PR counselors – all that is on us.

And how about creative ideas – where should those come from? Well, the truth is if your PR agency is doing its job, not only will be will it be generating its own original ideas, but your agency team will help you come up with new ideas you yourselves might not have otherwise thought of.

Look, we don’t watch the clock like attorneys do, and we certainly don’t charge their hourly rates, but at Rainier, we believe our responsibility as your PR counselors is no less than that of your trusted legal team. We are here to proactively give you the best possible professional advice, counsel and advocacy, so your story gets told the way it deserves to be told.