The Right Tools at The Right Price

Posted by Bill on Aug 5, 2009 in MeshBlog | 0 comments

McNeely, Pigott & Fox, a Nashville PR firm, is catching flack for charging a city agency nearly half a million dollars for lobbying the city council to approve a convention center project. That’s right, tax dollars are being used to pay an outside PR firm to lobby the city council to approve spending more tax dollars. NewsChannel5 has the story.

But MP&F doesn’t deserve all of the criticism for taking the money – the city agency deserves criticism (and a budget cut) for using tax dollars that way. It’s an ethical lapse on both sides. No government agency should use tax dollars to lobby its legislative branch to spend more tax dollars.

MP&F does deserve all of the criticism of the deal from another perspective: The firm is charging outrageous, indefensible, unreasonable fees for simple services like following the convention center debate on Twitter and sending emails. And its spending is out of control: The contract was for $75,000, but MP&F has billed the city more than $458,000.

Outrageous.

Mesh Media Strategies doesn’t operate that way. We don’t charge outrageous fees for anything. (We also don’t over-bill by counting a 15-minute task as an hour of billable work.) And our proposals include cost caps and a policy of never doing work that hasn’t been approved by the client, including approval of the price.

Our goal isn’t to make money at your expense, selling you services you don’t need at prices that don’t make sense. Our goal at MMS is to help your business, non-profit organization or campaign to grow and succeed – to make more sales, get more clients, attract more supporters and donors – by using the right media tools and the right strategy, for a reasonable price.

As for the larger ethical issue raised by MP&F’s current predicament, Mesh Media Strategies accepts government agencies as clients but will not accept tax dollars from one branch or agency of government to do media relations work intended to lobby another branch or agency of the same government on behalf of any project that would result in more spending of taxpayers dollars.