15 September 2006

Don't keep The Man waiting...

Back in the sultry days of June, we highlighted an apparent contradiction by our buddies at Lewis PR. In the past, Lewis had been happy to have a dig at others who had decided not to submit financial information for inclusion in the PR Week league tables. Morgan McLintic, no less, roughed up Firefly, saying that "Fortunes will wax and wane...but I don't think the response should be to yo-yo in and out of the tables at a whim"...but then this year Lewis itself decided not to provide information. Do as I say but not as I do?

In the grand scheme of things, however, the PR Week league tables aren't that important. I mean, not being in them is hardly going to drive your business to the wall, is it?

There are, however, some things in business that are quite important. Like submitting your accounts to Companies House on time. And once again, this seems to be something that the Millbank Tower posse has overlooked.

If you go to the Companies House company information search page, type in 'Lewis Communications', click through and scroll down, you'll notice that there's a big 'OVERDUE' by the 'Next accounts due' line.

Of course you might, like I did, assume that this is normal business practice...you know, keep them waiting a bit, buy yourself a few more weeks to, ummm, get the numbers straight.

Apparently not, because I checked, and all these giuys managed to get their accounts in on time: Firefly, Hotwire, Bite, Text 100, Edelman, Band & Brown, Brands2Life, Inferno, Nelson Bostock, Johnson King, Porter Novelli, Consolidated Communications, Hill & Knowlton, Burson-Marstellar...

So what possible reason might Lewis have for being late?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well spotted. My guess is that they are losing money at a quicker rate than clients and staff. Things are so bad they have announced a new account win twice. Does this mean they can invoice twice too?

(PR Week UK 22 Jun 2006)
http://www.brandrepublic.com/login/index.cfm?fuseaction=Login&resource=BR_News&articleType=news&article=565860

(Lewis 23 Aug 2006)
http://www.lewispr.com/uk/wire/index/1803/

I'm surprised you didn't spot that one also TWL.

Anonymous said...

PR people are notoriously bad at numbers....

Anonymous said...

As one of the (self proclaimed) fastest growing PR agencies in the UK, maybe they've just fallen behind with the old paperwork ??? After all winning and then servicing all those blue chip brands (can't think of any at the moment though, any suggestions?) would obviously take up all your time...

Anonymous said...

To be fair to Lewis (a first for me, admittedly) - there are lots of reasons why accounts become overdue, and most are down to nothing more than inefficient bean-counters.

Our own accounts were late a couple of times, but it ain't the end of the world. That's not to say it isn't the end of the world for Lewis though...