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A HS teacher told me that money doesn't talk, it screams.

Take the established company. You're in business to make money. Top priority. Plus, we all love challenges, so the established company will feed that craving, in addition to the revenue one.

Are there any financial stability questions (i.e., getting paid) with the hot company? It stinks doing a great job but not getting paid or having to harp on the client to get paid.

Of course, the obvious answer is to take on both clients.
Mike

Hmmm, tough one. I'll start by saying that nothing is guaranteed.

To me, your wording implies that going with the established company is the safe bet. Perhaps this is the company an agency should want if it is in desperate need of business/revenue and wants to play it safe.

The start-up is the big question mark. While the industy in which the company operates is hot now, it may lose all its steam in the near future.

To paraphrase Seth Godin: Playing it safe may get your company to survive, but playing it safe will never make your company flourish!

My decision: Go with the start-up. I think an agency would be allowed to really push the boundaries of creativity by doing so. Heck, it just sounds a lot more fun too! Who knows, the relationship could be a great success and totally launch the agency into the next level.

The answer is, "it depends."

"You are the company you keep," I've heard it said before. So choose the clients that reflect your values and strategy. So if the hot start-up aligns more, take them. If the established brand does, take them.

I'd be less concerned about the revenue question (assume all other things are normal in your scenario) because usually you can structure a client scope of work to make it profitable, regardless of how much revenue it is.

The established brand. Every other company is a "hot start-up" - the brand (even a suffering one) is something you can leverage.

This is a question that will surely divide PR agencies into polar opposite “personality types”.

The “rule with your heads” will go for the indisputable benefits of a large, stable client, a steady income and the pull that big brands have for other big brands.

“Rule with your hearts” will opt for the riskier start-up. Likely to be more fun to work on and with big potential to open up a new market, but with the risk of a rollercoaster downside of big demands, small budgets and the potential to crash and burn.

The truth may be that you need the former to be able to fund taking a risk on the latter. Aren't most healthy agencies founded, at least to some extent, on a mix of the two?

I'll say "it depends" too. For the reasons Jeff Risley gave above, plus: it depends on the product or service.

Since you've tried to equalize the 2 opptys in your scenario, I'd make my choice based the one I'd enjoy more -- I like/believe in the product and am juiced by the creative prospects of the challenge. I'd also factor in the people I'd be working with. Life is too short to work with people you don't like and respect, when you have a choice.

Safe bet. Easy. The hot start-up likely isn't a flash in the pan but if this is their first big venture into agencies then they will never be happy with what you do for them. The big established cheese know what to expect and, if they're that big, could move other parts of their business over to you later.

Thanks, all, for your insightful comments & opinions!

Right now we are in the happy predicament of asking ourselves this question of "big vs. hot" quite a lot.

Do we resign 1 (or 2) small, "hot" accounts for 1 big, prestigious win? etc.

It's a tough call. The answer we most often land on, as Mike noted first, is, "Both." (Because, as he also noted, we're in business to make a li'l money!)

All of the points ya'll made, above, are dead-on. In cases where we need to make an "either/or" decision, we go with our gut. We try to balance fun vs. profit. Both are important.

Lastly, we very often ask our staff which one they'd prefer to work on, since they'll be doing the daily work. Employees don't necessarily get the final say, but we do take their opinions very seriously into consideration.

For me, and i am not the decision maker here at CoLin, it would depend on one thing only - people. I would need to see how we click with the client's contacts. PR is all about people and communication and if it doesn’t feel right, it’s better to leave it.

If the people would be fine on both side, I would choose the established company not only for the money and the additional silver lining my company would get using them as reference but for one simple reason - they would most probably have reasonable demands and knowledge of what PR agency can do for them and what. not.

But then again, i am in the industry just for year+, so I like watching you big guys brainstorm here :)

Yes, it all boils down to resources. You don't want to take too many clients on, lest you fall down on service, yet, you don't want to stymie growth either. Still, as you point out Todd, it is a balance between the two ends.

It boils down to the expectations issue. Are you turning down the hot start up because they have outsized expectations? Or do you think it would just be easier to deal with the lowered expectations of the established company?

Note that they are two different questions....

The problem with the hot start up is it could be the next Six Apart, or the next Flooze.

First, I'm going to assume you're a mid-sized shop with more than a dozen active clients.

Do you have a client portfolio strategy? A portfolio might look like this: Let's say you'd chosen to maintain, say, 35% high growth moderate risk, 50% mature low risk, 10% creative challenge and learning opportunities with high risk, and 5% pro-bono?

Now I'm just making up those categories; you would slice and dice your own categories to give you a picture of your customer mix that aligns with your operational goals. As you draw your segments, can they tell you anything about the risks typical of that category of client? For example, what is the risk of bankruptcy of businesses in this segment (e.g. small restaurants under 3 years old vs. 10 person accounting firms)? How many months does the client's key marketing exec have left in their job (in some industries the average CMO lasts 36 months, so landing a contract there with an exec two years' into their tenure gives you a year to make your bones, get a return and prepare for the inevitable contract review when the new CMO steps in)? How much higher/lower are your chances for contract renewal in this sector, based on past experience? 2 in 3 in one sector vs. 1 in 4 in another?

Maybe you have lots of clients in one industry and you want diversity across industries that are counter-cyclic (when one industry goes down, others are going up). Is your firm too dependent on one metro area, needing more geographic diversity, perhaps in faster growing markets like China?

So you've defined customer categories that diversify some of your risks, give you a blend of different kinds of non-cash returns and that turn out to have some predictive power for events that affect you (like customer turnover). How does your target portfolio compare with your current mix? Are most of your clients in two of your five categories? Where is the gap between the client portfolio you have and the client portfolio you want?

Back to your question. Other things being equal, bounce prospective clients against the gap between your target client mix and your actual one, and choose for the segments you want to build up.

Then again, how often are things really equal?