Inter-agency relations

I've heard a lot of industry chat recently about PR agencies teaming up to share leads, compare contacts and generally help one another out in a display of old fashioned chivalry.

I'm in two minds about this, as surely half the fun of PR is the backstabbing and bitchery. After all, we all love to hate the biggest agencies like Lewis (sorry, but SpinBunny started it, so I'm just continuing a theme). But good PR is really all about contacts, and people move from agency to agency all the time, so burning bridges (like I just did with my Lewis comment) has got to be a bad thing.

Contacts at other agencies can really help. They can pull a journo contact out of the bag to fill that last minute slot at a press conference, for a start. They can also help with a new job should the time come. The most successful trend by far, though, is the inter-agency journo drinks. A lot of that went on at the recent 3GSM conference and I think it's fair to say that a good time was had by both journalists and PRs. You also get to share the bar bill, which is great.