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Feb 21 2012

IRS seeks some PR help

Wall Street Journal - by Kristina Peterson

The Internal Revenue Service is offering up to $15 million for some professional public relations help.

Racy Super Bowl commercials this is not. The IRS is currently evaluating pitches made last week from communications agencies to help publicize programs like the earned-income tax credit and small business retirement plans.

The nation’s tax collector wants a “full service communications and marketing company” to help convey its “corporate vision and goals,” according to a 49-page solicitation sent to 12 agencies. The winner’s duties could include market research, educating the public about new tax provisions, and designing national information campaigns.

The one-year contract could be extended for four more years, with a total value of as much as $15 million, the IRS solicitation says. PR firm Porter Novelli has had the contract for four years, but it reached the $17.5 million limit, IRS spokesman Terry Lemons said.

The most surprising element of IRS’s search for a new marketing contract is it isn’t the first, said anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “The idea that they used to have a PR firm really leads to the question of ‘what did they do?’”

The IRS has relied on Porter Novelli to help inform taxpayers about some new laws and programs. Porter Novelli confirmed that the firm works with the IRS, but declined to comment further.

Public relations experts said it would be an attractive challenge, given the agency’s unpopularity.

“It would be a client who’s basically under siege from every direction,” said Loretta Mock, vice president of public relations firm Cognito, which isn’t competing for the contract. “We find that fun.”

And the IRS has one thing going for it: Most of America already knows what it does.

“You would have a client that has a relationship with every single person in this country,” noted Sean Gibbons, vice president for communications at Third Way, a center-left Washington think tank. The challenge, he said is that “they have a brand that in many quarters of this country is not especially popular.”

No kidding. The IRS ranked last among 13 federal agencies in a 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center, which asked respondents if they had a favorable opinion of each agency.

Indeed, some suggested the IRS think a little more radically about how to rebrand itself.

“For the IRS, the first thing to do would be to change your name,” said David Bauman, an agent representing Metta World Peace, the Los Angeles Lakers basketball player formerly known as Ron Artest. As Mr. Artest, the basketball player “at one point was the most hated player in the NBA” following an ugly brawl with the Detroit Pistons in 2004, but was able to slowly win fans back, Mr. Bauman said.

PR types said it’s technically possible to think of tougher marketing challenges — but not many.

“Advancing the interests of the North Korean leadership at the moment would be harder than the IRS,” suggested Matthew Harrington, chief executive officer of public relations powerhouse Edelman U.S.

The U.S. prison in Guantanamo could prove a harder sell, said Mr. Norquist. “It’s just a little less scary than that.”

Mr. Lemon said in a statement that the IRS, like other U.S. agencies, “uses a contract to cover a small segment of marketing and communication services.” He said it “is limited to developing and distributing educational information for use by taxpayers and partners on important projects.”

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