The reason, according to Sabrina Lee, director of R3:GC China, is that China's marketers are under pressure to deliver sales.
"48 per cent of all China PR relationships are still on a project basis – marketers need to put in place more strategic, long term partnerships to see the benefits of collaboration and talent," she said.
The research, which covered over 100 foreign and local PR and event agencies in eight cities, also finds that digital capabilities is an important criteria when companies select PR and event agencies.
"With more than 450 million netizens online, PR agencies are playing an important new role in social media and iWOM in China - and marketers recognise the need to find specialist third parties in this area," said Lee.
Despite the influx of global agencies into China, local agencies performed very strongly, with ten ranked in the top twenty PR agencies, including Blue Focus, Genedigi and Trends.
Among event agencies, Spearhead, Pico, Highteam and Across China were all mentioned more than their foreign competitors. Local agencies have often had longer, more consistent management and built up stronger 'guanxi' with local media.
