Transforming Research, Step 1: Integrating Insights

Yesterday's ARF Industry Leader Forum "Transforming Research: Are You Listening?" had many great insights which I'll blog over the next hours and days. The first big theme was integrating insights: taking data from various sources and interpreting them together to get a more coherent picture of the consumer and the market.

In one of the first morning sessions, General Mills' VP Consumer Insights, Gayle Fuguitt, described the evolution she is leading her group through: from consumer research, to consumer insights and ultimately to "integrated insights". I really like this idea. Research should be shedding light on consumer wants, needs, motivations, and influences. It shouldn't matter whether the data comes from a traditional survey, social media analysis or, as talked about in a later panel, search terms, web analytics, or TV set top box data or any other source. If it helps a brand gain a better insight into its audience, "market research" should be all over it.

The flip side of this is the statement: "We already have more data than we know what to do with." I heard this in the workshop I conducted in the afternoon and is a complaint I often hear from Cymfony prospects and clients.

Plenty of data, but a dearth of insights. Many attendees believe that if instead of viewing these reports individually they were viewed in a more integrated fashion, there would be greater insights and the value of this research would increase dramatically.

This was music to my ears! (Disclosure: here comes a plug!) Last month I led a webinar with my TNS colleage Jeni Chapman. We used a variety of data and research techniques to gain a better understanding of the booming HDTV marketing. We found that looking at market share, brand equity, brand awareness and social media discussions provided a much richer understanding of the dynamics driving the market than any one or two of the sources alone. ARF members can view the recording of the webcast in the My ARF section of the website.

Other idea/questions/issues struck me and I'll try to address those in posts over the next few days: cutting the fat, questioning the data, what to do with the data that doesn't fit, and what skills are needed.

Posted by Jim Nail on October 30, 2008 at 04:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

2008 Measurement Summit

The Institute for Public Relation’s annual Measurement Summit is a great venue to discuss both challenges and successes in PR research. However, each year conversation tends to dwell on the same topics i.e. examples of measurement initiatives without discussion of how to overcome the following challenges we all struggle with:

  • How can corporate communications folks validate PR research thus increasing their research budget?
  • How can agencies help their clients demonstrate the necessity and value of research throughout the campaign process?

Panel discussions focusing on these issues could stimulate ideas that would help us all.

Another frustration voiced at the summit is the deficiency in PR measurement expertise among practitioners with individuals noting the wealth of knowledge at the pre-conference workshops taught at the Summit. How about holding these workshops annually in markets such as Chicago and New York where considerable numbers of practitioners work? This year saw a smaller number of practitioners probably due to the economy but if IPR brought the workshops to them I bet attendance would be significant and research proficiencies could be disseminated.

Lastly, I was surprised there were no presentations at the summit focusing on social media. Although Jim Macnamara held a pre-conference workshop on measuring the impact of blogs, none of the Summit talks focused on the evolving universe of social media and how communications professionals are faring in this medium.

This in light of the results of the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media study indicating that 85% of Americans believe a company should interact with its consumers via social media.

Our counterparts in advertising are certainly diving into this medium. The lack of social media discussion at the Summit is concerning…

Posted by Natasha Stevens on October 20, 2008 at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Announcing "Verismo" for PR Measurement!

PR measurement is a topic of hot debate and little agreement. Cymfony's new approach, Verismo, aims to tame the wealth of data spit out by a sophisticated measurement platform and give PR professionals a simple, clear way to explain the results of their work. Read on or click here to find out more.

A sophisticated content aggregation, analysis, and tagging platform like Cymfony's Orchestra system is a bit of a blessing and a curse to PR measurement professionals.

The blessing is that it generates rich data that were impossible with physical clips. The curse is that there is so much data, it can be a little overwhelming.

So in trying to tame this beast, Cymfony went back to basics and asked: what are we really trying to prove? There is a pretty simple answer to this because there are two key questions a PR professional must answer:

  1. Did we reach the audience we wanted to?
  2. Did we communicate the messages we wanted to?

The difficulty in PR measurement is in picking the right data to answer these questions. There is no simple answer and no general agreement across the industry.

But in looking at all the work we do for our clients, there were some common themes that became the foundation for Verismo:

  • Visibility: When an article mentions a company or brand, how man people does it reach? And is the company or brand prominently discussed in the article?
  • Reputation: What is being said about the company or brand? Is it the message the PR person is trying to communicate?
  • Influence: Does this particular publication or journalist carry more credibility than average so that what he or she writes have higher impact on the reader?
  • Sentiment: Is it positive or negative?

VRIS became our key variables. Then we developed a model to weight and calculate these variables into a score that represents the degree to which a communication objective is achieved.

VRIS Model, which became Verismo.

To learn more, read our new white paper. And to understand how Verismo fits into the musical theme of our company (Cymfony, Orchestra, etc.) read this Wikipedia entry ;-)

Posted by Jim Nail on October 14, 2008 at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack