Cymfony's Influence 2.0

An Example of Confused Terminology

A recent article published in the PRSA's new PR Journal provides a example of how poorly the terms "output", "outtake" and "outcome" are understood in the industry, even in this peer-reviewed publication which features articles from the leading academics and industry practitioners.

My recent post, "Outputs, and Outtakes, and Outcomes Oh My!" lamented how frequently I see these terms misused. In addition to the comments I got on the blog, I had email exchanges with several people. One member of the IPR's Measurement Commission said "I'm extremely puzzled how anyone could possibly misinterpret outputs (which only relate to mentions) with outcomes (which must relate to attitude or behavior reinforcement or change)."

I didn't have to look far for an example.

In this paper titled "The Application of "Best Practices" in Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation Systems" published in the first issue of the PR Journal, EchoResearch's President David Michaelson and CEO Sandra Macleod, noted as "two of the world's leading experts in communications research and measurement", ouputs and outcomes are used incorrectly if you take, as I do, the IPR's Guidelines for Meauring the Effectiveness of PR Programs and Activities authored by Prof. Walter Lindenmann as the standard definition. (Note: David Michaelson is on the Institute for PR's Commission on Public Relations Measurement & Evaluation under whose aegis the guidelines were published.)

Before I address the misuse of the term, let me say the paper is useful and, for PR practioners unfamiliar with conducting market research it should be a "must read" to understand the basics of constructing a valid research methodology. However, IMHO, it falls short of delivering the "best practices" by skimming over the tough issues of how to isolate PR's impact from other marketing/communications/sales activities and how to link PR to sales. But this is a topic for another post, perhaps.

Back to the example. On page 3 of the paper, Michaelson and Macleod write:

"Companies specializing in public relations measurement and evaluation have traditionally focused on evaluating only the outcomes of public relations. These outcomes are most commonly the media or press coverage that is a direct result of media relations activities (outputs)."

These two sentences say that outcomes are the number of clips or impressions while outputs are the number of press releases issued, perhaps the number of reporters called or who attended a press conference, etc.

Here are Lindenmann's definitions on page 7 of his paper:

"...PR outputs, which are usually short-term and surface (e.g., the amount of press coverage received or exposure of a particular message)..."

"...PR outcomes (e.g., did the program or activity change opinion and attitude levels, and possibly behavior patterns?)."

If the experts and members of the IPR Measurement Commission don't use the terms accurately, the rest of the industry will be confused, as I believe they are today.

Why do I rant about this? We all know words are important -- that's why we do what we do. We also know that words come with certain associations and connotations from everyday usage and I believe the terms "outputs" and "outcomes" are commonly used in ways that are dramatically different than what the IPR intends. (Outtakes is just a strange word that only exists, perhaps, in the world of film editing.)

Michaelson's and Macleod's misuse of outputs above is an example where common usage gets substituted for the official definition. If someone asked me what my output was today, I'd probably answer "a blog post, 35 emails, and 3 meetings" or something. When a CEO thinks of outputs, he probably thinks about how many widgets come off the assembly lines of his factory, not the number of his widgets on store shelves. Thus when a CEO (or other non-communications exec) hears the term outputs in association with communications activities, she probably thinks in terms of the activities of the PR staff as Michaelson and Macleod describe them, and not how many articles the company was mentioned in. And, as I have said before, I believe the only "outcomes" C-level staff are interested in are those that contribute financially to the firm's performance.

It is natural for people to apply their common understanding of terms when they hear them in a new context. It is a lot of work to try to wrap new meanings around them and have those new meanings widely accepted. The IPR and PRSA need to either step up efforts to educate the industry on the correct use of these terms or consider changing them to terms that are understandable based on their common usage.

I believe change is the preferred course. My nominations for new, more readily understandable terms are:

• Media Influence: clips, impressions, message pick up that indicate that PR activities and programs influenced the media to distribute the intended information
• Audience Influence: perceptual or attidudinal changes that indicate the intended audience saw the information, paid attention to it, and that the desired change took place
• Business Influence: sales, stock price, or brand equity valuation increases that are linked to these activities

What's your vote: change or stick with outputs/outtakes/outcomes?

Outputs and Outtakes and Outcomes -- Oh My!

In my experience, the terms outputs, outtakes and outcomes are not well understood among PR professionals. And if they are not well understood, building a PR measurement program will get derailed by using incorrect approaches and flawed reporting. Therefore, I propose an alternate framework of Media Influence, Audience Influence, and Business Influence.

Since the Institue for PR published the paper "Guidelines for Measuring the Effectiveness of PR Programs and Activities" in 2002, these terms have gained currency in the industry. Almost every presentation I see includes the terms "outcomes" and "outputs". But I continue to see what I consider to be misclassifications of  what I consider outputs and PR activities as outcomes.

Perhaps because the terms are somewhat mysterious. And while I like the alliteration and parallelism in the "out-" triad, it may be too confusing. So I'd like to propose an alternative framework:

• Media Influence -- this is essentially the outputs: clips, impressions, quality of coverage. In other words: did our PR activities cause the media to respond to our messages and report on them?
• Audience Influence -- this is essentially outtakes, though I differ a bit in Prof. Lindenmann's definition which is "determining if those to whom the activity was directed received, paid attention to, comprehended, and retained particular messages." I would go the next step to measure if these messages change audience perception, attitudes, and intentions, which the paper categorizes as "outcomes". Thus, this category of measurement answers the question: did our PR activities cause the intended audience to respond to our messages? The main approaches here are likely to be based on market research surveys.
• Business Influence -- These outcomes I define  very strictly as a financial impact on the business which can be measured in one of three ways: sales, stock price, or brand equity valuation. This category of metrics answers the question: did our PR activities positively influence the business? I use this strict definition because 1) we know that at the end of the day, this is all the C-suite really cares about and 2) it is the most complicated, expensive, and difficult metrics to create and link to PR activities. The main approaches are likely to be sophisticated modeling techniques, like market mix modeling.

While I don't want to get the industry hung up in changing terms for change's sake, I think the distinction is important. It will make it much clearer what measurements and methdologies address which aspect of measurement and clear away some of the fog surrounding the purpose and usefulness of different approaches.

(I also think we need to rethink the Audience Influence approach in light of the idea of "engagement", but I'll save that for another post.)

Thoughts?

Social Media Forecast: Looks a lot like online advertising 1994 - 2000

Mediaweek, citing an eMarketer report, states, "User-generated content on the Web is set to rapidly shift from a budding consumer trend to a serious business over the next five years." For those of us who have watched the adoption of online advertising, we are seeing history repeat itself.

This eMarketer report states that UCG sites will earn $1 billion in ad revenues this year, and $4.3 billion by 2011. Mediaweek goes on to state, "Plus, users have shown no indication that creating their own Web content for others to consume is a passing fad, found eMarketer. By 2011, the researcher estimates there will be 95 million Web users creating content online, up from 64 million last year."

The analogy to Web 1.0 online advertising is this: 1994 is usually cited as the birth of online advertising, and in 1997, the medium's fourth year, the IAB reported $900 million in ad revenue. Arguably, 2005 was the first year of social media, so 2007, the third year of its existence, will see $1 billion. Very similar growth curve. Online advertising hit $4 billion in 1999, its sixth year; UGC will hit this landmark in its 7th year. Since UGC growth isn't being propelled by a bubble that was starting to inflate in 1999, the curve again looks similar.

At the same time eMarketer also published an article "UGC not Critical for Many Marketers" in which only 12% of survey respondents said UGC was "very important" to their marketing efforts. The top reasons according to eMarketer "lack of clear ROI was often named as an objection. Other reasons listed included "management doesn't embrace it yet," "we simply haven't given it enough priority to consider it at this point" and "we've had difficulty in getting the establishment to understand it."

Nonetheless, over 40% are either using it already or considering it for next year. emarketer explains, "respondents understood the benefits of using UGC. A third of respondents said UGC was cost-efficient compared with traditional marketing and advertising, and 31% said it was useful because the credibility of traditional advertising and marketing was declining."

This is really deja vu for me: I wrote the following in an October 2001 Forrester Report titled "Online Advertising Retrenches":

"Marketers wrestle with opposing forces that alternatively urge them forward and hold them back from adopting Web site display advertising. They sense the Web's potential but recoil from the risks of being a pioneer and so wait for proven metrics and ad formats to appear."

In a nutshell, consumer media consumption habits are changing faster than marketers can learn and adapt. But year by year, from dipping a toe in the water, to pilot tests, to full adoption, the shift is on an inexorable course. The only question is whether the shift will be faster or slower than the prognosicators think.

I have an obvious bias, but my money is on it growing faster. Being a former prognosicator, here is how I would think about it:

1. There is no VC-fueled dotcom spending here, so the growth is unlikely to be interrupted for 3 years as happend to online advertising.
2. Senior marketing executives and industry observers like Bob Garfield have woken up to the reality that the age of mass marketing is in decline and they no longer need to be convinced to move beyond the tried-and-true tactics of the past. Traditional advertising spending is slowing and "below-the line" (I've always hated that phrase) on CRM, interactive, direct mail, etc. is growing.
3. Social media represents a bigger change than online advertising was. Banners were another format to push messages through; blogs and social networks require a much more dynamic relationship with consumers.

IMHO, the biggest drag on the growth of online ads in the '90's was lack of urgency because marketers still had total confidence in TV and mass marketing. Without that comfort, marketers will be much more willing to invest in the necessary learning to add new social media tools to their marketing arsenal.

Top Reasons people say NO to Social Media

Last Thursday, at the Social Media Club Boston event, our Director of Professional Services, Pat Fennessey, talked about the Top 5 objections to social media that we hear at Cymfony.  Todd Van Hoosear posted a recap of these objections (with Pat's rebuttal to each of them) on Tech PR Gems.

New Podcast - How to Mine the Blogosphere

Paul Dunay, of Buzz Marketing for Technology, recently conducted a podcast on “How to Mine the Blogosphere” with our CMO, Jim Nail.  In this podcast, Jim gives advice on what companies should think about when looking at online conversations and includes examples of what companies like Sony and Wal-Mart are discovering in the process. 

Before the kickoff, Doritos scores a touchdown

In the REAL contest (the battle of the Super Bowl ads to see which advertisers will get the most for their money), Doritos has already put a big lead on the board. From January 1 - February 2, coverage of their contest to have consumers create their Super Bowl ad has generated over 40 million impressions -- almost half the number the game will deliver.

Cymfony has been tracking coverage of Super Bowl advertising in television (thanks to our friends at Critical Mention!), Internet traditional media sites (sites like reuters.com, abcnews.com, msnbc.com and thousands of others) and social media sites (blogs, discussion boards, social network sites, etc.).

Here's one other stat: the social media sources deliver less than 5% of all the impressions generated. While the blogs and social networks are undeniably important, they still have a long way to go to match traditional media's impact. But this shouldn't be a surprise: according to Quantcast, Engadget gets between 30,000 - 40,000 unique visits per day. A broadcast on a local TV station like ABC 9 in Cincinnati delivers an audience of 65,653 while the online version of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper delivers 66,416 readers.

Beyond just the raw amount of exposure, Doritos wins on another dimension: almost half of the discussions of the Doritos ads are positive and almost none are negative. At Cymfony, we almost never see this strong of positive reaction for any brand.

    

By contrast, Nationwide's Kevin Federline ad also shows strong favorability, but in a more typical pattern, almost 17% of the discussion is negative (you can't please all the people all the time).

 

But while Nationwide also got a fair amount of coverage and discussion, K-Fed really can't please the blogosphere: just under 30% of discussion in the social media world is negative.

   

Read my picks of the best and worst of Super Bowl ads: First Quarter, Second Quarter, Third Quarter, Fourth Quarter.

Gread Ideas I Learned in October, Part 4

ROMO COP.

No, this is not a new Schwarzenegger sci-fi flick. It's the right approach to marketing measurement.

Back to Rex Briggs' and Greg Stuart's What Sticks for this one -- or actually two -- ideas: Return on Marketing Objective and Communication Optimization Process.

I really like the distinction Briggs and Stuart draw between ROMO and ROI (Return on Investment). I've ranted that the measurement obsession is wrong: ROI (usually defined as immediate sales spurred by an individual ad) is NOT the only valid measure of marketing effectiveness. If it were, all we as marketers would do is a bunch of couponing and discounts, and as the authors state on page 50 "If you condition consumers to wait for price discounts..then you're also conditioining them to switch from your brand to a very similar competitive brand that may be offering a price deal this week."

(They refer to breakfast cereals in this paragraph -- I wonder if this is the old (circa early '90's) General Mills market mix model study by Promotion Decisions, Inc. authored by Greg Ambach and Mike Hess. They proved that promotion generated immediate sales but not repeat sales while advertising generated repeat sales, both at higher price and higher frequency. I was going to link to it from this post, but couldn't find it online any more. It's an oldie but goodie! If anyone knows if it is still online, leave me a comment.)

But back to the real story. ROMO is so important because in so many catagories and many media, it is unrealistic to expect a person to drop everything and make a purchase that moment. When they purchase later, the last ad/marketing piece/brochure, etc. that he/she sees gets all the credit, discrediting all the other previous marketing stimuli. Market mix modeling is a great tool to straighten out the misallocation of credit, but it is costly and complex.

Boosting consideration and purchase intention provide a return because the indicate that the consumer is moving toward a purchase. Rex's Cross Media Optimization methodology is a great tool But since these metrics are softer than revenue, the process behind measurement is as important as the metric itself, the authors argue.

This is where COP comes in. The authors lay out and illustrate three critical steps: 1) to get everyone to agree on the primary goals of the campaign;  2) create the right measurement tools, processes, and metrics; and 3) devise scenarios on how to change the campaign as results data come in.

It sounds deceptively simple, but in reality is hard. They bring this to life with the example of the McDonald's chicken flatbread sandwich. The company had to answer the following question: if the ad increased traffic, but people ended up buying a Big Mac and not the chicken sandwich, was the advertising successful?

What Sticks provides some great advice on how to apply this discipline to benefit the quality of marketing programs, improve the ability to rapidly respond to results of the campaign, and appropriately get recognition for marketing success.

The real story of the State of the Blogosphere

David Sifry's latest State of the Blogosphere report notes that the blogosphere is maturing. Forget the 57 million total blogs. The interesting number is that there are more authoritative blogs than there are traditional outlets in any single medium.

It's time to stop citing that there are 57 million blogs -- it is a pretty meaningless number. Since 26 million are spam or abandoned, they don't count. I'm not even sure the 31 million active blogs (that have been updated at least once in the past 3 months) is a very meaningful number -- in the blog world this isn't very active. At best these numbers serve as a proxy for the growth of CGM. But with comScore and NetRatings traffic numbers for YouTube and MySpace, I think this number has outlived its usefulness.

The number that really caught my eye is:

• 30,488 high authority and very high authority blogs

For context there are about 13,000 radio stations, 9,000 TV stations, and 17,000 magazines in the US. (source: Forrester Research, "Left Brain Marketing")

In other words, authoritative blogs are  more numerous than any other single traditional medium. That alone is a number a marketer or public relations person needs to take seriously.

blogosphere CGM media

Time to Disengage from Engagement

It was clear from the panel on engagement metrics at the Mediapost Forecast 2007 conference that the industry's attempts to use "consumer engagement" as a tool have gotten ahead of the Advertising Research Foundation's process of defining and codifying the concept.

The panel was billed as a debate, and it delivered. Representing the media buying community were the well-known and always colorful Erwin Ephron, along with Dave Smith, president of Mediasmith. Representing the group championing and developing the concept were Joe Plummer Chief Research Officer of the ARF and Bob DeSena Director of Active Engagement at Mediaedge:cia.

The debate boiled down to this: the media buyers want to operationalize the engagement concept with the kinds of specific metrics and processes that have guided the reach/frequency/GRP model of ad buying. But the initiative was only announced last July and the work is ongoing.

Dave Smith noted that every presentation by media companies includes a pitch that their property is more "engaging" than others while media research companies like Simmons are pitching engagement metrics that don't fit into the current process. To top it off, Dave noted pressure from clients asking what his company is doing about engagement.

It is to these media sellers, researchers and clients that my title is directed: they should disengage the hype machines.

Joe Plummer readily admitted "we have a long way to go and we need to hurry up" and noted that there are five research initiatives in process to explore and validate different approaches that could be taken. Joe continued, "We are changing the way the industry thinks about advertising about advertising from one mental model to another. There is a lot of trial and error to evaluate the role of ideas like Net Promoter, co-creation of meaning and others."

This kind of change takes time, experimentation, and a lot of creative thought. Everyone should engage in the process to get the best thinking and ideas into the mix to be tested and validated.

Advertising Market Research Consumer Engagement

The Dawn of the Age of Influence 2.0

Welcome to the new Influence 2.0 blog. You may be asking "What is this new name all about?" Let me explain:

The worlds of marketing, public relations, customer service and all market-facing functions know that the old mass media/marketing models are broken and major change is afoot. There are myriad new formats, channels and tools, but no new framework to make sense of it all.

So Cymfony is putting a stake in the ground: we are brashly declaring the Dawn of the Influence 2.0 Era.

Why Influence? Because, despite the different ways marketing, public relations, and customer service professionals work day-to-day, their fundamental goal is the same: to influence the perceptions of, and preferences for, their companies and brands.

Why 2.0? Because we believe this isn't solely about new channels which companies can use to push one-way messages. It's about the creation of what the Wikipedia definition of Web 2.0 calls “market conversations”. This will require far different approaches than the Influence 1.0 world.

Why now? These changes have been emerging for a while. They seem to be accelerating. Traditional media and social media, which used to be separate and distinct, are increasingly converging. The pace makes it hard for professionals to step back, look at the macro trend, and develop new kinds of thinking to fully take advantage of these changes.

Cymfony plans to play a central role in helping business understand the new strategies, tactics and practices needed to harness the new dynamic of market influence. We hope to kick-off an industry-wide dialog around this idea to expand it clarify it, and capture the best thinking about how to respond.

So in addition to this blog which will report our findings and perspectives, we are launching two initiatives:

The Influence 2.0 eBook: The first chapter is available today at (link) that will present our first attempt at putting a framework around these changes. We have three more chapters in progress which will be released over the next couple of weeks.

The Influence 2.0 wiki: But I consider this only a draft. I know these changes are bigger and more complex than I alone or even all my Cymfony colleagues can fully explore. So we will post the entire eBook to the wiki and invite all interested parties to read, contribute, expand, revise. Like a martial arts master, we want use our opponent’s strengths to turn the encounter to our advantage: the great strength of the Web 2.0 world is the ability to harness the collective intelligence of the community to fully explore and understand how Web 2.0 will change our professions.

Come back often to see how our thinking evolves and our understanding deepens. Check out the wiki as new chapters, examples and ideas are added. Join us on the wiki to contribute your knowledge and learning.

Welcome to the new Cymfony blog. Welcome to a new era. Welcome to Influence 2.0.

influence web 2.0 social media marketing public relations customer service

Dispatch from the ARF Engagement Metrics Panel

Yesterday morning, the Advertising Research Foundation ReThink! conference explored in depth the idea of “engagement” as a consumer-centric metric to supplement if not replace the traditional media-centric metrics of impressions, GRPs and reach/frequency.

I’m biased of course, but I see the analysis of consumer-generated media playing an important role as marketers move toward the future of engagement as a central principle.

Joe Plummer, the ARF's Chief Research Officer, kicked off the morning summarizing the work of the committee and presenting this definition of engagement:

Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhance by the surrounding context.

He went on to define "turning on" as "activating associations and metaphors so the prospect co-creates brand meaning."

So here's the central paradox of the idea of engagement as a metric: it is fundamentally a “soft” concept in a world demanding more and more hard metrics

Jean-Louis Laborie, Global Research & Development Director for Integration Marketing & Communications, demonstrated some progress toward resolving this paradox. He granted the point that engagement is attitudinal, and as such, can only be a relative measure, e.g., this consumer is more engaged than the other consumer. An objective scale of engagement is probably impossible. He showed indices his company is developing for consumer engagement with media and brands.

Why CGM has a role: CGM is a qualitative data source in high volume. Applying the right analytic tools and techniques can identify brand associations with quantitative rigor.

Other notable comments from the session:

Ted McConnell, Manager of Interactive Marketing Innovation, P&G, quoted this excerpt from the World Federation of Advertisers’ Blueprint for Consumer-Centric Holistic Measurement:

We know our consumers beyond demographics and get info about them in a very timely manner. We truly understand their multi-media behavior and respect their privacy.

Ted also had one of the most quotable quotes of the day: “We should measure share of choice, not share of voice.” He didn't elaborate on what he meant, but I interpret it to mean simply counting the number of impressions we deliver in an ad campaign is inadequate; we need to shift the perspective to the consumer reaction or behavior that is the result of those impressions.

Why CGM has a role: CGM is both timely and revealing of consumer attitudes and habits: it is available continuously in real-time, and this spontaneous voice of the consumer provides insight into consumer feelings. And because Cymfony analyzes both CGM and mainstream media, we can track how mainstream media is impacting these feelings.

Greg Smith, EVP Media Insights, Planning & Analysis, Carat Fusion, had one of the other most quotable quotes: “Today’s media choices allow us to paint our brand story in color; current metrics only measure black and white in b/w.”

Why CGM has a role: Greg is agreeing with the WFA vision of understanding more about consumers than dry facts. In CGM, consumers share their motivations, needs, wishes and other  colorful details. Extracting the essence of these emotional characteristics from CGM and overlaying it on the demographics statistics will put flesh and bones on our statistics.

market research Advertising

Information Overload, Mining Data for Nuggets

Is anyone else feeling a bit overwhelmed with the amount of information and data available at any given moment?  I've signed up for so many marketing, pr, media and advertising email alerts and newsletters that by the end of the day my head is spinning.   Never mind the amount of news sources, blogs, and consumer-generated media I read ever day.  I feel like if I stop, I'm going to miss something big.  I'm finally at the point of really understanding the age of information overload.  I suspect most PR and marketing folks are in the same boat.  We're all trying to keep track of our company as well as issues and opportunities facing our entire industry.  This got me thinking of an article Cymfony was asked to write for an upcoming issue of PRTactics on "Mining Data for Insights."  (due out in March I believe)

Jim Nail was the lucky author of the piece.  In it, he compares harnessing data and information to mining for gold...you may need to move a ton of rocks to get to the nugget.  "Companies need a map of where to look, the tools to extract the ore and the approach to refine it into a valuable commodity." 

I thought I'd share some of the highlights of the article since I had the pleasure of editing and submitting. 

As most of us know, data can be complied through either a manual or automated process.  Both contain valuable insights, and the critical decision is to determine what type of insights are the most beneficial to your business.  Jim explains the benefits of both approaches and points out that "automated tools provide a number of advantages, especially if you find a high volume of relevant posts across a wide range of sites. First, they will consolidate relevant content from any number of blogs, boards, groups, etc. into one central repository. They will categorize, sort, count, and analyze posts, reporting on the number of comments about a particular topic, and rate each comment as either positive or negative. Finally, they will allow the user to perform his or her own analysis to shed light on a particular business issue or challenge."

Depending on what you want to do with the data and info, there are many perspectives to view it.  "The most common three include:

· Category drivers, to answer questions such as: What does this product mean to the buyer? What problem is he or she trying to solve? What stimulates a purchase and what barriers does the prospect encounter in the purchase process?

· Feature hierarchy: What are the most sought after features and why? What features aren’t important? Are the buyers looking for more functional or emotional benefits?

· Brand perceptions: Which brands are in the consideration set? Which are most top-of-mind? How do consumers weigh the pros and cons of each brand?

These perspectives aren’t mutually exclusive. For example, an analysis could cross reference the brand perceptions and features data to create a perceptual map of how consumers view each brand in the category, how they relate to each other on key criteria (price, quality, availability, etc.), and, over time, how brand perceptions evolve."

As I have said before, automated tools are a great resource to help gather and organize the overwhelming amount of info out there, but they are not going to replace human interpretation of data. 

And I'm still going to read my news updates, email alerts, and aggregation sites like bloglines. 

8 Traps to Avoid in PR Measurement

PRNews recently released its 2006 Best Practices Guide in PR Measurement.  The grouping of articles is described as a "one-of-a-kind guidebook that will equip you with the knowledge, tactics and workable strategies to measure your PR initiatives."  The book is full of insights, and as you would expect, best practices, from heavy hitters such as Bruce Jeffries-Fox, Katie Paine, and Frank Ovaitt.  Cymfony's Julie Woods authored a piece entitled "8 Traps to Avoid in PR Measurement." 

"Good measurement is dependent on two key criteria: valid data collection and relevant reporting"

At Cymfony, we believe there are eight common traps you should avoid when starting a new measurement program or to begin to evolve your existing program.  (I'll highlight them here but save the details for the full piece): 

1.)  Not doing a media audit or assessment before starting a measurement program.

2.)  Not defining standard metrics across your organization.

3.)  Limiting metrics and analysis to small number of key pubs or simple messages.

4.)  Treating all mention s equally.

5.) Not slicing metrics by different audience segments.

6.)  Delayed measurement and reporting.

7.) Not taking blogs and online discussions seriously.

8.) Not demonstrating your success, often. 

"PR measurement is no longer a nice-to-have line item in most PR budgets.  Its now a critical requirement for demonstrating the impact of PR on corporate objectives and managing a company's most important asset - its reputation.  While some people were initially skeptical of the benefits of measurement a few years ago, most agreed that a valuable outcome would be the ability to demonstrate the tangible benefits of PR such as increased media coverage in key regions or markets that could be tied to increased leads and revenue."

The good news?  Most measurement issues are avoided through good planning and communications. 

WOMBAT and IDC's MPM Summit Summary

As Jim Nail was speaking at the Word of Mouth Basic Training (WOMBAT) Conference in Orlando last week, Cymfony's CEO Andrew Bernstein held court at the IDC Marketing Performance Measurement Summit for Business to Business marketers.

To expand on Jim's post about Thurs. session at WOMBAT, Steve Rubel has few nuggets and Josh Hallett, Marianne Richmond, Dana Vanden Huevel and Toby Bloomberg did an excellent job summarizing the event on the official WOMBAT blog.

Meanwhile in Santa Clara, Rich Vancil, VP of IDC's CMO Advisory Practice and chairman of the MPM Summit suggested tech marketers are embracing measurement practice out of economic necessity.  This is a shift from last year where he emphasized that the high-tech sector was woefully lacking.

According to Rich, marketing costs have grown to 6.5% while worldwide IT industry growth has only risen 5.5%.  Sales costs have increased and sales cycles have lengthened.  Additionally, media has fragmented leading to complicated marketing decision-making. 

As expected, most of the speakers talked about the need for measurement and the strategies used to implement.  Andrew's luncheon discussion on "Measuring and Analyzing MSM and CGM to Gain Critical Market Intelligence" was the only session that touched upon the need to integrate CGM into the mix.  So I'm not surprised that I couldn't find much discussion about the event online.  Opportunity for IDC perhaps?

There will be a similar east coast event in New York City in April.

WOM, Marketing, marketing measurement

Would PR Rather Not Be Measured?

I had the pleasure of speaking with a Cymfony client yesterday about their PR measurement program in 2005.  The reason for the conversation was to gather specific information on our partnership over the last year to write a case study.  This particular Fortune 1000 client worked in the corporate marketing department as a market researcher.  The challenge for the department was to set up the best program to quickly and accurately measure the impact of PR on the organization.  Cymfony began working with the company in April of 2005.  Being very metric focused, they were looking for data which was something we could easily provide.  We quickly determined that it wasn't just data that they needed, it was metrics with insight - actionable intelligence.   But that's not the reason for this post.

What struck me about our conversation was that the market researcher said that if the PR team had their way, they would be much happier not to be measured at all.  Now this might have been a statement made about the internal politics at one organization but I tend to believe it's a wider issue.  Look at a recent post by Shel Holtz suggesting that the reason for the lack of PR measurement is because communicators are by nature "math-challenged" (lots of chatter on this one).  Additionally, Andy Lark pointed to a Dec. article in the Holmes Report that shared a survey of more than 100 PR Agency principles - highlighting the problems that continue to make research and evaluation a major issue for the PR Industry:

"In general, their responses  suggested that an failure of commitment- rather than the absence of necessary tools and techniques—is behind the industry’s poor performance."

As a PR practitioner myself, some form of measurement has always been the key to show the value of the PR department or to help determine what messages are really sticking or to determine how the company is being perceived.  In general, measurement programs can be set up in many ways. A small company many only want to look at clip counts or impression numbers while a larger company might focus on favoribility, message adoption, depth of coverage or prominence.  There is even a debate about what defines a true PR measurement program (as opposed to a monitoring program or tracking program - fodder for another time).  The point is that some form of measurement should be part of every PR program.  I can tell you, if this math-challenged individual can do it, anyone can. Maybe 2006 is the year.

PR’s 2006 Resolution: Become Accountable

The presents may still be wrapped and under the tree, but last month’s news from Procter & Gamble that PR is more cost effective than advertising for four out of six brands evaluated should have PR professionals planning their New Year’s resolution: Get to know market mix modeling.

The news received widespread coverage. PRWeek’s November 28 article began with dreams of sugarplum budget increases for PR, then continued with a good overview of market mix modeling. Even Ad Age (registration and purchase required) picked it up, focusing on the broader issue of marketing accountability. Shel Holtz noted on his blog that it took P&G 18 months to develop the tool, which they dubbed PREvaluate.

This is puzzling: the time frame and use of a special name seems to imply that P&G built a separate model instead of simply incorporating PR data into their existing models. What a shame, if the PR and marketing people couldn’t get together to share this resource.

In any case, this demonstrates a clear need for PR to catch up with marketing’s increasing sophistication in tying their spending to sales results. Market mix modeling is a statistical technique that correlates marketing stimuli (ads, promotions, etc.) to sales. Market mix models have been used in the CPG world for over 15 years and have been adopted by retailers, financial services companies, pharmaceutical marketers and others recently. With all the emphasis on marketing ROI, many more are planning on using them in the future.

The biggest benefit of these models is being able to talk to C-level executives in the language they understand: “My activities drove $x million in revenue.” The result: less pressure to cut budgets and more respect for the work you do.

If you work for a Fortune 1000 company, chances are pretty good that your marketing counterparts are using these models. So make your New Year’s resolution now to incorporate PR into the model. Here are some resources to get you started:

1) The AMA has a good definition, while iKnowtion, one of the boutique firms specializing in modeling, has a deeper explanation.
2) iMediaConnection hosted an excellent discussion on the topic at a recent conference, with MMA’s John Nardone and Ogilvy’s Gerard Broussard.
3) Knowledge Networks, one of the leading companies specializing in building these models, has an excellent case study looking at the effects of advertising and promotion which illustrates the use of the technique for comparing different marketing disciplines.
4) In my days as a Forrester analyst, I wrote a report outlining the key steps in getting started with the technique (free summary; full report available for purchase to non-Forrester subscribers).

While the models are sophisticated, the most important step is preparing the data. If you are using a PR measurement tool, you’ve already done most of the work. If you are not, resolve now to seek out your company's modeling experts, understand the data requirements of your company’s models, and work with a firm that can package the data for easy inclusion in the model.

marketing, PR, measurement

The Big Max for PR: Measurement

Seth Godin has a really interesting post on people and companies that get stuck in a rut, repeating the same approaches to marketing, business expansion, product development and even job-changing that lead to their initial success. This is called Local Max – the point at which your efforts are paying off to the max. The problem is that a drop often comes after a burst of growth. Achieving the same level of success when trying new approaches often leads to near-term disappointing results or even a decline in performance relative to the initial growth. So, many people retreat back quickly to what made them successful originally. While retreating to core values for your brand is often helpful when companies shift away from the brand promise that customers bought into originally, retreating to old marketing and PR tactics often results in disappointing outcomes.

PR-guy commented that this same Local Max phenomenon may be happening in the PR measurement space. Are PR Firms abdicating their responsibility to measure PR Effectiveness to firms like Cymfony? I don’t think so. Well not at least for the PR firms we work with. These PR firms embrace measurement because it demonstrates effectiveness faster, exposes problems with messaging quickly and highlights areas for improved media targeting and competitive positioning. Smart PR firms are providing more valuable services to their clients by offering more valuable guidance based on deeper insight on the media, message adoption, product differentiators and competitor strategies. Cymfony’s Orchestra product also connects PR people more closely to consumers so they can understand what people care about and how they perceive the company and its products.

Using automated products and services offered by companies like Cymfony can be the catalyst for PR Firms and their clients to get to Big Max rather than wading in Local Max territory reusing the same PR strategies that worked in the past until the client finally decides to switch PR firms in a quest for fresh ideas.

Public,pr,marketing

Gotta Have Analytics

I was reading a post by Sam Whitmore about the top Enterprise trends for 2006 that included Microsoft Office 12 and Analytics. With the launch of Microsoft Office12, now just about everyone can have analytics. Analytics have long been the domain of Business Intelligence vendors providing advanced applications geared towards domain experts and business analysts. Sam pointed out a good article in Network World on the hot analytics space that mentioned market size for Analytics software was sized at roughly $15B in 2004 according to IDC. Most analytics solutions are focused on particular business functions (sales, marketing, CRM) and customized extensively for each client to analyze their markets, business lines, products, customers, competitors, channels and regions targeted. Without customization, analytics solutions are too vanilla to provide valuable insight. With customization, they can be targeted carefully so that they help guide analysts to interesting trends, data anomalies, performance issues and market opportunities.

Microsoft will have to take the vanilla approach in order to deliver a basic solution that can be useful to millions of customers. That most likely means that out of the box, it won’t provide much value to many customers who will need customization in order to find it useful. But, the trend towards analytics for all is a reflection of the demand for accountability at all levels of business.

By opening up the possibility for millions of users to embrace analytics, Microsoft is enabling businesses at every level to improve business processes that should result in better services, solutions and products for their customers. I suspect that marketers at small companies that can’t afford the advanced solutions already on the market will be some of the first business users to embrace Microsoft analytics. Marketers at medium-sized companies will probably wait until VARs provide some level of customization but I’m sure that won’t be too long because:

1. There is nothing to lose from better marketing analysis and many customers to gain
2. You can be sure that other business areas in the company will start using these new features and asking marketing folks "where are your analytics?"

Brand Engagement as a Metric?

Gary Stein wrote a very timely article for ClickZ yesterday entitled "Consumer Engagement: Breaking the Perfect Measurement Myth".  I say timely because I was recently in a meeting  with a few internal folks and advisers were we were discussing an engagement metric.  Specifically what is the right methodology or best way to measure brand engagement as a metric?  Can it be done correctly?  As Gary points out and we agreed, measuring engagement is difficult but not impossible.  As does the Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Advertising Research Foundation who issued this press release not to long ago to encourage industry-wide adoption of "consumer engagement" as a media measurement metric to complement traditional measures of consumer exposure.

"The goal of marketing measurement is to capture what the community does with and thinks about your products, not how well campaign mechanics preform.  Shifting an organization away from this traditional mindset is difficult, partially because individuals want to see their work succeed.  But engagement can become a corporate goal, or at least a marketing department goal: a single point everyone focus on and contributes their work and expertise toward."

In traditional marketing measurement ROI or marketing mix models companies try to answer questions such as, what's the ROI of my Ad?   We all hope and expect ads to drive sales.  But ads can do something else, they can drive emotion to a brand.  Take the Subservient Chicken from Burger King for example (btw, you can buy a halloween mask of the chicken on this site?!?).  It's considered a successful viral ad campaign spread primarily by word of mouth.  Again, the question becomes, can you show analysis based on the promotion of this ad to the growth of the brand?  A critical piece in this case is being able to measure the message that's getting through - and then take a closer look to see if it's driving behavior.  Are people going to Burger King because of the chicken?  Or is Burger King now considered a cool, hip company because of the ad? 

Gary shares a great example in the article:  Data shows that people are still watching a large amount of TV.  But picture a family who has the TV on in the morning when they're getting ready to start the day.  The TV is on for a couple of hours, but is anyone really watching?  The mother might check out an interview with the star of a new movie, the dad a new luxury car ad.  "Imagine, though, the data from that experience. The TV's on for two hours, but there's no objective way to know only 20 minutes of actual consumption occurred, spread across a four-member family."

Later that day, the mother sees an ad for the movie the star is going to be in, a few hours later she reads a blog post that says the movie is way to violent for kids and recommends another movie.  The mother then might do a search on each movie while clicking on reviews and show times.  The consumer moves from awareness to action and several media pieces play key roles.

The point is that integrating multiple data sources and examining how each element generated value in the engagement chain is key.  In the example above, the PR team played a role in getting the star on the show, another team placed the search ad - the search ad may have captured more clicks but the consumer searches having already established awareness.

As you can see measuring engagement is sure to be a complex model with many moving parts but it's quickly becoming a metric that many marketers will need to consider.  Especially as the consumer gains more control.  As a final note and call to action, Gary suggests that "you can being measuring engagement simply by thinking about each individual connection as part of an interlocking chain.  Incremental steps can also be taken, such as correlating SEM data with site performance data. Use blog search engines or buzz services to monitor discussions about your products and its relation to other products."

The Year of Measurement?

Since I began working in the PR industry eight years ago, it seems every year I have seen a similar headline in one of the trade publications or at a conference:  "This is the Year of PR Measurement".  While it's true that many more companies have implemented PR measurement in recent years, we haven't yet seen anything that I would categorize as a Year of PR Measurement.  Why, you may ask?

Well, I think PR measurement is more complex than many firms initially realize.  When they endeavor to implement a measurement program, some companies believe they can just flip a switch (or call their agency) and see the results.  Sure, there are simple ways to measure - like counting clips and using spreadsheets to configure charts.  That might be all an agency needs to report back to its client.  It might also suffice for a PR manager's update to the CEO, but I'm talking about something deeper and more useful than that.

In my opinion, measurement should answer questions like What do the results tell us about our program or campaign?  What did we do well? How are we stacking up against the competition - not just in numbers? Are we telling a good story to the marketplace?

These will sound pretty standard to PR pros.  I point them out because you cannot answer them with a clip book or by producing a static chart.  A meaningful measurement program enables you to investigate and get your hands dirty, look beyond the numbers.

Anecdotally, I've heard many more recent RFPs issued by companies to PR agencies include measurement as more than a checklist item.  It seems that companies are becoming wise to the value of measurement as an intelligence tool, not just a reporting function.  And, they realize they will need to pay for it, too.

Dare I say it - Who knows, maybe this year?

marketing pr measurement

Filtering Spam from Blog Analysis

Today Stephan Baker of Business Week mentioned a major problem that most people don’t realize can corrupt blog analysis. SPAM. Keeping spam out of analytics is one of the most important things we do for our clients. It’s the old maxim of garbage in garbage out. No content provider that we know of using everything from web scraping to RSS feed technologies can delete the majority of spam before they aggregate it and send it to analytics companies like Cymfony.

Instead of relying purely on search and filtering technologies, we rely on our own advanced content analysis technologies to eliminate spam BEFORE it gets into our analytics. I hope someone comes up with a clever way to eliminate the spam at the aggregation point because we’d rather spend our time developing great new analytics. But until that happens, we will continue fighting the battle at the engine level to ensure valid analytics for our clients.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Spokespeople

As a contributor to PRWeek's ToolBox section (subscription required), I'm often asked to answer PR related questions for the publication in 200 words or less.  I submit my answer which is then often edited down even more to fit in the allocated space.  Since the Q&A is not run in the form originally submitted I thought I'd share some of the more recent Q&A here.  Recently, I was asked if there is a way to tell if a company spokesperson is being effective.  (I did address this question in an article and posted on it here few months ago.)

It is important to any organization to continually gauge whether your spokesperson can communicate your key messages effectively for a business or trade reporter, just as the spokesperson is able to communicate with a potential investor, customer or prospect.

Does your spokesperson's message evolve as your audience changes? A critical part of the spokesperson's role is the ability to convey the company's vision with enthusiasm and credibility, in a convincing and dynamic manner to meet the needs of the audience.

For all companies looking to build or enhance their brand, it is important to have an effective spokesperson who can communicate the company message, values and goals. It is also critical to accurately measure your spokespersons effectiveness in delivering the company's messages. Tracking how well your messages are being communicated will help you determine how well your messages are resonating in editorial coverage and in the minds of consumers and corporate decision-makers.

Status, respect and effectiveness of the spokesperson are often tied to exposure to the media. To measure effectiveness, track the number of quotes attributed to key executives or spokespeople at a company. Are they consistently on message with the company's objectives? Do they have something to say that's been picked up by many publications?

Being concise and staying on message is a skill spokesperople need to learn.  As a measurement of this, track the number of quotes and messages and determine if the coverage was positive or negative if possible.  That way spokespeople can benchamark their effectiveness in communicating the company message through direct quotes.  There are additional benchmarks you can set up as well as tools you can use to gain a deeper and broader analysis of effectiveness.

Traditional, CGM Playing an Important Role in Measuring Corporate Reputation

The New York Times published an article from the AP today entitled "Companies Using Tech Analysis on Themselves". Included in the piece is an example of how NACCO Industries, a manufacturer of truck lifts and replacement parts, is using automated analysis of unstructured data to detect flaws in parts.  The technology can look as NACCO's service records and other data as well as consumer discussion online in the form of blogs, message boards and e-commerce sites.  As the AP writes, if NACCO's cargo-vehicle division can detect common problems and fix them in the manufacturing process, it can save millions on warranty claims. 

Not only can NACCO save money by fixing problems before they become widespread - they can also help in managing the company's corporate reputation.  And as marketers and communications professional know, one of the most important intangible assets not directly linked to the bottom line financial is corporate reputation.  Cymfony's own technology, InfoXtract combines information retrivel, information extraction and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to help our customers identify important entities, concepts, relationships and events in documents.   

The way a company, its brands, CEO or corporate representatives are perceived play a significant role in increasing or decreasing company value.  Cymfony believes companies need to place specific measurement parameters around corporate reputation to help monitor this value -- ultimately to help adjust PR and marking strategy to the specific needs of a company.  It is important for companies to have a comprehensive monitoring and analysis system of all news media whether it is traditional or consumer generated. 

Even though this sounds self-serving for a blog post, even a corporate blog post, I'm going to say it anyway - at this time Cymfony is the only firm currently offering NLP-assisted analytics for both mainstream media and consumer generated media.  Okay, enough of the pitch for today.

What's the PR Payoff?

Can PR drive sales? More to the point, can that be measured? In a recent article published at Sam Whitmore's Media Survey, Mirapoint CMP Bethany Mayer extolled SHIFT Communications and its commitment to measuring PR's effect on product sales. SHIFT's LeadSensor service "helps me justify money for programs because if a program does well from a lead-conversion perspective, I get more budget for that program," Mayer told me. Mayer signed up for the service when she ran marketing for Vernier Networks, too.

Predictably, this article raised some response in the PR community. One respondent said that building a company's valuation can be vitally important in justifying PR spend. Another said that "lead gen" is a narrow metric, not broadly useful for charting strategy.

Personally, I think that PR agencies -- especially those serving tech clients -- are in for severe pricing pressure. Many of these tech vendors already are asking for "measurement" of their agency's performance. Do you understand what "measurement" means in this context? What does that word mean to you?

Blog Tracking by Industry

Name an industry that is not blogging these days?  I can't think of one. WebproNews.com contributing writer Tinu Abayomi Paul shares RSS and Blog marketing tips for Real Estate.  And here's a press release on how prescription blogs are helping to educate consumers on prescription consumption - granted it's a tactic by the company to promote it's ecommerce prescription Web site (and I am in no way promoting this site) but it's still interesting to see how the mere mention of consumer opinions coming from blogs are being used to raise awareness of a company. 

This raises a good point - companies need to be tracking online consumer-generated media as well as traditional media by industry (when possible).  Just analyzing your own company, competitiors and brands may not always be enough. By taking a closer look at a specific industry, companies can discover the next hot trend, issues that are bubbling up or who is being associated with their company or brand.  Take the food and beverage industry for example... 

Earlier this year, Cymfony conducted an analysis of the "low XX craze" in the food and beverage industry.  The analysis tracked the last 10 years of low calorie, low fat and low carb in traditional media coverage.  As one would expect, media coverage of diets shifted significantly, with low-fat and low-calorie mentions remaining steady or slightly in decline, as low-carb mentions rose sharply over the last few years.  We decided to take a closer look at the light beer industry, specifically tracking the launch of "low carb" beer.  Cymfony examined the following brands:

• Amstel Light
• Aspen Edge
• Bud Light
• Coors Light
• Corona Light
• Michelob Light
• Michelob Ultra
• Miller Light
• Rock Green Light

And once again, as expected, the coverage of light beers has been relatively in line with their respective market shares. However, Michelob Ultra - launched as a premium, low-carb beer by Anheuser-Busch - captured a disproportionate degree of coverage since it was introduced.  And while coverage for Micelob Ultra to a certain extent replaced coverage for Michelob Light, instead of eating into media presence of Bud Light, it took away from the mentions of its main competitors, Miller Lite and Coors Light. 

The most surprising discovery of this analysis is that prior to the introduction of Michelob Ultra as a low-carb beer and others marketing themselves to that effect, Miller Lite owned 41% percent of the media share in 2000.  By the end of 2004, its coverage dropped to only 26% percent.  If Miller Lite had been looking at the industry and low carb, they may have been able to shift marketing or messaging earlier on to capitalize on this trend. 

If Marketers Shift to Customer-Centric Focus Will They Gain Greater ROI?

Over at CMO Magazine's "Analyst View" research analysts Claudio Marcus and Kimberly Collins of Gartner offer the Top 10 Marketing Processes for the 21st Century.  The article says that by 2007, marketers that devote at least 50% of their time to advanced customer-centric marketing processes and capabilities will achieve marketing return on investment that is at least 30 percent greater than that of their peers, who lack such emphasis.  Yet, also by 2007, fewer than 20 percent of marketing organizations among Global 1000 companies will have evolved enough to successfully leverage customer-centric, value-added processes and capabilities.  This strikes me as odd since almost everywhere we look these days the focus on the "consumer" is more apparent than ever.  Look at the way advertising is changing - viral and online ads are popping up everywhere. And the blogosphere is playing a major role in the way companies interact and gain knowledge from consumers. I wanted to take a closer look at what Gartner had to say about the low percentage of companies shifting focus. 

Gartner believes marketing organizations must move away from a tactical focus on day-to-day activities and place more emphasis on high-value business processes that add value to customers, enhance brand equity and produce stronger, more-predictable return on investment (ROI).  So how do companies make this change?  Although it will vary by industry and size of the company, here is the suggested list:

1. Marketing operations management: Due to increased competitiveness, product and channel proliferation, and greater market, media and interactive channel fragmentation, the complexity of marketing operations has increased. As such, the marketing function must strive for higher degrees of process standardization and automation to drive greater efficiency and productivity, as well as better alignment of resources and activities with corporate objectives. TRANSLATION - if you haven't already - need to tie marketing into the rest of the organization.
2. Marketing visibility, accountability and value measurement: As the sheer number and complexity of marketing efforts have increased, the ongoing visibility of marketing activities across the entire enterprise and all its distribution channels has become a significant challenge. TRANSLATION - Companies must have a measurement or metrics program and it must be tied to the rest of the organization.
3. Customer and market insight generation: Beyond traditional competitive analysis, market research and customer surveys, enterprises must be able to capture and leverage vast amounts of customer and market information.  OPINION - I would suspect all marketing departments are starting to realize this now - and those who are not will soon.  The key piece marketers should look at is the ability to integrate this "new realm of digital influence" by understanding and analyzing online consumer AND business discussion.
4. Customer-value-based segmentation: The practice of segmentation is not uncommon, but among many enterprises, it remains mostly product-centric, focusing on demographic or "firmographic" (that is, demographics related to business statistics) characteristics that align products to market segments.  OPINION - Here is another area that marketing can gain a vast degree of knowledge by looking at unfiltered consumer-generated media. 

The other "processes" are available on CMO Magazine's site.  If these numbers are correct, marketers are going to have to play catch up, and fast.  It might be more reasonable to say that many companies do recognize they have to make this shift - its just matter of time before they take action.

In fact (but also on a side note), an article in today's New York Times offered a preview of a survey released at the Association of National Advertisers "2005 Marketing Accountability Forum".  The survey reveals that 61.5 percent of respondents said it was important to them to define, measure and take concrete steps in the area of advertising accountability. But only 19 percent said they were satisfied with their ability to take those steps. (The survey was conducted by the advertiser association and two partners, Marketing Management Analytics, part of the Aegis Group, and Forrester Research.)  In an excerpt from the NYT's article:

Back in the day, "marketing had a rock-star mentality, able to do what it wanted," said Ed See, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Marketing Management, which is based in Wilton, Conn. "But we're not living in a rock 'n' roll world anymore," he added. "Elvis has left the building."

John Nardone, executive vice president and chief client officer at Marketing Management, said the survey showed that it was more important than ever for advertisers to give their marketing departments the types of controls, models and "repeatable processes" they use in areas like supply-chain management and human resources.

Ironically, there are research companies and marketing services companies that already offer these types of services and can help marketers overcome hurdles and adapt to these processes.

Safeguarding Your PR Measurement Budget

What is the value of measurement? Kerri Martinek, Cymfony's marketing manager addresses this question head on in the July issue of PR Tactics.  "In a perfect world, everyone would have at least 10 percent of their PR budget earmarked for research.  However, the reality is that it's closer to 5 percent, if there is even a budget for it t all."

Kerri reminds us that safeguarding a PR measurement budget is always possible - even if it has been cut to a miserly amount in the past.  For the PR department, the value of measurement is defined as the ability to link the effects of intangible assets (building awareness, changing attitudes, consumer opinion, preferences) to tangible assets (revenue, market share, sales) and demonstrate a casual relationship as a result of that linkage.  Yet, how many companies have budgeted enough for measurement or are prepared to defend this expense? 

There are three important factors that contribute to the ability to protect a measurement budget - all directly relate to how effective PR professionals are at showing its value: 

• Setting PR objectives that you can measure and correlate to corporate objectives. 

According to the Council of Public Relations Firms "The more that a PR function is designed, practiced and evaluated in close alignment with an organization's strategic business goals, the greater its support from top management in terms of budget size, and the greater its perceived contribution to the organization's success."

• Supplement media-related measures, such as impressions and number of clipping, with outcome-based measures, such as influence on corporate reputation, influence on shareholder prices, etc. 

The Gap II Study, published by the USC Anneberg Strategic Public Relations Center (SPRC) found that the most admired Fortune 500 companies ranked their top five metrics for measuring ROI for PR programs as:

• influence on corporate reputation
• influence on share of voice
• influence on stakeholder attitudes
• influence on stakeholder awareness
• influence on employee morale

None of these metrics are directly media-related so the challenge for PR professionals is that it's much harder to measure influence than it is to measurement impressions or number of clippings.  One way is to break up outcome-based metrics into manageable pieces and prove the need for measurement one metric at a time.  For instance, focus on shareholder price, map a specific communications campaign against changes in the price of company stock.  Or look at corporate reputation by focusing on a certain time frame, say 3months, then examine all media coverage generated over that time frame.  Next rank tonality of each article and correlate that to sales trends over the same period. 

• Advocate measurement and communicate results on a periodic basis.

The more public relations can advocate and communicate the value of measurement programs, the more likely the PR function will win the support of the entire organization, including senior management.  As PRTactics highlights in Kerri's article,  "The entire PR team should champion measurement and let its enthusiasm become contagious."

Thanks for the great content Kerri.  I hope you and baby Abby are doing well.  We miss you!