Evaluating the media

The Power of Local PR

2012-01-03T11:41:00.000Z

I read this article this morning and it resonated with me. If new/social media has proved anything to us it is that focusing your effort is key. Gone are the days when you could catch a large portion of your target audience through a couple of newspapers and broadcast news items. The audience is now consuming from a vast array of sources and the younger the age, the less likely it is to be from traditional news sources.

Communities are now key. They might be around a special interest, or a specific geographical location. This blog post makes the point that if it is the latter there is no substitute for regionally based PR support, focused on the local media (social and traditional media) community.

(Trying to) Look ahead

2011-12-19T13:48:00.001Z

I have been having a few conversations with people regarding the Barcelona Principles and how this relates to different types of organisation and while it is not possible or recommended to transplant a PR plan from one similar organisation to another, there are a number of common themes which keep on coming up:

The importance of objective setting. It is becoming increasingly accepted that setting relevant, measurable objectives is the most important, and sometimes the most difficult bit.

There are many in the PR/measurement area who want to find standards and common metrics however I would be very surprised if they fall in behind a single measure to supplant the AVE. One view I would uphold is that of Philip Sheldrake, who could be loosely described as the CIPR's measurement 'guru':

“Your organisation is unique, your market is unique, your vision is unique, your strategy is unique, your execution is unique and your measurement & evaluation is unique”.

If you condone this view I accept it places the onus on organisations to have the confidence to develop and use their own metrics, and to be prepared to argue that it is the best option. As far as I can see it, the best course is to think in simple terms...why a story/campaign might benefit; examine those ideas with a view to isolating the tangible benefits, like memberships, sales, attendance, media sentiment and hang your metrics off of these.

There are a few things coming together to make this not at all simple. Unquestionably, departments increasingly need to account for their actions/time and coming up with relevant metrics is a challenge; then add-on digital media and it's seriously complex.

If I were to look a little into the future I would hope the much-wanted 'standards' might consist of a number of measurement techniques, with their use and benefit clearly understood, supported by a large selection of 'cause & effect' case studies which people can refer to. This is what could be referred to as the PR measurement 'back-end'. The front-end has to stay with the PR team...deciding the strategy & objectives. Sure, you can get help with this (general PR frameworks) but it would be from people who don't really understand the nuance of what you are trying to do.

Ofgem come under social 'flack'

2011-10-14T14:10:00.001+01:00

Listening to the news this morning it quickly became clear it was not going to be a good day for Ofgem - the governments watchdog for the UK energy market. They has announced that the energy firms were making about £125 a year from customers, instead of the more normal £15 per person. Aside from the technicalities of the energy market which is often portrayed as more broken than mended, why not let the social media reaction decide quite how the bad it is for Ofgem?

Using Brandwatch I looked at the social media exposure on Ofgem for the past 24 hours. The system collected almost 600 social media references, mostly being form news sites and Twitter. I would liked to have manually confirmed their sentiment rating, but as time is short and I don't half a day to spare for the exercise, I am working with their auto sentiment rating. Frankly I thought it might have been worse, but it is fair to describe it as pretty bad....48% negative, 50% neutral and 2% positive.

Assessing the measurers

2011-10-03T11:42:00.006+01:00

Over a period of 6 weeks my intention was to use of as many online/social media monitoring tools as I could; aiming to understand their strengths, drawbacks and pricing options. I will deal with this latter issue in a follow-up post. The organisations tested included Brandwatch, JamIQ, Lithium, Trackur, UberVU. Obviously this list in not exhaustive. At the last count there were more than 100 providers in this space.

One of the criteria when deciding who to test was they had to be a player in the lower cost (non-enterprise)/self consultancy space. Believe you-me...you could spend considerably more than those I have tried! Indeed, if you include bespoke dashboards and human validation of articles tone and messaging you could easily spend many thousands of dollars a month. I wanted to understand more about the lower-cost players; see what you can get for a couple of hundred dollars a month, over the free tools we all use like Google Alerts, etc.

It is quite easy to point to the things which they all come with. You get a social media capture featuring stories relevant to your keywords covering Titter, Facebook, Linked-In and other online sources. You get the opportunity to compare and contrast these keywords (they could be a list of competitors or an agency's clients) either in a list or graphic form. It was also notable that this latter option would allow the user to click on a peak or trough and see what were the stories making it up. I last tested a few of these tools about 18 months ago and this is a new (and very welcome) addition to many of the providers service.

Another welcome addition to many of the providers is the ability see the impact of various commentators/Media sources. Whilst I am reluctant to describe it as a measure of influence, the combination of MozRank, Klout and similar scores are a welcome indication of media impact.

So what were my experiences with the providers listed above? It's probably easiest to firstly separate them into 2 groups based on ease of use. In the easy to use camp I would put Lithium, Trackur and UberVU. This is not say they are simplistic tools. Far from it, they have the ability to be customised and adapted to meet a variety of requirements and I would defy anyone using them for the first time not to be able to generate some kind of meaningful results in less than 5 minutes. Quite an achievement and very important considering that not everyone in PR has a Masters in statistics!

It is necessary though to draw meaningful categories, and if you are after a more comprehensive style of reporting you would do well to consider JamIQ and Brandwatch. I like the accessibility of the Asian based JamIQ portal. It is logically laid out, offers scalability and a broad selection of features including a nice dashboard, graphical interfaces and the ability to 'drill down' to the actual media coverage from most points.

Brandwatch is similarly feature-filled, though the set-up process is longer winded and involves several stages. In time I am sure the different groupings and queries would become logical, but I have to emphasise the point that it sometimes does not seem entirely logical. On a number of occasions I had to follow one of the online video tutorials (involving several stages) to be left with the impression that I had done what the others providers allow you to do almost intuitively.

All said, it is probably my favourite provider, generating coverage lists I could be confident with and filterable via and wide range of attributes. Other useful features included topic word clouds (I particularly liked the ....coloured plug-in version), and the ability of download as a CSV, Excel listing Or JPG for the charts.

This is a fast changing space and I will try to keep my views updated. I will also try and follow-up with a posting on their relative charging structures and value for money.

2011-05-04T11:48:00.006+01:00

In preparing material for the talk on 'How to Measure: Beyond the AVE' for the CIPR I have been collecting information from mainly online sources. It has been a few months since I have done a talk on this subject and I have been amazed that none of the key pointers I have used are more than a year old. It only goes to show quite how fast-moving an area this is.

The main thrust of the talk is to discredit AVE and highlight the alternatives. The thing I need to try push home to people is that the alternatives to AVE are not as easy to do. AVEs are simple, easy to convey and are often portrayed as a proxy for ROI. It is the lazy person’s PR measurement.

Brian Solis at the recent Dell B2B Huddle in London warns on the problems of using others case studies as templates for your own measurement. People who are doing this for the first time are spending a lot of time (and money) finding what works, which metrics correlate and how effort transfers into measurable outcomes. As such this work is valuable and as a result it is understandable that people keep it to themselves.

There is also the issue that, as Philip Sheldrake points out, organisations are unique, as is their vision, strategies, and therefor so will be the correct measurement. Often this stuff does not travel well – we have got to bear that in mind.

I am looking forward to the talk and in particular to the Q&As as it’s bound to get some opposing views! I will put the slides up on Slideshare in the coming days.

Communicating Uncomfortable News

2011-02-14T11:27:00.008Z

‘Organisations are run by managers and their job is to make decisions which will guarantee the survival and grow of a company’…so says the management text book. Sometimes they are difficult decisions and involve people’s futures. None more so than for Pfizer who recently announced the closure of its massive R&D lab in Sandwich.

Over the recent years pharmaceutical research has been apparently moving toward biologics, or as the FT recently put it, moving away from the bench and towards the bedside. I can’t hope to explain the complexities of this shift but we must acknowledge that pharmaceutical firms need to do what’s necessary to continue. There seems to be a growing acknowledgement that it is more productive for drug development to be integrated within academic institutions, rather than to have large dedicated R&D facilities. This was one of my main take-outs from reading a selection of recent media coverage on the closure and would seem to support the view that Pfizer has done what it needs to do.

Pfizer announced the closure on the 1st February. They made no other public statement until the sites leader was interviewed at the Sandwich plant a week later in relation to the task force to mitigate the effects. I feel this may have been too long. There was considerable national and regional media interest and into this vacuum poured conjecture and some criticism.

I have also been studying the Pfizer Twitter stream, which is always a good headline media measure and while it was trending for a few days the feed was mainly factual linking to news reports. What views were expressed focussed on the unexpected nature of the announcement. The employees have been asked not to talk to the media and while radio stations like BBC Radio Kent tried to gather views from among the employees, they were mostly in vain. The anger was often focussed on lack of warning about the closure.

My view is Pfizer handled the announcement well. Expressing its scale and impact was going to be the main challenge for the media. It was recognised that Pfizer was willing to play a part. The authorities and politician had a far tougher time of it. The local MP’s sounded well-meaning but with few ideas. The Prime Minister said it was ‘depressing news’. I would say their response was depressingly predictable. The community needs to hear more about high-speed rail to London, university involvement and small-scale pharma venture support.

But Pfizer is not off the hook. The challenge is not being caste as wanting to just wash their hands of the place. We should not forget Pfizer has some experience of dealing with site closures and will realise they are messy and unpredictable.

Communicating the Uncomfortable Truth

2011-02-14T11:27:00.000Z

‘Organisations are run by managers and their job is to make decisions which will guarantee the survival and grow of a company’…so says the management text book. Sometimes they are difficult decisions and involve people’s futures. None more so than for Pfizer who recently decided to close its massive R&D lab in Sandwich.
Over the recent years pharmaceutical research has been apparently moving toward biologics, or as the recently FT puts it, away from the bench and towards the bedside. I can’t hope to explain the complexities of this shift but we must acknowledge that pharmaceutical firms need to do what’s necessary to continue. There seems to be a growing acknowledgement that its more productive for drug development to be integrated with academic institutions, rather than to have large dedicated R&D facilities. This was one of my main take-outs from reading a selection of recent media coverage on the closure and would seem to support the view that Pfizer has done what it needs to do.
Pfizer announced the closure on the 1st February. They made no other public statement until the sites leader was interviewed at the Sandwich plant a week later in relation to the task force to mitigate the effects. I feel this may have been too long. There was considerable national and regional media interest and into this vacuum poured conjecture and some criticism.
I have been studying the Pfizer Twitter stream, which is always a good headline media measure and while it was trending for a few days the feed was mainly factual linking to news reports. What views were expressed focussed on the unexpected nature of the announcement. The employees have been asked not to talk to the media and while radio stations like BBC Radio Kent tried to gather views from among the employees, they were mostly in vain. The anger was often focussed on lack of warning about the closure.
My view is Pfizer handled the announcement well. Expressing its scale and impact was going to be the main challenge for the media. It was recognised that Pfizer was willing to play a part. The authorities and politician had a far tougher time of it. The local MP’s sounded well-meaning but with few ideas. The Prime Minister said it was ‘depressing news’. I would say their response was depressingly predictable. The community needs to hear more about high-speed rail to London, university involvement and small-scale pharma venture support.
But Pfizer is not off the hook. The challenge is not being caste as wanting to just wash their hands of the place. We should not forget Pfizer has some experience of dealing with site closures and will realise they are messy and unpredictable.

Social Media – the preserve of PR?

2011-01-30T21:21:00.001Z

I saw on one of my LinkedIn groups a discussion about whether social media be the preserve of PR or Marketing. The discussion ranged from comments making points like PR should be central as they are the professional communicators, through to issues of corporate culture and structure.

Many organisations have divided up the responsibilities on-the-hoof, giving only lip service to any sort of structure. The one thing which I feel really needs to be highlighted is the necessity for a social media plan. Within the larger organisation aspects of social media need to be addressed by different parts; is it a customer service issue, a corporate issue or something involving a community outreach? Organisations need to have proactive and reactive elements; crucially involving a gatekeeper/filter to see that all proactive elements are complimentary and reactive points are all addressed.

While this is new to many organisations, alot are doing it really well, learning quickly, having a plan and adapting it to the changing style of external contact where the organisations reputation is increasingly coming under the ownership of its publics.

Adding bones to the fat and muscle that is the internet

2010-11-01T12:33:00.003Z

It might seem a tall order, but if anyone is up to it IBM is! They recently released their Big Sheets initiative from their innovative jStart group.

I have contacted them for more information on application, perhaps a demo and some idea of costings. I'll blog what I find out.

So what's the motivation to find out more? Big Sheets can sift tera, if not petabytes of data from online and off-line sources. It has its own built in web extraction bot to trawl and an ability to receive plug-in additions to customise source and analysis processes.

In some respects its nothing new. The difference will be the interface, its usability and the lack of necessary knowledge/coding.

Online sentiment...like tossing a coin!

2010-08-02T09:48:00.004+01:00

Automated sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis might be seen as a way of finding favourability of online coverage. There are some free tools like Tweet Minister for Twitter, although most of the online services use a paid approach. Views on their accuracy are mixed; Mel Carson, Community Manager at Microsoft in a recent For Immediate Release podcast said his experiences of sentiment analysis were not positive enough for him recommend their use.

Fresh Networks went further in their review of Social Media Monitoring Tools 2010, indicated they were no more accurate than tossing a coin!

The solution is to restrict the content to the influential conversations, and then to graft-on human sentiment and message analysis, either done in-house or externally if independent credibility is important.

Pointers for online monitoring and evaluation

2010-07-13T15:02:00.004+01:00

I have been thinking recently about media monitoring; many people just work with searches using Google, for which interestingly there is no comparable traditional media comparison. There are many up-to-the-minute online notification systems users can subscribed to for free (no need to list them).

If tracking a ‘busy’ sector, topic or client, then filtering will likely be an issue. Current thinking is moving away from quantitative, and towards qualitative analysis, ie reporting what was said rather than how much. The recent AMEC Barcelona principles back this up pointing users towards restricting effort to the influential media. ‘Influence’ is not a universal measure; it needs to tie-in with the (all important) campaign objectives. We are talking about restricting effort to the important commentators; but it needs work up-front, deciding who is influential. Factors to consider might be community involvement, Twitter followers, number of blog comments, etc.

There are a number of tools and techniques which PR can use to gauge success. In the times before online/social media there was a fairly restrictive selection of techniques which could be used; but with social media (and its many manifestations - Twitter, Facebook, etc) the breadth of measures has blossomed.

Pitting ourselves against the graphing greats

2010-06-03T10:03:00.005+01:00

I once heard an interview with a top executive and he was asked if he was any good? He replied 'Well I have made all the mistakes, so yes I am very good'.

This is a bit like how I feel about creating graphs and charts for media analysis reports, apart from the fact that I could be a whole lot better at it!

With the introduction of many online monitoring/evaluation tools like Radian 6 and Brandwatch and their associated charting abilities, you could almost believe that the need to create graphs and charts has become obsolete. I would argue to the contrary. If you are going to convey a story which uses data you are bound to consider the addition of a chart or graph. Proprietary software will generate graphs and they are often flexible and can be dropped into other documents. Alternatively you could put together your own charts and Microsoft Excel allows you to relatively easily create some quite impressive results. And then there are couple of other programs which take things to another level and even allow animations.

It would appear that the boundaries have almost disappeared; any combination of colours, textures, chart styles; only limited by a users imagination. The massive range of options however has its drawbacks. It was why I was experimenting with Google Motion Charts (and its unerring ability to simply convey the impact of 5 variables) that I realised that it is the data that matters, not the coat it wears. Sure, that's the point of this post, to select the right representation. But you have to start with the data; and that means starting with the story. Sometimes the story will come as you look at the data; other times you have a hypothesis which you try prove using the data.

The presentation is about taking the data and telling the story. A great graphical presentation will do so much more. Excellence in this area I believe is Hans Rosling's Gapminder and this video from TED. Its a few years old now but the it has so stood the test of time - an outstanding use of animated graphing to convey a story.

In later postings I will consider in greater detail how you can create charts and graphs and some of the pitfalls.

Is Google about to revolutionise media monitoring?

2010-02-23T09:26:00.005Z

I recently read an interesting article by Marshall Sponder about the possibility of Google entering the social media monitoring space. He concludes that they would not need to buy-in any skills as they have more data than anyone else and plenty of expertise to construct a really powerful (free) product.

For example, they are quite good a finding stuff and they have Google Alerts/Analytics to organise the items and loads of data on visitors to create a far better picture of usage. They also have the really cool Motion Charts widget which can bring those media usage graphs into brilliant life.

Would this be a good thing? Possibly not for the existing vendors, although it will add legitimacy to the sector, they will need to add more features and develop niche offerings. But I think it would be excellent news for PR, and here's why.

PR has been struggling to find the right metrics for measurement. Google can tell people all about their online media consumption habits. They might struggle to measure consumer behaviour, but their effort will be far better than anything previous. I really think this could be PR's missing link. All of sudden there will be a common currency for success; interchangeable and comparable....something for the non-PR bosses to get their heads around.

So what will it look like. I can't see it containing sentiment measures or messaging; I think this will remain the preserve of the other vendors. I think it will take the form of a reputation management widget/dashboard with start/end dates, monitored activity, comparisons, using metrics culled from searches undertaken and browser activity. I am pretty sure it will happen, just no too sure when.

Just emptied the bath...arhh where's the baby gone?

2010-02-12T14:26:00.003Z

I like a lot of stuff included in the COI's Standardisation of PR Evaluation Metrics document. In particularly I like the idea of the cost per reader/listener/viewer and how this takes the value of the campaign and divides it by the number of thousand audience. A nice clean revenue to return comparison which with widespread adoption and best practice could become one of the preferred forms of PR measurement. My only possible concern is that it will involve a degree of budgetary disclose which some may be uncomfortable with.

However my big headache is with 'Reach', or as it also seems to get called 'Impact'. Now I might be just being a bit slow but it makes reference to this being as a proportion of target audience, ie how many people reached within a certain target audience. Take an example. My target audience is pregnant women in Newcastle. I choose the wrong day to run my story and only get one item in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. I can't find on their site how many pregnant reader they have; though it might be privileged information...

This is my problem with target audiences. They are a wonderful concept but I can't see how you can get them unless you undertake expensive MR. I admit I don't know very much about TGI but I suspect they won't be able to tell me much about pregnant women's reading habits in Newcastle!

Hence the title of this post- evaluation techniques are evolving and whilst many measures are flawed they have currency for their legacy. The COI document refers to a candid approach to methodology. If people are expected to adopt new techniques it needs to be clearly communicated, its worth explained, along with the processes and sources required.

Access to organisational outcomes – leaving the evaluators out in the cold

2010-01-20T09:58:00.001Z

Time has shown that there are genuine benefits to measuring media output. Through the processes of monitoring, coverage can be collected and analysed for messages and tone as well as benchmarked against competitors or contemporaries. Together this is an invaluable view of the media landscape, how you are being portrayed and what tips you might be able to glean from others.
Moving up the ‘golden steps’, how about measuring audience out-takes....what are people actually reading and looking at? Not so easy but here are a few tips. Many websites indicate which story is the most read or watched on their site. Take as broad a cross-section as you can gather, build a relevance factor to your target audience and you should be able to deliver a credible and defendable measure of audience out-take.
Finally, at the top is organisational outcomes. Or this is what Jim Macnamara said when he created this enduring model. By outcomes we mean impacts on sales, web activity & inquiries . This is the thing though – it is the data which independent evaluators can’t easily get access to. Their PR/marketing contacts within the organisations are the gatekeepers but for reasons of confidentiality it seldom becomes part of the evaluators data, even though they are arguably the people most capable at tying it to media outputs and out-takes.
If the evaluators can not easily get access to outcome data it leaves it to the internal PR/marketing people to connect the media output report with outcome information. There are a number of questions around this:
• Do they actually do this
• Are the able to do this
• Do they access to the right outcome data
• Have they thought to tailor the media report to reflect the outcome data they can get
This seems to move right to the heart of where media evaluation needs to be. The gatekeepers either need to be prepared to grant access to the data or develop the systems and knowledge to connect the media output reports to the outcomes.

Internatonal PR Networks - Masterclass

2009-07-23T11:51:00.003+01:00

Anyone lucky enough to be at Edelman’s London office last Tuesday night would have heard some of the foremost contributors to international PR pulling apart the traditional processes around running an international PR network. More interestingly they then tried to reassemble them fit for the social media age.

Roger White, for 12 years the Communications Director at PwC, the global accountancy firm and David Brain, in charge of Edelman’s activities in Europe, both delved deeply into the argument for and against global direction compare to local decision making, particularly exploring the models which support these different approaches.

Crucially, social media is speeding the process of information and the necessity to react. Traditionally, global campaigns have not allowed local practitioners much freedom. Both contributors recognised the need to devolve decisions to the local level whilst maintaining a corporate-wide uniformity.

One recurring characteristic focussed on the influence of US-centric global brands. Scaling campaigns to fit a market is not that simple and countries with populations larger and smaller than 4-5 million require a different selection of techniques. David Brain illustrated this through the comparatively differing ways to engage within countries like New Zealand, opposed to the US. Within the smaller countries it is important to know your stuff but more importantly (than with larger countries) there is an imperative to know the stakeholders...’it’s not so much what you know but who you know’.

Many organisations have come unstuck when a successful US campaign (to a market of 300 million people) is rolled-out to much smaller markets. The strategy and techniques don’t just reduce and this is when it is most important to have good local PR counsel able to decode the requirement, advise and adapt for the local market.

There is also the issue of transferability. Some campaigns just don’t travel. For example take the Co Compare the Market / Go Compare the Meerkat...brilliant for the UK but would it work in the US – probably not. As opposed to the Singapore Airline’s Singapore Girl which has been used successfully globally for over 20 years.

If you are involved in international PR networks there seemed to be two quite distinct activities and associated skills. For those charged with running an international campaign an understanding of strategy and techniques on a global level, combined with the skill to instruct and adapt on a local level. The other side of the coin is if you are running the local campaign, instructed by global. Then the skill is to take and modify expectations on the basis of your understanding of the local market.

(Failing to) Bridge the divide

2009-05-01T11:14:00.002+01:00

There are some gaps which will never be bridged – I am pretty sure there will never be a bridge from Russia to Alaska across the often sub-zero Bering Straight. There is also the divide between the ways that traditional and online media are measured. From talking to people in the industry at events like Measurement Camp it seems to be an issue on which a serious discussion and research need to be focussed.
At this point it seems illogical to cut to what I think might be the conclusion to this post ...that these media types are essentially so different that no metric can transcend and we might as well just get used to it and carry on life. If that’s your position then to be aware of the issue is probably enough. But I strongly believe that PR and marketing needs cross-media metrics, able to transcend the multitude of media channels. How can budgets be effectively divided, resources allocated and jobs given out if there is no comparative value associated with each type of media?
In the world of traditional media measurement audience data often underpins the gauging of impact. This is all nicely audited and is accepted as a dependable yardstick. But when you flip into the digital world those sort of figures don’t exist – in relative terms it’s the twilight-zone.
There are many more familiar with online metrics and I acknowledge its an area I should know more about but my view is new media is just so varied that any sort of sample audit can’t accurately encapsulate the real picture.
In the world of social media measurement there are loads of question marks and none bigger than cross media metrics - can you find an answer?

Are you interested in the CIPR?

2009-03-10T17:38:00.005Z

Anyone who is a member of the CIPR can not have failed to have been impressed by their St James's Square HQ. I have often used the members rooms as my London office with its wifi and coffee machine; it has always been pleasant surroundings and occasionally a real lifesaver.

So it must be a disappointment to many that they are moving in April to Russell Square. Personally, it will mean a longer walk from Charring Cross, but the issue I am sure more people are concerned about is what are the members rooms going to be like?

Well for anyone who can't wait until April the CIPR International Group is hosting its AGM at the St Stephen's Club, London on the 30th March with Colin Farrington, Director General and Kevin Taylor the CIPR President who among other things will try to enlighten us on their new premises. To book a place go to this link http://tinyurl.com/coqsl3 or contact me directly and I will reserve you a place.

Measuring the decline in sports sponsorship

2009-02-27T08:47:00.005Z

Yesterday afternoon the Aviva yacht sailed past the office here on the South Coast of England and while I don’t necessarily want to give extra publicity to one of my clients rivals it did get me thinking about RBS's recent announcement on its sponsorship deals. This Wednesday’s RBS said it plans to drastically cut back its sports sponsorship commitments, something which won't be good for the sports and is bound to have negative implications for the UK's PR industry.

Sports sponsorship is an invaluable supplement to many sports peoples existence and with the clock counting down to London 2012 Olympics it looks likely that last Summer’s medal haul will not be easily re-enacted. With the current economic contraction playing out there is little public appetite to make up for RBS (and others?) scaling back of support.

Obviously I am not commenting on Aviva’s sponsorship commitments – I am not aware of any changes with them, but I do feel there is an issue surrounding the measuring of success for sponsorship. A crucial element of any sponsorship campaign is measuring the media generated, with a view to generating some form of ROI.

While media output is not directly linked to attitudinal outcomes (or buyer behaviour) it is a powerful proxy - but just how powerful?. My concern is that, as companies revise sponsorship budgets, so they will dispense with output measures. We can argue over how accurate the link is between output and outcomes and undoubtedly this is one of the most controversial aspects of PR measurement.

From my work as one of the awards judges for the CIPR over the last couple of years I have been struck by how ingrained opinions are on media outputs and crucially the percieved closeness of its connection to outcomes. Campaign results are often outlined as a series of media hits with little attempt to address consumer out-take, let alone outcome.

Online however is mixing it all up and conventional off-line metrics don't transfer well online. I am bound to say that this does not mean it can't be done but the dynamic of the medium is necessitating a more dynamic solution.

Social media measurement and evaluation - after the event

2009-02-19T11:49:00.003Z

I just read an interesting post by Jason Falls about a new product from Scout Labs providing online media monitoring and measurement. I was talking with someone at yesterdays Measurement Camp about these types of service and it seems to be a shame it is not possible to offer an after the event service, as it is my understanding that one needs to set something up before coverage appears (please correct me if I am wrong).

I have a client who has just finished a campaign which seems to have got 150+ online media clips and it would be very interesting to present in tamden some sort of social media specific measurement. This connects with another posting I want to do on yesterdays Measurement Camp, which I will try and do later.

Markets, the State and academia

2009-01-23T11:01:00.008Z

I am involved in the International Group of the CIPR (as Treasurer) and last night it hosted the Maggie Nally Lecture at the Palace of Westminster with Sir Howard Davies, now with the LSE and formally running the FSA, the CBI and being Deputy Governor of the Bank of England - the ideal person from whom to gain a perspective of the current state of the economy.

He did that, but he also offered a rare insight into the flaws of free market economics and the contrast between the Anglo-Saxon Laissez-faire approach and that taken by the ‘more broad minded near continentals’. In particular he spoke about the French attitude where there is growing feeling that the markets must operate with greater oversight, or to use Sir Howard’s expression ‘return of the state’.

Sir Howard spoke about how the Treasury only seriously considers scientifically based research, avoiding any consideration for the less tangible influences like the ethics of wealth and the associated philosophies under pinning them. Some could argue over the merits of a more Gallic approach and as I am so ignorant on this area I would say nothing more than the Treasury’s approach has obviously failed and there is a need for a discussion on issues like the meaning of wealth, how we reward it and the destructive forces which run hand-in-hand with speculation.

London’s financial services boom of the last ten years has largely been built on speculation and Sir Howard indicated that the new raft of market regulation will vastly limit the ‘creativity’ bankers and financiers have. This will limit asset pricing, limiting the relative size of this sector and ultimately London and UK fortunes. In effect these new regulations will not allow London’s financial services boom to happen again.

This might seem a bit off-topic but I think there is a public relations/measurement element to this. Sir Howard talked about the need for ‘translators’ to make the findings from academia of use to the greater public. In many ways the job of these translators is similar to PR in being the conduit between the organisational message and the public consumption. Whilst we are lucky to have some of the greatest researchers in this country it was seen as regrettable that they were not able to convey their finding in a more accessible way, ie the need for these third-party translators.

Measurement Camp ups the pace

2009-01-16T11:07:00.004Z

Yesterday was the first of this years Measurement Camp monthly meetings, hosted this time by Econsultancy (Thanks Michelle and Aliya!). The 40 or so participants cover a vast cross-section of marketing specialisms, from PR, advertising, online and offline, direct and social media content producers. The breadth of interest and experience has to be unique, all to ponder the single issue of media measurement.

Some of the out-take I got was the overwhelming feeling that people needed to apply measurement to a massive selection of media outputs. Not only across the large number of social media platforms, but with the aim of generating a customised selection of results specific to their circumstances.

The instruments available make it possible to present many many different results sets. Clients don't want to be faced with 100 different metrics, and that is where Measurement Camp comes into its own. The format of the meetings are to take a real or imaginary media campaign and over a period of 2 hours present the best ways we can think of to measure it. The photo above shows our group presenting our finding to the rest.

Getting back to the out-takes; its clear that there will never be a single all-encompassing measure...a metric to to measure all social media; forget it. Through meaningful discussions and education on behalf of the agency, researchers and clients the hope is there should develop a confidence to pick on a couple of the metrics most appropriate. It will also help if examples of best-practice can be promoted as part of this education.

My final thought is on secrecy. There can be no use in agencies adopting a 'smoke and mirrors' approach to methodology. If it is not clear and transparent there can be no justification. I strongly believe that any efforts to cloak methodology will hinder the widespread adoption effective media measurement harming the evaluation agencies, confusing the clients as well as the media agencies.

When things turn down should we take to the water?

2008-12-19T11:49:00.005Z

One of the benefits of Media Evaluation Research being based where it is are the pleasant sea views from the office. Over the last few days there has be a succession of rather impressive speed boats and gin palaces heading up towards the North Sea and we wondered if they are going up to the London Boat Show which starts early next month?

Either way, it is an interesting indication that there are still people with the money to spend on these things. Obviously the bankers have not been hit that badly! While the day job involves finding ways to measure the media I am continually amazed at the selection of meaningful measures out there pointing towards the truth. At the moment a good indication of the downturn are the relative absence of cranes from the city horizon, or the fewer number of recently registered cars.

Measuring New Media

2008-12-04T12:51:00.004Z

I recently did a talk for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Strategy Conference on measurement. The PowerPoint slides are available via in the previous post. The brief for the talk was fairly broad and so as well as talking about the range of strategies and tactics for measuring traditional media, I went into some detail on measuring new media.

Although I hope the slides are of interest I thought they needed a little explanation and while I was writing up some explanatory notes I became side tracked and before I knew it had blossomed into a 1700 word mini-White Paper. If you are interested in taking a look this is the link to the paper.

Presentation to CIPR Strategy Conference

2008-11-26T14:03:00.007Z

This is the presentation made to the CIPR's 'Prefecting PR Strategy' 27 October 2008. There are some notes which go with it so please come back to me or leave a comment and I will email them across. The conference lasted a one day and had over 50 middle and senior public relations practitioners in attendance.

| Get your Presentation Pack

Sitting in on the infuence debate

2008-10-21T09:32:00.004+01:00

In the world of online measurement it is easy to think of it as similar to traditional media (well similar) but with the additional necessity to measure influence. In traditional media influence is not such a major factor as the medium is finite in volume, with the individual media titles having their own discernible character against which influence can ascribed.

In social media this walled-garden has been thrown open to all comers. The result is a melting pot of unlimited dimensions. In a weeks time I am presenting on media research at the CIPR and central to the presentation is some pointers on the measurement of social media and crucially some discussion on the measurement of influence.

To quote Shel Israel it is not easy to measure. He makes the point that it is easy to mistake popularity for influence, largely because popularity of easier to measure. You can consider the number of comments and the level of engagement as an proxy for popularity. The challenge to PR in the future is find who has influence in the space they are working in. The process has to start with a concise understanding of which areas of the social media space are relevant to the market place.

A key PR skill is communication and needs to be combined with the ability to research the media market. I'm imagining that we need to get used to asking the question 'who are the key media players in this space?'. Everyone will have a different take on this and only after mapping the responses will we be able to appreciate how the lines of communication run, taking us a valuable step nearer to a picture of influence.

Singed by the fires of Dell

2008-09-25T13:49:00.008+01:00

While I don't want to '....hell' it up I thought I might elaborate on my Dell Tweet from this morning. I wanted to order a set of tonors for my 3010cn printer so put the terms into Dell.co.uk and got 2 options...one set for £161.84 and another £192.08, (both inc VAT) both with very similar discriptions.

So I wondered what was the difference. I have been talking with Dell technical support lately about a separate problem with this printer who have been very good, so I think I will just call up the sales people and ask them what is the difference. After a lengthy details collecting phase (we recently moved address), The sales rep was unable to say what the difference was but that I should order the more expensive one from him. He said I would not be able to place an order online for the cheaper one. I said I would try and his parting words were that I was wasting his time. Well, the order did go through and if for any reason they do not fit the printer I will certainly be commenting here.

Keeping the human element on online measurement

2008-09-25T08:48:00.004+01:00

One of the themes of this blog has been about preserving the human element in media measurement. Christie Adams makes this point very well in a recent posting.

Online is becoming a colourful playground for measurement products offering a multitude of instant results. If your requirements are purely quantitative then they are useful. If you want to consider qualitative factors then you must accept a element of human input, and the likely increase in cost and time.

Munching the credit crunch media

2008-09-11T15:05:00.006+01:00

Just over a year ago the term 'credit crunch' was widely outside common use. Though we might wish otherwise, now it dominates. With my (quite tatty) economist hat on I actually prefer the term 'credit reversion', as history will show I think, this period as a ending of loose credit times, and its associated pain.

However, who came up with the term 'credit crunch'. Was it a New York or London banker, who last July saw the wall of investment money vanish overnight? The truth is difficult to pin down, but suffice to say it was in relatively common media use back as long ago as 1969 when the New York Times ran the headline "Fed Reserve study of impact of 66 'credit crunch' on borrowing and spending".

To those who thought that globalisation had bought a new paradigm of ever increasing values, forget the lessons of the past. In my review of media coverage on the term credit crunch (using Factiva) it is clear that during the last year its use has massively increased. Over the previous year its use in the media has increased by 6200% illustrating the markets (and the media's) ignorance to the dangers.

Vision of the semantic web

2008-08-26T11:49:00.005+01:00

Michael Marshall in evancarmichael.com explores some fascinating examples of implications of the increasing use of the semantic web. He explores the issues surrounding fraud, SOE and spamming, associated with tagging. Expect this to become a real issue soon as where new developments go, not far behind is someone trying to make a quick buck.

I was also very impressed with his view on tagging and truth/fact and its relative perception. The semantic web will rely on a sub-level of information providing an additional layer of information (through tags) in tandem with with web page information. In effect this information, or tags, tell the computer what the page 'means'. Michael Marshall makes the point that who is going to inspect the tags to make sure they are correct. This is very relevant to the measurement of online media.

While we should never expect perfect information; the hope is the semantic web will permit more accurate, intelligent searching and data interpretation. In the world of media measurement could this lead to computers undertaking more of the qualitative tasks we currently reserve for humans? This helps illustrate some of the challenges for auto-evaluation, and I hope undermines those who say they currently have an automated process for undertaking qualitative measurement.

Getting a pipe on social media measurement

2008-08-25T07:59:00.004+01:00

Since discovering Yahoo Pipes a couple of months ago it has really been off my to-do-list. Whether I am progressing is debatable but there is a feeling that the bits are starting to form a shape, if not necessarily fitting together easily.

Following the news from the head of the stream I have been playing with Pipes to create an effective monitoring capacity, with some success. On the face of it it seems simple enough but the truth seems a little less clear. There are a selection of examples other have put together and as the general instructions are not so good it seems best to reverse engineer one of these.

In a future post I am planning to concentrate on one of the Pipe apps, Open Calais semantic tagging tool. Its a brilliant concept and with time I am determined to make use of it.

The other element I want to use is a Google Docs spreadsheet, which I understand can receive RSS feeds. Going right to the end of the 'food-chain' I also need some sort of admin. This might need to be custom derived using something like PHP / MySQL or Drupal(all about which I know very little).

The one thing I am determined to do is blog about the experience as these new tools and are all free and very current I hope it will useful information.

Customised semantic searching...free for all

2008-07-17T09:29:00.004+01:00

These will be the best 'searches' you can get - forget confusion of double meaning words and searches which produce a load of gibberish. Yahoo! and others are working on producing a number of freely available tools which will permit all sorts of previously unheard of results.

Take Yahoo! Pipes. They have been around for a year or so and I have spent the last few days working out what it can do and how they work with other services. One of the modules is the semantic tag adding module form Open Calais which I have blogged about in the past. It is not quite there in accuracy (the Gnosis plugin seems to be more accurate?) but with a PHP output connected you have a really professional method of collecting web hits to rival almost any of the paid-for services out there. All you got to have is a bit of patience to knit it all together and customise the search functions. Pipes is really intuitive and once I watched a few tutorials on YouTube, found it quite straightforward and not at all daunting.

The tools for the measurement of social media are web hits and with the challenges this evaluation process presents you don't want to spend your time sifting irrelevant search results. All an analyst wants is a clean, relevant list of new coverage before setting to work deciding who has influence and what the content means. Don't rely on the semantic web (or any other computer system for that matter) to decide how good your coverage is, but when it comes to monitoring and low-level analysis it has a massive role to play.

Google wades in

2008-06-24T14:41:00.002+01:00

This in the Huffington Post confirms that Google is trying to steal in on the online measurement space. Their free offering is bound to rattle comScore and Nielsen and I wonder if they are going to try and put any measure on the great online questions of authority or engagement...?

CIPR "Elevator Speech" Breakfast Briefing June 25th

2008-06-16T13:32:00.002+01:00

One of the groups I work with is the CIPR's International Group and we have organised a “Elevator Speech” Breakfast Briefing June 25th for which there are a few places left. It is taking place at the CIPR's HQ in central London.

The briefing will be in lead by J. Scott Punk, APR, Director of Global Public Relations and Advertising for ESI International, will provide a structure to wrap key messages around, helping you to introduce yourself and your organisation - particularly invaluable in short conversation settings including:

· First-Time Pitches

· Networking Events

· Cocktail Parties and

· Elevator Rides

Cost: £10 for CIPR Members, £15 for non CIPR members.

I hope you can join us.

Full details and the booking form link are below:

http://www.cipr.co.uk/wprf08/ScottPunkBookingForm.pdf

Advocacy and organisational outcomes

2008-06-05T17:47:00.005+01:00

Since meeting up on the 4 June at the latest gathering of Measurement Camp I have been pondering any connection between the concept of communication outcomes and advocacy. Are they the same, just viewed different ways?

Let me try to explain myself. The objective of successful communications is something to do with message conveyance and more importantly its correct understanding leading changes in behaviour (outcomes). The quality of this change in behaviour could be measured in the number and intensity of your advocates.

The notion of advocates and their importance is supported by the research of Fred Reichheld from Bain and Co. espoused in his book The Ultimate Question. The book ponders that organisations need to be aware of the answer to one crucial question: How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?

Another slant on the 'Outs'

2008-06-04T17:35:00.013+01:00

At the latest meeting of Measurement Camp Jason Ryan (I think) from ICrossing mentioned a model of consumer behaviour which I feel is somehow connected with the Outputs, Outtakes and Outcomes model initially proposed by Walter Lindenmann back in 1990's. It seems to take a consumers perspective and uses the terms Awareness, Actions and Advocacy. I can see a strong link between media output and awareness and the idea of actions seems to correlate with user outtakes. Outcomes is always an intriguing area and, as I have discussed before, closely connected with the concept of advocacy.

My feeling is that outcomes can be divided into active and inactive outcomes, which could be supported by this this diagram from Ruby Quince of Bite Communications following-up on our break-out groups submission at the meeting. There is quite a lot of detail here and in effect it considers that initially an organisations needs to initiate a lot of social media interactions to generate participation, but as this increases the organisation can decrease its involvement as it gets nearer to the real brand advocates who demand higher levels of paticipation. Brad Little from Nielsen Buzzmetrics made the point that it becomes more difficult to accurately measure as you move from left to right on the diagram.

I hope this seems logical and I welcome any thoughts.

Monitoring new media - all the answers....!

2008-06-04T15:28:00.002+01:00

Ever wondered how to monitor all the diffeerent aspects of new media like Facebook, Twitter etc? Here one great post which highlights 7 great monitoring tools.

I can't recommend Pipex

2008-05-19T15:21:00.004+01:00

Please find enclosed a letter sent to Pipex on the 9th May, to which I have had no response. I said I would put this letter on my blog if I did not receive a response in a week. I am keen for this not to be seen as cathartic exercise - it is a serious issue which exemplifies how the single consumer has no voice over the big corporation.

Gary Rodgus
Pipex
Manchester
M21 7QS
9th May 2008
Re. Account: *********

Dear Mr Rodgus,
I am writing to you regarding the unsatisfactory communication from your organisation concerning our recent house move. I have been particularly disappointed with the conflicting information received by post and that via the phone.

I notified Pipex by phone on the 14th March 2008 of our house move and was assured by your colleague Adel that all service would transferred on the target date of the 17th April. I subsequently spoke with another colleague Richard on the 20th March who again reassured me that all services would transfer on that day. I understand you record all your phone calls and I would invite you to review these conversations to establish their validity.

On the 17th April the phone transferred but not the broadband service. I work largely from home and my work depends on a high speed data connection. On the 18th April I spoke with Martin, a supervisor, who acknowledged my utter confusion over the non-connection and said there was nothing he could do to speed up the reconnection in less than 10-14 days.

I was particularly annoyed about this delay as if I had know about this unavoidable delay earlier we could have started the transfer process a week earlier, as the previous week we were out of the country (6-15 April).
In anticipation of getting connected before the end of April I made a number of attempts to contact the house moves team eventually talking to Craig, another supervisor, on the 24th April who said that the connection would not be made until the 12th May as there is a 10-14 days period to close the existing line and another 10-14 days to reinstate it. Again, if I had been informed of this information earlier then I could have made alternative arrangements (like a short-term mobile broadband contract).

As it now appears, and after making a number of additional calls, Craig was wrong and the target reconnection date is the 15th May (subsequently revised to the 17th).

Up to the 2nd May I have made 11 calls to your ‘0871’ at a cost of £6.19. I have also been forced to use the ‘0874’dial-up service which has cost £26.65. I also understand there is a ‘moving charge’ of £32.77. In view of the events outlined I strongly object to all these charges and make the strongest representations for their cancelation, at the very least. If I do not receive a suitable resolution within 7 days, for the unacceptable manner in which I believe we have been treated than I will have to consider alternative measures including the publication of this letter on my blog (www.mediaevaluation.blogspot.com).

Your sincerely,

Michael Blowers

Measurement Camp update

2008-05-15T10:24:00.003+01:00

Yesterday’s Measurement Camp proved to be very well supported with well over 30 people working in many aspects of PR, Marketing and measurement attending the meeting in London. There were specialists in ‘buzz’ measurement, social media planning (a new title I think we will see more of), search, and many aspects of online marketing, with the possible exception of advertising. Notably there were senior online representatives from a number of the large PR agencies including Bite, Fishburn Hedges and Porter Novelli.

The focus of the near future activity is the wiki with a view to building up resources in the form of measurement metrics case studies and best practice. There seemed to be a genuine desire to progress the issue and without a doubt there were people with the necessary diversity of skills and depth of influence.

I am not sure if there are any templates for this kind of initiative but it seemed hard to argue against there being a need to make practical progress in the world of online measurement. The point I really want to make is it would be great if it were possible to formulate the most appropriate ‘best practice’, supported by case studies across a wide variety of industry situations, resulting a broad selection of tools. This toolbox could then be used to educate as well as support the implementation of measurement programs.

I found myself in one of the breakout groups discussing the metrics of measurement online. There were a host of media output measures, like sentiment, topic, message; but I think we could benefit from considering the connection with organisational and PR outcomes, which is something I would like to explore, with others help, on the wiki.

One thing which does concern me is that this might look like a London or UK –centric initiative. Globally people are wondering about this area, hence the value of the wiki. Marshalling the research acumen and the creative energies across the continents would be a mammoth task, particularly as it is increasingly involving the interests of the greater marketing function, not just PR.

Measurement Camp

2008-05-09T14:53:00.003+01:00

Big plug for Chinwag for promoting Measurement Camp, which is starting its monthly meetings next Wednesday in London. I am up in town on Monday and as Pipex have renaged on their promise of broadband by Monday (Thursday maybe...?) I might break with tradition and travel up to town twice in one week.

Sounds like it is going to be an interesting event if its anything like the seminar at Internet World a couple of weeks ago. Breakout sessions sound interesting on 'what are we trying to measure' and 'casestudies'. The later point is great as I have seen some wonderful stuff on the net regarding the evaluation of social media, led by Shel Israel's measurement series.

Chinwag takes on Measurement

2008-05-01T14:21:00.005+01:00

Interesting event organised by Chinwag dealing with the measurement of social media at Internet World yesterday. There was some disagreement over metrics (whats new) and how long it would take for the standards to be formalised behind which the industry will follow. There was a degree of the suppliers using it as an opportunity to pitch their wares, which was a shame, although with standardisation comes the possibility that their 'smoke and mirrors' (and expensive) wizz-bang box of tricks will become redundant.

Measurementcamp is a new concept and has be scheduled to kick off later this month, plus there is a wiki. All good developments and should be encouraged. What disappointed was the apparent poor turnout by the traditional media evaluations companies (why isn't someone from AMEC in the panel?). If there were some please correct me.

While at the event I attended the keynote talk by Andy Hobsbrawm from Agency.Com. It was a brilliant talk about the value of brands and the transfer of ownership - quite visionary.

PS - 'Pipex, life is hell without broadband - can I have it back please'

A period of information poverty

2008-04-24T12:04:00.000+01:00

There are periods when we must go without but after a week without broadband I am finding it hard. We moved last week and Pipex Homecall assured my over the phone on two occasions leading up to the move that all services would be transferred on the day of the move. Wish-full thinking and having almost exploded when told it will 10-14 days I now, after many regular and unanswered calls, I have been told it could be up to 34 days.

I have a lecture to prepare for the CIPR in 2 weeks and there really is only one place to go and find out about the measurement of social media. While this might be a slightly cathartic experience, I now realise the nature of social exclusion and differs little from a story in the media in yesterday media about power companies reserving the best rates for those with bank accounts and where-with-all to research the options online.

You will know when I am up and running when I start posting more frequently!

Don't use a computer to measure online media 'buzz'

2008-03-25T12:15:00.004Z

Adweek has put together a very interesting discussion on online and social media measurement. The principle points IMO relate to the practicality of programs from providers like Cymfony and BuzzMetrics being able to automatically tell you how good your media exposure is.

I must admit I am beginning quite sanguine about the notion of how good automated solution for representing online and social media are. Organisations are spending many, many thousands of the ever-tightening media budget on the online equivalent of a wetted figure in the air.

I really think we need to step back and take a long look at the sense in letting a computer mark your coverage. Even with the recent developments in the semantic web a computer can not understand text. It can not grasp an argument, highlight creativity, isolate messaging, or most importantly assign favourability. Until they can, any automated measurement tool will be nothing more than an expensive marketing gimmick.

Doing the Zurich Test

2008-03-05T09:46:00.004Z

Is the semantic web now becoming a reality. Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said all the tools are in place, it just needs people to collate the data and make the applications. As mentioned yesterday we have been trialling one of the recent tools developed by Reauters called Calais.

The techno language bit is a bit baffling to a non-techie like me but I have understood enough to run a few queries on what I call challenging texts. Would it be able to distiguish between company names, places and people? The image above is an extract from the output and I must admit I am pretty impressed. Although it failed a few times yesterday, on this extract from the FT it was able to distingussh between Zurich the financial services company and the Swiss town - pretty good!

Calais goes semantic

2008-03-04T09:27:00.002Z

Just last week my wife and myself spent a few days in France and while travelling back I was catching up on some editions of For Immediate Release, which covers just everything you need to know about communications and the online environment. It just so happened that as we approached the North French coast Neville and Shel started talking about Calais, but it was not the nearby town but a new access devise created by Reuters as a test-bed for public access to what is referred to as the semantic web.

A few years ago I went to a conference which set out what XML can do for you. My conclusion was, in ignorance, very little. The semantic web is an open attempt to make our use of the net more relevant by allowing computers to understand what they are looking for.

A short example: If you are searching for references to the financial services company Zurich, you will get lots of references to the Swiss town. If a computer has these names 'tagged' with a meaning then you could filter out all the town references, and all of a sudden the results are more accurate and meaningful. This will be a massive help to accurate research enabling far more accurate online analysis.

Egging on another PR disaster

2008-02-03T10:06:00.000Z

In recent weeks there have been a few candidates for the recent PR disaster award. There was Ryanair and their salacious school girl ad and the Qtrax music download service which never was.

These were all completely eclipsed by the news yesterday that Egg, the credit card people cancelled 130,000 odd accounts due to their enhanced risk, however the overwhelming feedback from the cancelled account holders was that Egg made no money out of them because they paid off their balance each month.

From what I have seen I can’t see much upside on this one. Surely, anyone looking for an example for an organisation with masochistic tendencies should look no further!

On the one level its an organisation rejecting its customers and on a more sinister level utter corporate hypocrisy, from one of the worlds biggest banks (Citigroup) at a time when they need all the friends they can get!

Gazing into PR's crystall ball

2008-01-16T14:40:00.000Z

This weeks PR Week ran an article on the views of 25 leading UK based PR professionals regarding what are going to be the big issues for 2008. Amongst the selection of concerns over skills retention and CSR there was a flurry of comments about PR proving its benefit – particularly if the economy grows chilly.

Lis Lewis-Jones, President of the CIPR said if conditions tighten consultancies need to place a greater emphasis on proving value. She indicates that if this is combined with enhanced professional conduct and ethics then the result will have to push PR up the agenda. Stephen Waddington from Rainier PR, and prolific blogger, said PR is still recovering from the rout following the dotcom crash – something he thinks we need desperately to avoid again.

Alex Aiken, Home Counties local authorities PR supremo, echos the need for value for money, something which a more PR savy top management will need to see demonstrated beyond the ‘thud factor’ (‘look have many cuttings we got!’).

But my favourite is Colin Byrne, CEO of Weber Shandwick: ‘clients will stop being fascinated by social media and start investing in it-but expect real measurable results’. Will they be disappointed? Possibly by the amount of time involved in creating an effective online presence and with the difficulties in seeing its impact. Quite a few books have recently been written or are in the process of being written on the measurement of social media (before we get to the conferences…) and I would just caution against getting stuck in without professional counsel.

Thoughts on the media with Lord David Puttnam

2008-01-08T10:35:00.000Z

Maggie Nally Memorial Lecture 2008
Venue: House of Lords, London
The International Group of the CIPR are delighted to announce that the Rt Hon Lord Puttnam Kt CBE – one of the most active campaigners on the Westminster scene – will deliver the sixth annual Maggie Nally Memorial Lecture on Thursday 24 January 2008 at 6pm in the House of Lords.
Although famed as a film producer, David Puttnam has many other strings to his bow, most recently in the field of environmental protection. He has won Academy Awards for such films as The Duellists, Midnight Express, Chariots of Fire and The Killing Fields. His books include The Third Age of Broadcasting (co-author), Rural England (co-author) and The Undeclared War: the struggle for control of the world's film industry.
Lord Puttnam has been President, Council for the Protection of Rural England 1985-92 and is President of UNICEF UK 2002 to date. Most recently he has been Chairman of a Joint Lords and Commons Parliamentary Committee reviewing future climate change issues and a Bill related to them.
Following the Lecture, which is jointly organised by the CIPR International Committee and the CIPR Greater London Groups and is sponsored and chaired by Lord (Tom) McNally, there will be a seated full buffet reception with wines on the Cholmondeley Room Terrace of the House of Lords. Admission to the Moses Room of the House of Lords on 24 January 2008 will require a security letter of entry.
Date: Thursday 24 January 2008
Time: 5.15pm for the International Group AGM, 6pm for the Puttnam Lecture.
Although there are only a few places left for the sit-down buffet (£45) which follows the lecture, there is more space available if you would like to attend the lecture only. This is at no cost although all attendees will need a letter of entry to the House. If you are interested in attending please make contact on either 020 7549 2829 or at michael@meresearch.co.uk.

The objective of favourability

2007-11-15T16:40:00.000Z

The discipline of media evaluation has over the years found it hard to dodge the accusation of subjectivity. I have noticed that when executing research using the accepted forms of best practice it is never possible to make the process completely objective.

I have also noticed over the years that media research often returns to the core disciplines of the measurement of tone and the spotting of key messages. When it comes to establishing favourability there is always the possibility of some sort of ‘unfair’ bias.

There are ways to give the research rigour including proportional analysis, headline bias, other branding traits and potency of the wording. The default categories have tended to be ‘positive’, ‘neutral’ and ‘negative’, although it is possible to feel slightly uneasy about what the actual difference is between a neutral and positive item, for example.

If an article mentions an organisation by name is there some value to that, or should it just be classed as neutral? This could be resolved by introducing the categories of ‘slightly positive’ and, ‘wholly positive’ however there seems to a lack of research to support one categorisation over another. I strongley feel PR measurement would benefit from some form of discussion on this area.

Is it time to out the 'Outs'?

2007-11-12T21:09:00.000Z

The traditional method of measuring PR (pioneered by Dr Walt Lindenmann) was via the measures of Output, Out-take and Outcome. They have been widely covered in academic journals and used as a method of categorising response measurement. Dr Tom Watson in DummySpit outlines their use in this useful review. But there seems to be a problem as the ‘Outs’ are often misused and I think it is fair to say, poorly understood by practitioners.

So in response a couple of alternatives have been pitched. Dan Bartholomew suggests the Exposure, Influence and Action categories, while Jim Nail suggests Media Influence, Media Audience and Business Influence. They both undoubtedly have their merits and while I think they could be accused of introducing more jargon, discussion on this issue is healthy, particularly if it engages view from the wider PR community rather than from just within the measurement community.

Personally I prefer Dan Bartholomews option but as this is very early days much more information and practical application and testing needs to be done. And of course if a new option is to be adopted it needs to be much better than the existing.

A single measure for the media.....really?

2007-10-17T08:58:00.000+01:00

Can I be the only one to find it difficult to conceive of the idea of a single measure of PR value? Is it really possible that there is an all-encompassing, universal catch-all for all the nuances of the media's exposure, representing its impact, favourability and message content?

'5.9' on the scoreboard...
Many in PR and research are becoming concerned by the rising trend of providing a single score of media effectiveness. To adopt an analogy from ice skating when the Russian judge holds up the board with 5.9 on it...what does that actually mean?

Measures to match goals.
My biggest problem with a single measure is its inability to treat organisations differently. Every organisations PR strategy is different and hence the metrics applied to understanding media impact must reflect different goals.

The former Chairman of CGI Europe Adrian Wheeler (now with Firefly), said at a CIPR seminar that the nature of the media is 'fuzzy'. It is hard to see how a single measure can adequately capture the meaning of such a medium.

The truth is surely that a multitude of measures needs to be carefully considered. Often the problem is that as PR revolves in a world absent of absolutes, it is easy to grab a hold of some sort of all-encompassing measure as a sum of all achievement.

To continue my earlier analogy, the ice dancer can learn a lot more by going through her performance with the judge in front of a video. In the same way, far better to carefully consider a range of measures tailored specifically to an organisations strategy.

Alan Chumley with Hill and Knowlton, Canada, further developes this idea and illustrates it particularly effectivley through an example on his blog.

Problems understanding the measurement of social media....

2007-10-12T16:04:00.000+01:00

Start here. This item on the Net-Savvy Executive is a superb summary of what matters in measurement of social media and very importantly what aspects are key to which discipline - great piece Nathan!

Hardening up the fuzz

2007-10-12T14:05:00.000+01:00

I recently revisited a comment by Adrian Wheeler, the former Chairman of GCI Europe who at a talk at the CIPR looked at the current impression of PR amongst its other contemporary business functions. Importantly he also outlined a view on where it should be going. His current view was that the discipline could be described as ‘soft, fuzzy’. ‘Soft’, as in its ability to interact with other disciplines and departments and ‘fuzzy’, as in the nature of media.

The proposed move is towards a ‘hard, fuzzy’ position, where the discipline displays a sharper understanding of needs of business, is accountable and commands respect for the contribution it can make towards the management of corporate reputation.

FIR Geek Dinner

2007-10-09T08:37:00.000+01:00

The dual weekly podcast FIR broke out of its strictly aural format with a fan-fest at a super little restaurant in Windsor, UK last weekend. I tried to upload a shot to Flickr (not sure if worked) but this is a shot I took.

Big thank you to Shel and Neville for organising the event - brilliant job! It was also a pleasure to meet with the other dozan or so attendees including Jed Baxter, Alan Richardson, Martin Davis, Michelle Holtz, Ronna Porter, Laura Hobson and David Phillips. I had a brief conversation with Kerry Bridge from Dell who was very interesting if interupted by Shel wanting to film an interview underneath a street lamp outside the venue - all rather unlikely!

Facebook access - a measure of management testosterone

2007-09-22T09:46:00.000+01:00

Just caught a blog entry by Roo Reynolds from IBM about some UK regional authorities (in this case Kent County Council) blocking access to Facebook. Amid the plethora of stats indicating lost productivity / enhanced networking its hard to see any bans as being nothings else but a reason for management to exert what they think is good for the rest. If you are at all involved within an organisations marketing and sales or at all interested or involved in communications internally or externally you have every reason to use and benefit from Facebook and other social networking sites. This is the reason I fully support Shel Holtz campaign Stop Blocking. The arguments will carry on and we all know the way people are and some will take the p**s, although I am firmly in the camp that says it is in corporations best interests for its employees to be involved and engaged. An IT based blanket ban is I believe unreasonable - better that it be encouraged or questioned as a function of management. When posed with the question 'how is this helping you with your work' it should be obvious if one can present or fails produce plausible reasons.

Media sentiment and share/stock prices

2007-09-14T10:06:00.000+01:00

If a mechanism for accurately correlating media sentiment with share and stock prices could be formulated then you can safely say that this sector of research would be many times larger and I would drive something other than a middle of the road family saloon! But just occasionally comparing the two can make for an interesting insight into whats really going on.

This morning the major UK corparate news has regarded Northern Rock, who have been somewhat unwilling dragged into the debacle, and fast becoming a crisis, that is the sub-prime credit crunch. The graph above sets out a measure of the volume of UK press exposure compared to their share price since the start of the year.

Their share price has dropped by over a half since the start of the year and now sits the south-side of 500p. When there is a single issue dominating coverage the relationship starts to stand-out and although this is only volume it is a telling comparison.

So what is being compared in this graph? Share and stock price is a measure of the financial worth of a company now and into the future by a group of highly experienced analysts and market makers whose only job is to do that. The volume of media coverage presents a picture of media focus on an issue or brand. The media will respond to any changes they feel notable and which would be of interest to their readers. So, the question is does one indicator lead the other? I am honestly not sure but an interesting alternative might be a measure of media favourability towards the organisation...that could be telling!

Rosters rumblings

2007-09-05T17:04:00.000+01:00

It is a perenial problems for relatively new specialist research agencies like the one I work for as to whether we ought really go all out to get onto the public sector roster of providers lead by the COI (Central Office of Information). The media evaluation listing was up for review late last year, I think, and I must admit to not even looking at the initial pitch documents, but last weeks PR Week has given me heart and allowed me to live with myself a little longer by indicating that the list is only considered in a quarter of appointments.

This will not go away however and having completed the pitch process a number of years ago, I can honestly comment that the process is onerous, and in the case of the agency I worked for at the time, unsuccessful. Its up for review again in 2010 so you never know!

Interesting analysis of Canadian research

2007-08-22T11:33:00.000+01:00

Alan Chumley, the Research Director for Hill & Knowlton in Canada has submitted an analysis of the Canadian media research industry. He makes a number of good points, the highlights of which to me were:

- As a progression from the Macnamara's Output / Out-take / Outcomes model the additional inclusion of 'Outgrowth' measure in response to an attempt to closer tie cause and effect. I see real value in focusing effort on the resulting impact of process as a way of better illustrating PR effort.

- He also spoke about the selection of branded packages available from research suppliers. He makes the point that if all medium/large organisations were the same then they would all need the same style or research. As they are not trying to fit needs to designated product styles is not helpful.

Super article, Alan.

Free trials......is it worth the effort?

2007-08-20T09:50:00.000+01:00

Just occasionally its necessary to talk about something unrelated to research and on this instance it is the company Pitney Bowes. A few months ago I was persuaded to take a trial of a franking machine for a month. I found it useful and easy to use but as most of my communication is electronically it was of limited use.

Since then the machine has been returned but on various occasions my 'free' trial has been valued a amounts ranging from £59.43 to £95.91. Whats the most frustrating thing is people from Pitney Bowes in the UK tell me when I call up (premium rate number) that it has all been cancelled and a credit note has been raised. But then this morning I receive another invoice for £70.30 so I tried to call to be told every ones on another line. So I leave a message...will anyone get back to me? They probably will as I have already been told on 2 separate occasions it will credited; I have just yet to see it in writing.

Please let it happen soon!

Wikipedia manipulation

2007-08-16T10:29:00.000+01:00

BBC Radio 5 Live did an item on their Wake Up To Money show about Wikipedia being subject to manipulation and wholesale alteration by organisations keen to project a positive side in their entry. It was great to hear a contribution from David Phillips backing-up the argument that this sort of immature propagandist tactics do nothing for their reputation and any feeling of transparency. Great one David - sure did wake me up!

Wrestling with measurement

2007-08-15T14:17:00.000+01:00

Cross-media measurement tools seem to be all the rage at present. Advertisers want to equate their media spend and analyse the impact of their budget across the different media...ie press, broadcast and new media. Advertising measurement specialists are trying their best to assist with a host of systems and packages. Erik Sass has an interesting discussion on some of those currently available.

With traditional media (press and broadcast) the audience was quantifiable but with new media there are so many more uncertainties. My understanding is that one proposal is to measure the time spent with a page 'open'. I quite often leave a page I am interested in open all day, just refreshing it occasionally. My time actually spent reading the page probably only numbers minutes.

No, there has to be another way for new media. My suggestion would be a sample of viewers analysed via a users pointing camera to look at when the screen is being looked at in conjunction with a log of the pages fully open. This measure of 'actively viewed' pages as I see it would have to be the most accurate form of measurement for new media.

Many thanks for the help chaps

2007-07-30T16:51:00.001+01:00

I am always surprised by the use the blogosphere can be connecting with people and my case in point was in response for a 'quick and dirty' set of media figures for a number of territories including Canada. I tried the normal candidates who were not very co-operative but then I remembered seeing frequent blog comments and references to Alan Chumley, now the Research Director of Hill & Knowlton in Canada, but used to be with Cormex Research. Between him and Andrew over at Cormex they really helped me in a big way and I am really very appreciative.

If I could send an award to the most helpful people I have ever worked with this chaps would be up there! Absolute stars. Thanks again.

Defending communications

2007-07-23T10:16:00.000+01:00

In the Sunday Telegraph this weekend there was an article on a leaked memo about the Ministry of Defences press function. In particular, it talked about the 'large number of staff employed to improve the MoD's public image, and the high cost and there being no evidence as to whether or not the strategy is working'.

While the article extrapolates figures it estimates the salary bill for the department being about £39million a year. Is it reasonable to have a level of expense to the public of this magnitude without a rigorous form of checks and balances? The document sets out a strategy to target new media against traditional media without any indication of how this is to be monitored and evaluated.

The story leaves an uncomfortable sense as it portrays the MOD as 'spinning' a news managed smokescreen to deflect attention from the real issues of overseas troop deployment, equipment and cost.

Thanks for the credit Mark..

2007-07-17T09:23:00.000+01:00

The 29th June 2007 UK edition of PR Week ran a feature on the importance of media monitoring and the analysis of competitor intelligence and featured a case study on a client of ours Allianz Insurance. The reason for this posting is to say thanks to Mark for the credit to Media Evaluation Research - we really appreciate it! The full article is accessible online but I think you need to subscribe.

Lessons in two-way communications

2007-07-16T11:10:00.000+01:00

last Friday proved an interesting day for the communications industry. Television grandee Lord Grade, who is in charge at ITV spoke about the need for all in the media to think carefully about the implications for their actions. He was talking following the mistakenly edited trailer for the BBC programme about the queen which infered she had walked out of a royal photo shoot.

Grade's angle was that the media needed to be more carefully with instuments at their disposal - to communicate clearly and truthfully. He was a pains when featured on BBC Radio 4 'Today Programme' to say that cutting corners will not do and that you do not decieve the audience. This rather neatly dove-tailed into an article written by the DG of the CIPR, Colin Farrington for the latest edition of their house publication 'Profile'. The subject matter was the importance of two-way communications in the PR function, and the utter rejection of the media push/propoganda model.

Colin's article was excellent in its clarity of the problem at large and the ways it can be addressed. An excellent read which unfortunately I can't find featured online, so no link.

Reputation - a slippery fish

2007-07-09T10:10:00.000+01:00

Reputation measurement is such a complex thing and is the theme of a discussion on the royaldutchshellplc.com site which investigates the complexity of the task and its impact on tangibles like share price.

Stock values is all about putting a price on a company, which in the past was not that much of a problem as you tallied up the plant and machinery, other assets, etc added in some goodwill and presto you had a value for your firm. Today life is more complex and the majority of an organisations assets are classed as intangible.

There are ways of calculating the value of intangible assets and if this area is of interest Kaplan's balances scorecards are worth reading up on. A big component of an organisations intangible assets would be reputation and one of the primary influences would be media coverage. Various providers of research in this area will suggest they can do all sorts of things not far short of predicting future share price movements. But reputation is a slippery fish - share price is influenced by reputation and the media affects reputation, but the media is not a silo. Multiple sources, multiple channels of varying influences to a varying style of audience.

In these days of innovative corporate deal making will we find there is a time when the private-equity bandwagon will see a cash return from simply improving a reputation? Sure, there are complex tools to help and a sophisticated level of understanding of how the reputation process can be manipulated. My view is that reputation is a delicate thing and any attempt to veneer a image over an unchanged whole would be seen as that alone.

Being sociable online

2007-06-27T13:38:00.000+01:00

Only in the past couple of months have I been at all serious about using social networking tools. I have a page (with only a few contacts) on Facebook which I find quite intuitive and clearly signed for use. There are a few things I find confusing although this might be because I have never been a myspace/bebo person.

But just recently this has become a rather more complicated area for PR professionals with sector specific offerings being launched by Ragan Communications and Melcrum. The thing I have been trying to find out about these sites is their real value. There is obvious value to having a community of contemporaries in the same industry as an avenue to building relationships, learning and exploring new ideas. Sure, but do these new PR focused networks deliver?

At the moment I am not sure. Could there be a feeling of networking fatigue and do people need a little time to catch-up; consider whats available and come to terms with the impact of new media on the rest of PR?

My aim is to try and find out - to investigate how they can help those in PR. I will report back soon.

Extraordinary display of natures might

2007-06-20T09:27:00.000+01:00

They said we might get a storm last night and boy they were not wrong. Here on the Kent coast we were lucky enough not to loose power and unlike parts nearby there was no flooding, althought the back yard did start to look a bit like a lake at one point. No, the amazing thing was the light show and the accompanying thunder. Standing on the doorstep for ten minutes and at no point were we without the sound of thunder and the lightning was more 'on than off'. Quite amazing and certainly one of the most violent diplays of what nature can do as I have seen.

Corporate social responsibility and prostitution

2007-06-05T10:57:00.000+01:00

Curious item in the FT this morning about business leaders low prioritisation of climate change. The YouGov survey for KPMG said only 14% had a clear strategy for climate change. Far more urgent were said to be brand issues, marketing strategies and corporate social responsibility. Strange as, if climate change is not a part of corporate social responsibility, then what is?

I really think that this is the point which so many leaders seem to miss about CSR. To be effective it needs to be all encompassing and all consuming. If you adopt a CSR programme you are standing up to be counted on your social and environmental credentials. I really don’t know how organisations can pick and chose which parts of their organisation they wish highlight for CSR purposes – it just sounds like hypocrisy. I really don’t get why BAT, the cigarette manufacturer has a CSR programme – why bother. Or Honda’s Formula1 team promoting their environmental credentials. It just seems a bit like a tart going to church on a Sunday!

BBC Business gets pulled up

2007-05-29T10:02:00.000+01:00

This weekend the FT ran an item on the BBC’s business news coverage. It followed a report by the BBC Trust into the failings of the networks business news. Business news has always been a bit of a Cinderella on the BBC, although with the exclusion of the dedicated business news networks (like CNBC and Bloomburg) there is the impression that none of them take it all that seriously.

I undertook a quantitative study a couple of years back for one of the BBC’s news channel competitors and my recollections are that the BBC’s news coverage was comparative in length, although tended towards a greater use of repeated items.

If I have a current frustration it is the lack of macro-economic coverage on current networks. Possibly this reflects an increasing interest on my part however I am of the opinion that there are some major shifts in the economic structure of the world (like China), pressures on prices and net impact on inflation. These for me are the important issues particularly if accompanied by comment from some of the many insightful commentators working in association with City of London.

One of these structural changes is the shift in economic power towards the City of London over the past couple of years. Has the BBC mirrored this shift? I think not, and has it failed to reflect the professional interests of the increasing number of people involved in this sector?… I think it has.

As an aside, I concur with the reports highlighting the sycophantic interview with Bill Gates. He was talking about the launch of Vista (and not about his charity work) and deserved to the tackled on issues like the rise of Google, Microsoft’s depressed share price and the organisations future strategy.

Big Brother – give us your views….

2007-05-25T15:20:00.000+01:00

Yesterday morning I had a call out the blue from someone at Channel 5 (UK) News asking if I would comment on ‘the Big Brother story’. My RSS feeds had not mentioned anything so in an attempt to sound in touch I blurted ‘so they have pulled the plug on them…?” Frankly, I was ill prepared and it must have shown. The understanding lady from Channel 5 News said she had looked at our corporate site and was not sure if it was our thing. (Defeated) I kinda’ agreed and said I would have a chat with some people in the PR industry and get someone to call her with a suitably informed comment.

Then last night I watched a commentator on BBC News 24 on the subject making all sorts of curious deductions on the Ofcom ruling (even suggesting at one point it was an IFA ruling); and it all got me to be thinking that I should have persisted and volunteered more forcefully. I even got to queue up some soundbites: ‘when you live by the sword, you must die by it’…..‘wasn’t this what Big Brother has been trying to engineer all these years...?’ On reflection, possibly fate dealt me a fortuitous hand.

PR: Nothing but blue skies?

2007-05-15T12:03:00.000+01:00

A really interesting essay has been posted on the PR2.0Universe website written by John Holmes of the Holmes Report regarding how PR missed its chance in the first internet revolution and the challenges which lie ahead if it is to extend its influence against the wave of consumer generated comment.

It includes some excellent discussion on identifying key online influencers, the death of the conventional press release, the types of people PR should be employing, salaries and competition from other disciplines.

It also looks at measurement and suggests a market research approach among stakeholders. It would have been interesting if this had been extended to the role of media monitoring, application, analysis and what you can hope to learn from it.

Social media has the casting vote

2007-05-14T15:04:00.000+01:00

The BBC, John Sweeney / Church of Scientology story is assuming a level of interest largely as a result of various clips being posted by the relevant proponents on YouTube. For the record you can see the clip here. A kinda bazaar place for a PR battle, particularly when it is free for anyone to post a comment under the clip.

Really interesting podcast

2007-05-11T14:59:00.000+01:00

Anyone involved in comms and technology can't help but be interested in the Hobson and Holtz report, if you are not already aware.

Blogging and the CIPR Diploma

2007-05-09T14:27:00.000+01:00

I think the submission day for the latest CIPR Diploma CRT essays was either yesterday or today and I must admit that being featured in one of the questions has resulted in a number of phone calls and emails. I have tried to help out and direct people to the relevant sources although it now occurs that I have missed a trick by not posting comments on this blog for use by more of the students.

Having been in exactly the same situation of doing the Diploma only last year it is quite strange to be involved in it from this angle and had I been a little less busy it would have been fun to have engaged in the discussion more and to have circulated the views a little further via the blog. We learn from our mistakes and only hope it will make us better prepared next time!

Creativity - key to successful PR

2007-05-02T12:50:00.000+01:00

Last week I was at a business seminar hosted by Businesslink in which the famous management science guru Edward de Bono talked about creative thinking. It is easy to say the word but often hellishly difficult to act out. One of his opening points was that adaptation is poorer than reinvention. The ‘line of least resistance’ is the often adopted course based on adaptation rather than the more testing line of invention.

Creativity is key to PR. I recently heard a talk on Online PR at the CIPR in which the apparent threats were outlined, particularly from consumer generated content, or members of the public talking online about your brand. The discussion ranged from deep mistrust and concern for the loss of control of the brand message, through to the embracing of the medium as a god-sent opportunity to engage with those willing to ask.

While this content often ‘competes’ with PR content there was the view that PR had two essential star cards, being creativity and relationships.

Relationships are made and the reassuring thing from Edward de Bono is that creativity is not something one is born or not born with, but can be learnt.

Online content - big problems arise

2007-04-23T14:50:00.000+01:00

Interesting article on eMarketing on the trouble with online video content search. In previous posts we have talked about the problems of searching YouTube (can Google make it properly searchable??). By far the highest growth potential for online content is seen to be short video according to an Accenture survey with the majority being user generated.

Meanwhile a Synovate survey found that the third most frustrating thing to consumers of this shift was the difficulty in finding what they were looking for (19%). Other concerns where it being too commercial, inconsistent and chaotic.

Online audience measurement

2007-04-18T16:22:00.000+01:00

We have blogged here before about the problems of measuring an online audience. Traditionally it has been done via page views and often with the use of cookies (small tracking programs inserted on your computed by the servers of the sites you visit which track what else you look at). Interestingly the BBC has investigated the issue, covering recent reports from comScore and Nielsen NetRatings.

The traditional method of measurement has been page views which have always been a bit unbelievable and with an increasing number of PC users regularly clearing their cookies, there is every chance that these are being astronimically overstated. Another measure suggested is by taking a sample audience and scaling up their behaviour; in the same way this is done for TV and radio.

Possibly more reasonable but I would caution using it too precisely. When you are on time unmetered online access where is the onus to read only the pages which are open? I usually have a number of browser panes open at any one time, one of which is normally showing the BBC's news homepage, but I am not reading it all the time!

This is a massively important issue for media measurement and if users are to have faith in the metrics adopted then they must reflect the consumer out-take not the media output.

Google and the PR industry

2007-04-16T17:59:00.000+01:00

Of all the organisations out there its probably Google that fascinates me most. It’s a kind of hobby reading about their latest moves, deals and products however I must admit to holding a modest amount of their shares (or stock) but if anything it’s just to add to the excitement of trying to work out what they are up to.

I think it relevant to mention that last year we dabbled in Adwords but found it expensive and have concentrated efforts on the ‘natural’ listings via an SOE initiative. I use the Gmail mobile and desktop which I think are great although I have not as yet parted with $50 for the full Apps product, although I think it’s going to be a great alternative to MS Office, particularly with the hoped for addition of the presentation module.

Back to my Google fascination, which really seems to stem from the conviction that they know something we don’t. I can’t put it any clearer than that. Perhaps they have too much power, maybe it’s a critical mass thing, but lots of their ideas seem odd with no particular view on monetarising the benefit. My gut however tells me they could end up taking as active a part in the UK’s PR provision as they do in advertising.

They are talking about customising your browser to only display ads related to products or services your have previously shown an interest in. If this is the future then its possible pages and content could also be filtered on a similar basis, or to show the stories of those who have paid the most money.

Online ads points way for PR

2007-04-02T15:40:00.000+01:00

This weekend the Guardian ran a super article on the impact of the internet on advertising. Its relevance is so pertinent to PR in that these are shared methods of communication and as Credit Suisse recently said ‘money follows eyeballs’.

One of the most interesting parts of this discussion focused the concept of user solicited content and how this is enabling the internet to veer away from traditional media’s ‘pay and pray’ approach.

The consumer ability to distinguish between the ad and the editorial contents of the media in another area worth considering in greater detail in the future; enough to say the combine of PR and ads online are enabling great leverage to new entrants – without the infrastructure and cost of building a brand offline.

So where will consumers go in the future for information. Traditional media providers like the newspapers with an online presence will present one of the best routes to connect with a less specific audience which is associated with sites like MySpace and Facebook.

Finally what about justification online? A big aspect holding back the progress is the lack of good audience data. This month marks the first monthly data series specifically for the internet produced by Audit Bureau of Circulation. ABCe will be a welcome addition only if it sets a standard and becomes the currency of preference. Limits could come from a lack of scale to the analysis and over-complicated data streams.

Broadband figures for UK

2007-03-28T15:13:00.000+01:00

Dramatic news on broadband adoption for the UK. eMarketeer has found that the UK's take up of broadband services is picking up speed and the number of households taking the service is only narrowly behind Germany and France in Europe. Importantly as a percentage of the number of households the UK is way ahead of its European contemporaries and is fourth in the world behind South Korea, Canada and Japan.

eMarketeer say that this has largely be achieved by a virtuous combination of strong consumer purchasing power and reducing charges. The study indicates that the younger generations take 'always on' connection for granted and regard it as a virtual playground. For the rest of us, it is for making purchases, collecting information and doing work. All generations are partaking with one in four internet users being over 50.

What does the future hold. Projection are within four years broadband penetration will have reached 76.8% (20 million)of homes. Can there be a more candid sets of results to anyone in PR needing convincing about the importance of online sources.

Help wanted - sure fire way to make a million....!

2007-03-26T16:14:00.000+01:00

I am looking for someone to help me with a massive business oportunity just waiting for someone to get the right product in front of the PR community(and others!). All you got to do is come up with a way of monitoring YouTube and the like...

In effect you will have to perfect a voice recognition system encapsulating multiple dialogue and dialect as well as having a method of recognising visuals. This could range from partically audable comment through to mostly clear visuals.

In our lifetime I doubt it will happen and I appologise for the rather cute way of introducing an increasingly pressing challenge to PR analysis sector. You might think there are voice recognition systems available but these have been proved to be unreliable by among others PR Week. The traditional way of approaching it has been to ignor it, but that seems risky.

Take an example of someone who puts together a daily weblog diary. What about if he or she works for a London based removals firm and happens to mention in passing that a load of trucks have been booked to help with a move at Downing Street in July. Among the hundreds and thousands of video postings it would go unwatched and although being in the public domain, it never gets noticed.

I am sure that our inability to effectivley monitor this increasinglty important form of media is resulting in many stories being missed, although tracking through a non-human method seems to be a chimera.

Navigating the blogging maze

2007-03-15T18:03:00.000Z

Its a fact that with blogs expanding at the rate they are you can just about find any sort of comment about anything. Often a rant, others well balance reasoning but all accessible - all you got to do is spend the time finding it.

And that is the problem - many are only read by the writer (like this...?). PR can't spend every minute collecting and answering every comment. I decision has to be made on significance. It is under recognised at present but a soon to be valuable skill will be isolating your key online opinion formers. You might think you know who they are but its a fast moving world out there and it has never been more important to sample your customer/stakeholders about who they listen to.

PR Week did an interesting item on this recently but as is often the case seemed to just state the obvious without actually digging into what was working for people and why.

Google - on the verge of being really useful

2007-02-24T08:21:00.000Z

I have a problem. On semi-regular trips abroad I am struggling to find an effective way of catching up on emails. I hate carting a heavy laptop around and so a PDA/phone seemed the answer. A Sony Ericsson P910i does the job with one drawback – it doesn’t have any spam filters and over a 24 hour period I can collect upwards of 200 messages – 95% of which are spam.

It seems that within the last 6 months spam has really blossomed and unfortunately my primary addresses have been hawked to all the least disreputable sources – a throwback to when the email address was clearly displayed on our website.

The answer seemed to be offered by the effervescent Google through their Google Gmail package, with its built in spam filters. All looked fine on setup and between desktop and mobile perfect synchronisation. But the forwarding of email from a POP server to Gmail is on limited availability. Other email forwarding options exist but seem to necessitate the forwarding computer being left on – not an ideal option when one is away for a week or so.

Please Google – you promise on your site to roll this Outlook collection option to Gmail in new future. You have a great opportunity to promote your use to a audience beyond search. I, and I am sure others really need this option and would be happy to pay for it.

Online adspend points the way for PR

2007-02-02T17:48:00.000Z

As part of my duties to the International group of the CIPR it was off to the House of Commons last night to hear a talk by Baroness Buscombe, the new DG of the Advertising Association. Not immediately relevant to media research but what she said was of great interest to the PR industry.

While she is keen to maintain standards it was also very apparent that content has to be king and if this means pushing the boundaries, then so be it. With advertising revenues from traditional media falling like stones, so cutbacks in all areas of content are occurring. If magazines are unable to sell as many ads they are not going to make up the short-fall with more editorial content. Instead the two will be mirrored, in effect leading to less traditional media sources with which PR can engage.

During this meeting I had the sense that there was an elephant in the room – metaphorically that is…. and it goes by the name of Google, which sucks up a quarter of all online adspend, bypassing whole ad agency machine.

I really wanted to hear about the ways the ad agencies can deal themselves back into the online adspending and more importantly what PR needs to learn from this situation.

Online PR goes intangible

2007-01-17T12:37:00.000Z

The current theme to this blog is contrasting the differences between measuring conventional and new media. The debate continues on the metrics used to measure online media with the growing rejection of the current default page view model. New methods of page processing mean that often people do not move from their original entry page – only the content before them changes. MySpace and YouTube are obvious examples of these types of site.

Where is the relevance of this to PR? The growing importance on online media means it will feature as an ever expanding element of PR’s output and needs to be effectively measured. As mentioned it was done by page views often derived from a sample of webusers. However web communities are often small and highly specialised meaning they are not accurately represented in a sample.

Jeff Jarvis wrote at the start of the week in The Guardian that the advertising industry is trying to find a replacement which can accurately portray viewing habits. One suggestion is to consider the audience fragmentation as an opportunity to track quality over quantity; for instance what were the step-through pages which lead to a sale?

The measurement of conventional media has possibly left us with the feeling that we must put a specific value on our output. For example, to say we achieved X hundred thousand viewers and readers. Instead (and in the absence of good online metrics) we should consider what proportion of our media coverage featured a key message and in what ways we can measure the positive impact of this messages use, be it through sales, share price or future PR/marketing opportunities. That could all be before considering the impact within your online community where the impact could be measured though mentions on blogs.

Coverage online are intangible assets and interpreting their impact will require experience and skill, qualities which PR has and can capitalise on.

2007 Predictions

2007-01-09T08:52:00.000Z

While the groundhog only tries to predict the next few weeks weather we have tried to offer some views on the future for PR and measurement in the year ahead and beyond. As these are only our personal views it comes with a big health warning!

While people appreciate data and your interpretation of it, what unquestionably they like are predictions.

If you are in the game of picking shares, your choices can come back and haunt you. If you work in the area of communications, (well…the research side) making predictions can be just as fraught.

The following is a selection of ideas which are more fully expanded upon in a PDF document on our website. We would welcome comments, including criticisms where you think we have got it wrong.

Our predictions were helped following a recent event at the CIPR where Larry Weber, formally of Weber Shandwick, spoke about the tipping point that will come in about 18 months time. At that point online media will overtake traditional media. He spoke about what is often referred to as Web 2.0 and the reinvention of the role of communications.

There are massive implications for media research, which has traditionally measured media output. We believe this could result in the marginalisation of OTS and AVE metrics and their replacement with a new set of media out take measures, moving PR one crucial step closer to public outcome.

New possibilities abound in the guise of automated media favourability and message usage programs, although we believe they are nowhere near accurate enough to use.

Finally, we offer some thoughts on the new rules of the online media game and specifically astroturfing and ghosting.

Take a look at the full report here.

Predicting the future

2007-01-08T09:49:00.000Z

In character with the time of year it felt right to offer a few thoughts on the future of PR and evaluation. Frankly I would have been wasting my time had it not been for an event I went to hosted by the CIPR last month which featured among others Larry Weber (late of Weber Shandwick and now Racepoint) talking about the impact of online usage to the discipline.

I will be completing this paper in the next few days, as time allows, and will be posting it to our main website and sending around a synopsis to the opted-in mail list. If interested sign up on the site. Happy New Year.

Are AVE’s and OTS becoming outdated?

2006-12-20T15:39:00.000Z

Acronyms apart (and PR seems to love them) there is a view that these measures of output are becoming increasingly out dated and irrelevant. Jim McNamara pioneered the concept of output, outtake and outcome, probably one of the most incisive observations on the world of media measurement, although it often seems like organisations have become entrenched in the measurement of output only.

Sure it’s relevant, but in an increasingly online dominated world the difficulties with establishing accurate audience and value data is making output measurement fundamentally unsound.

Instead, organisations interested in data driven PR will need to look beyond simple output and consider the measurement of outtake. Tools like the BBC’s News Most Popular Now indicates a comparison of the stories people are opening and reading (a metric which would be almost impossible to get for newspapers). Other tools which exist include tracking a stories usage within the blogosphere as a measure of media buzz, in addition to a track on other consumer generated media.

The internet posses many challenges to PR measurement. It also presents new opportunities and I am optimistic that the community will embrace the potential of this new environment to the eventual benefit of PR.

Very happy Christmas, one and all!

PR regulation

2006-12-19T14:34:00.000Z

The favoured worst case scenario is again raising its ugly head in the form of regulation of the PR industry. The FT ran an item this morning on an FSA investigation into 4 mergers this year to see if there was any signs of insider trading. Two of the obvious characteristics of today’s deals are their increasing value and the number of people involved. Keeping share-sensitive information confidential is imperative and as Mark Shipman a professional investor said on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Wake up to Money this morning, the regulation of parties involved including the PR element could become a reality.

Self-regulation has been seen by many as the best model for the sector and if there is any sign of impropriety involving a PR firm then would this not be most suitably dealt with via the CIPR’s new found teeth?

Future Media

2006-12-13T09:05:00.000Z

It is often said that the move to new media is being ignored by many in PR. On the 8^th December the CIPR hosted a round table discussion chaired by Colin Farringdon and David Phillips.

It is easy enough to say that less people are reading newspapers and more are getting their news online, but the main point of the discussion was to understand what that means, particularly for those in PR.

Larry Weber from Racepoint Group made the point that it would be in about 18 months time (mid 2008) when online/new media would no longer be in the minority in comparison to traditional media. In other words, the majority media in a year and a half will be online and the traditional mainstream newspaper and TV stations will be in the minority.

Blogs are a thing which can make anyone a journalist and in principle everyone has an equal chance of being heard. PR’s role is to struggle to get their client heard. Into this new media world, where all the rules are different, it is difficult not to think it will be a bigger struggle and it will be good content that will win out.

Automatic analysis

2006-11-30T11:29:00.000Z

Evidence is that news monitoring is becoming increasingly automated, largely as a result of the increasing amount of news available via the internet. Many acknowledge that traditional cuttings agencies are about 85% accurate and evidence is that about 75-80 percent of news is available via an online feed.

Is this drive for automation going to enter the news analysis market? Well, it already has and competitors like VMS have produced ‘artificial intelligence’ linguistic analysers to research both qualitative and quantitative elements.

In effect this is an attempt to provide an automated measurement tool for favourability and messaging (accepted elements of qualitative research). Neuendorf, the leading academic on content analysis, disagrees with their introduction and says the human contribution to content analysis is paramount.

I know from experience that accurate analysis is a delicate process and one which needs detailed consideration. I am sure that in the coming years this issue will become increasingly central and it will increasingly polarise research providers and research users. I wonder what the PR community think about them?

To be an inquisitive cow

2006-11-29T09:22:00.000Z

A kindly sole helping with the Media Evaluation Research website has decided it would be interesting to substitute the photos on the new People page. Even though we have some professional photography it would seem a more 'amusing' option has won out!

To be honest I am undecided about the merits of being substituted for an inquisitive cow. I’ll grant that it is an interesting photo and much more arresting than the other options.

Is lobbying legitimate?

2006-11-23T13:58:00.000Z

This morning I was at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations which was hosting a practitioner's roundtable discussion on the legitimacy of lobbying. This discussion was being led by Lionel Zetter, the CIPR President elect, and from the lobbying firm Political Wizard. Central to the issue was the apparent widespread misconception of lobbists aims and methods. It is a fascinating area and one which poses particular challenges regarding its justification. How one measures success of a public affairs campaign is tied up with its objectives and whether these can be measured.

In this regard public affairs campaigns are no different to PR campaigns. In my ear I can hear ringing the comment “you are what you measure” (KD Payne), a comment which I am convinced is foreign to many in public affairs.

On a broader level the discussion dealt with the risks facing the discipline and its reputation from scandals and associated misconceptions of what the sector has to offer. There was an acknowledgement that public affairs is only an option for those with money and Andy Sawford, from Connect Public Affairs raised the point that the industry can benefit from rejecting its ‘Godfatherly’ overtones. This was followed by Donna Castle from the British Lung Foundation saying that money is often not an issue and that much can be achieved with next to no budget.

On the matter of self regulation, Simon Nayyar, from Edleman suggested that the sector could do worse than model itself on the service perception of the legal profession, where the contribution is often more highly valued.

Lionel Zetter said that we may only be one scandal away from full legislative regulation and that this would be a retrograde step. Personally I would like to uphold the comments by Donna Castle and suggest to organisations that if they have a strategy and an issue to support which they believe public affairs can contribute towards, they can achieve an awful lot themselves, irrespective of the budget.

To end I feel there is an educational message-that with basic guidance many can present an effective public affairs campaign using the tactics set out in books like ‘Public Affairs in Practice’ (Thompson and John, CIPR, 2006).

2006-11-22T12:57:00.000Z

Thanks to Glenn from Intelligent Measurement for sharing this report with us.

All publicity is good publicity

2006-11-22T12:13:00.000Z

My father used to work for Townsend Thoresen, the UK based cross-channel car ferry firm, who suffered the tragic loss of a ship and many passengers lives in 1987. Up until then I think I honestly believed in adage above, but now I take a very different view and evidence can now prove this beyond all reasonable doubt.

A study from the US bases Institute of PR has show that not only do sales increase when positive coverage enters the media, but also that sales can drop when a bad news story gets out. The example quoted is from the US where a group of chest physicians said that all cough mixtures were useless. This graph illustrates sales of cough mixture in red, and the number of stories relevant to the physicians announcement in blue.

There are a couple of other interesting aspects to this research which I will leave for another day.

Partnership matters

2006-11-21T09:12:00.000Z

I have got to say a massive thanks to Francis Ingham at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations who has drafted a wonderful quote for us to use as part of Media Evaluation Research’s adoption of the CIPR’s Partnership scheme:

"Against an increasingly complex media environment the Chartered Institute of Public Relations is finding its members are increasingly turning to Media Evaluation Research for their media analysis needs. We can strongly recommend all aspects of their quantitative and qualitative media research and consultancy services. Although a relatively new name to the market place we value their fresh perspective. We also acknowledge the organisations strong academic background and the many years of directly relevant experience in the sector."

Caption Competition

2006-11-20T10:49:00.000Z

I was going to put this picture on some Christmas cards to be sent out to the PR community but I was thinking it could possibly be ‘spruced-up’ with a suitable caption.

I have only until the end of the week (24th November) before I need to get them printed but if anyone can suggest a suitably amusing version then you could win a bottle of champagne.

Airbrushing history

2006-11-20T10:38:00.000Z

As the world’s information increasingly moves online so it would seem is our history and when information is electronically stored there is always a chance that it might be ‘modified’. This weeks MoneyWeek which recalled ex-FT editor Andrew Gowers prognosis that the future press won’t involve ink and dead trees. Of course one enduring feature of print is how it can record those spectacularly wrong predictions.

A recently written a paper called ‘Rewriting History’ alleges some selected revisions to a database recording corporate forecasts and earnings. They say that analyst names have been removed from the worst performing recommendations.

The implications for media tracking and analysis could be manifold, which works on the principle of certain publication and retrieval. The media mix is becoming so massive and diverse and the extra factor of alteration will only make it a greater challenge.

Don't forget about Wikipedia

2006-11-02T14:41:00.000Z

I have been reviewing the various media evaluation entries on the Wikipedia. It is a fascinating reference platform and has some insightful descriptions and explanations. The entry for ‘Public Relations Measurement’ is comprehensive, if rather American in its approach. There is a straightforward entry for ‘Media Evaluation’ which I put on some months ago which needs to be modified and added to (any takers?).

There is also a quite concise entry for ‘media content’ which rather dwells on the social theories and theorists which have progressed the issue, although I have issue with the absence of any references to Kimberly Nuendorf, who has to be regarded as one instrumental player in its development.

One of the things I would like to do is continue researching other related entries and add some links to the various relevant areas with a view to creating an adaptive resource for the area of PR research.