MeasurementEvolution, Importance & Best Practice

Mazen NahawiManaging Director, Media WatchPresident, News Group International

The Evolution of Measurement

How did it all start?

- CFO syndrome:

- Did not accept PR people as just “creative”

- Demanded accountability, results

- CFO’s took the decision for PR pros on how to measure

- The best they could do is liken it to advertising

“CFO’s managed public relations evaluation as if it were an extensionof management accounting – that it was based entirely on quantitativemeasures and could only be seen from a financial point of view.”

Timeline

1970s CFOs at Fortune 500 companies demand more value

AVE measures and Clip Counts dominate

1980s PR refines AVE to EMV, introduces multiples

Experts being challenging AVE/Clip Counts

Growing use of Field Studies; borrowed from Ad industry

1990s Associations formed for measurement

Breakthrough: media content analysis widespread

New terminology, best practice methodology defined

1990s Associations formed for measurement

Media Content Analysis widespread, automated

Several major clients stop using AVE

New terminology, best practice methodology defined

2000s Integrated measurement well defined

Media Content Analysis vastly improved (messages, favorability)

Engagement, Conversation and Advocacy metrics

Introduction of dynamic + integrated dashboards

Specialized field studies for PR widespread

Why Measurement is no longerOptional:

• PR at the crossroads of necessity or secondary importance• Especially true for emerging markets• Make the case to every client, colleague

Why is PR important?

The importance of measurement

#1 An ethical foundation for PR practice

#2 Creating a balance of credibility

#3 Retention: keeping PR in demand among (clients, practitioners)

#4 The Key to greater budgets and investment in PR

• Measurement: business requirement +ethical guide to everything i n life

- Every business social segment is measurement driven (height, weight, medical readings, school

grades, Intelligence Quotient, home value, electric bill, stock values, corporate growth, GDP,

unemployment..)

- Ethical obligation to clients (they are paying for something rea l)

- Ethical obligation to your staff and the PR industry (will we grow

Or will we wither)

• Accountability is non-negotiable it is part of every business practice

• If you aren’t measuring, you’re not managing your company’s assets responsibly.

• Clients should choose between data-driven decision making based on one of two I’s - Instinct OR

Intelligence

The importance of measurement:#1 An ethical foundation for PR

Charm

Ideas

Creativity

without measurement PR is relegated to:Artists vs. Accountants

P&L’s

Earnings reports

Productivity indices

The importance of measurement:#2 Creating a balance of credibility

with measurement:PR-focused organizationIntegrating PR throughout organization on all levels

Respecting PR as a driver of corporate growth

Demanding good PR as a guardian of reputation

#3 Retention: keeping PR in demand

Retention Problems: The Agency View

• Clients do not value work done by PR professionals

• PR professionals are overworked, under-appreciated

• Job role has become mundane, lacking innovation

• PR professionals are leaping to the client side

• Transient nature of PR positions creates skills shortages

Retention Problems: The Client Perspective

• Clients recognize the importance of PR

• Do not trust the organizational depth of agencies; Dislike lack of experience

• Do not respect standard approach to PR problems

• Results too limited and based on simple and ineffective outputs

• Desire is for corporate objective-based objectives

• With poor results and lack of understanding comes less funding

The importance of measurement:The vicious PR anti-retention cycle

Skills shortage

Bad recruitment

Reduced credibility, respect

Lower budgetsInexperience, less innovation

Poor results

Disenchantment

Less innovation

Skills shortage

Bad recruitment

Reduced credibility, respect

Lower budgets

Inexperience, less innovation

Poor results

Disenchantment

Less innovation

Competitive skills

Expertise-based recruitment

Planning depth, innovative approaches

High credibility, demand and appreciation

Objectives-based results

Greater investment in PR

Evolving best practice, constant innovation

PR: indispensable

PR without measurement PR with measurement

The importance of measurement:#4 key to greater PR investment

• PR in emerging markets equal to 2% of advertising spend

• Asia Pacific Ad spending is $24.8 billion (Nielsen) PR spending estimated at $180

million

• PR is seen as a low cost add-on at the C-level

• PR is not yet recognized as the only marketing communications practice that reaches

all milestones on the customer journey from awareness to understanding to intent to

action/advocacy –

MEASUREMENT IS THE KEY TO PROVING IT!

Best Practice Methodology:What are you measuring for?

• Aligning PR campaigns to organizational objectives• Understanting the audience• Measuring throughout a PR campaign

Output, Outtake, Outcome

The pre-measurement start: Understanding organizational objectives

Aligning PR to organizational objectives

• Understanding organizational objectives

• Understanding organizational needs and objectives, including doc umenting them – making sure they are defined, validated and practical.

• Comparing your objectives with those of your competitors.

• Positioning organizational objectives within marketing condition s

Building a PR campaignaround organizational objectives• Documenting organizational objectives in a plan that aims at building relations,

sending out effective messages, understanding market messages.

• Creating a culture of PR and measurement that ensures the organizational objectives

are driving the campaign, not the PR pro or the agency.

• Measuring PR performance by benchmarking against key organizational success

measures: sales, market share, employee turnover, positive reputation and

innovation.

• Defining organizational goals

• Audience research (quantitative, qualitative) and alignment

• Message research and alignment

• Measurement strategy and resources

• Actionable measurement results; responsiveness strategy

Measuring throughout the PR campaign: Aligning outputs, outtakes and outcomes with your actions, messages and results

Output measures

Defining output:

“Did you do what you planned on doing, did you do it on time, anddid you get the coverage you intended.”

All actions and volumetric results that are part of a PR campaign, including the preparation of a number of media releases, the planning and implementation of events, interviews and other actions aimed at reaching and influencing a target audience.”

ATTENTION

Output measuresActions Planned Vs. Actions implemented

> Number of PR activities (interviews, press conferences, media releases)

> Timeliness of activities

> Quality of production, dispatch

> Budgeted vs actual costs (including GRP, CPM measures)

Considerations:

Will a lag in actions implemented reduce overall effectiveness?

Take the appropriate steps and adjust: desired outcomes can still be achieved.

Output measures

Reaction Received Vs. Reaction Expected

> Number of media releases accepted, published

> Attendance of events, depth of interviews

> Volume of media coverage

> Distribution of media coverage and associated demographics

Considerations:

DEFINE SUCCESS BEFORE YOU BEGIN:DID YOU REACH YOUR AUDIENCE?

Have you reached the correct target? Did you get the coverage you needed?

If not, adjust and start again until you get the coverage/attendance you need.

Output measures

Messages Crafted Vs. Messages Received/Published

> Percentage of coverage that included your messages

> Where the messages in full or partly, in context, incomplete, misunderstood or

misrepresented

> Did the correct set of diverse messages reach the correct target audiences, especially

among media, journalists and audiences attending an event.

> What messages did YOU receive?

DID YOU MESSAGES COME ACROSS IN YOU COVERAGE/EVENT? NO MESSAGE = NO SUCCESS

Outtake measures

Defining outtake:

“Did your target audience see your message? Did they believe it?”

“Measurement of what audiences have understood and/or heeded and/or responded to a communication product’s call to seek further information from PR messages prior to measuring an outcome.”

“Audience reaction to the receipt of a communication product..including favorability, recall, retention of the message embedded in the product.”

PERCEPTION

Outtake measures

Salience: where are you in the mind of your target?

> Your coverage may have been published: but was it seen?

> It may have been seen: was it understood?

> If it has been understood? Was it believed/accepted

> Where are you in the mind of your audience: what are they thinking?

> Are their thoughts connected to your organizational objectives

Considerations:

ARE YOU PERCEIVED THE WAY YOU WANT TO BE?

If yes, continue your campaign with confidence; if no, adjust and start a conversation with your audience.

Outcome measures

Defining outcome:

“Did Audience behavior to your product or company change? Did the right people show up? Did sales increase?”

“Quantifiable changes in awareness, knowledge, attitude, opinion, and behavior levels that occur as a result of PR program or campaign; an effect, consequence, or impact of a set or program of communications activities or products, and may be either short term, long term.”

ACTION/CONSEQUENCE

Worst Practice Methodology

• The case against AVE/EMV metrics• Other critical mistakes

Avoid AVE

Arguments you can use with stubborn clients

What AVE do you assign to negative articles? Should you pay someone?

You are mentioned in one line of a full page article: please calculate and AVE?

Does anyone really pay rate card?

hmmm – have all AVE’s been inaccurate since the dawn of time?

Does anyone really pay rate card?

Doesn’t the integrity of the media/journalist impact article credibility?

I have a stack of clips worth $18 billion – why are my sales not improving?

AVE’s never match up with reality: and CEOs know it

Other Critical Mistakes

Assuming you know the answer

Starting a PR effort without measurement (especially objectives, alignment)

Thinking Measurement begins at the end

Giving up because it’s time consuming

I cannot afford monitoring, analysis – I’ll skip it: Some measurement is better than

none, and today measurement is low cost, easily accessible and high impact

Dashboards are the answer: no, there is no silver bullet – measurement is a process

Going ‘Deep’ - the deeper you go the more certain it is that

you will drown

From websites to citizen journalism: how to measure social media

• Why is this important, how is it different?• Social media platforms and metrics• Defining PR measurement for new media • Measurement strategies

Why is this important, different?

• Marketing communications, PR are no longer exclusively in charge of messaging

• Communications is transforming into conversations: message-based activity is now a two way street

• Power, decision making and influence are decidedly in the hands of our target audiences

• Traditional media remains important - but cannot work alone, it must remain in step with cyberspace

“If you talked to people the way advertising talks to people they would punch you in the face.”

WOM: viral speed - rapid consequences

• About 67% of the economy runs on word of mouth yet %5 of communications spending is online

• 80% of companies think they are giving their customers a great experience: only 8% of customers share that opinion..

• 1,540 people complain before a single complaint is filed to management

• 7% increase in positive word of mouth, or 2% reduction in negative word of mouth leads to a 1% increase in sales

• 10% of your audience fuels 90% of your word of mouth

• 20% of media we read is CGM (50% for under 25 year olds)

Social media platforms that you mustmeasureshould we be measuring?Wh

• The Internet Meta Tags, Meta Data, SE cahces

• The World Wide Web Search engines - Google, Portals - Yahoo

Websites B2B exchanges, news sites, company sites

Blogs Corporate, NGO, personal

Social media networks Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace

Podcasts Radio casts via the Internet

• Email/RSS Newsletters, email dispatches, RSS feeds

• Mobile Internet Text messaging, MMS, 3G communications

What should we be looking for? should we be measuring?Wh1. BEHAVIOUR

Engagement Contribution AdvocacyFriends Content creation Brand advocatesConversation by source Voting RecommendationsWider engagement metrics Tagging Unit of virality (right sections?)Visiting/reading Conversational indexDownloading Participants

VolumeTopics

2. PERCEPTION 3. CONSEQUENCES– Net Promoter Score - Sales figures– Conversations - Enquiries– Sentiment - Lead generation– Ratio of positivity– WOM unit– Authority

Engagement metricsStandard metrics on how many people are paying attention

Hits Number of files activated during a visit

Unique Visitors Single human* visitor per site/month

Page views Individual pages opened by visitors

Time spent on site Seconds, minutes on site by visitor

Total time spent per user Tally of all time spent on site by unique visitor

Frequency of visits Repeat calls by unique visitor to site

Depth of visits Measures of contribution, action on site

Essential Tools:What are you measuring with?

You implement pre-campaign research + measure for output, outtake, outcome

By using media content analysis and field studies

Essential tools

Access to a measurement library- Build a library

- Buy white papers

- FAQ for your clients

Association membership- AMEC

- IPR Measurement Commission

- MEPRA

Collaboration, training and workshops- Champion the cause of measurement with your clients, colleagu es and competitors

- Yes, there are measurement companies out there

Internal data- Financial/Sales information

Essential tools

Media Directories- Make sure you are up to date with the media

- Media Disk

- Media Atlas Gold

Content sources- Comprehensive media monitoring (Cision, Durrants, Precise, TNS Media Watch)

- Online content resources (Google news, Technorati, Radian6, Meltwater)

Field Study capabilitysurveymonkey.com; yougov; Zoomerang

DashboardsIntegrate all your data in a well programmed dashboard that incorporates all data and automates reporting in the format you require

Thank You!

• For more information on measurement, write me: mazen@mediawatchme.commazen@newsgroup.ae

• Subscribe to the first edition of PR360• To learn more about dashboards • http://saliencedashboard.com

• Or call me at 009714-3564100009714-3902890