The race is on.
A number of leading media-measurement firms have in recent months struck up strategic partnerships meant to expand the depth and breadth of their services. These new alliances
signal a heating up of the competition among the leading players. For PR practitioners, the new competition could mean good news, in the form of more service offerings and a
higher caliber of products.
The string of new alliances come at time of conflict and uncertainty in the field of media measurements. On the one hand PR practitioners are under increasing pressure to
produce quantifiable validation of their worth. On the other hand, many are hard-pressed to come up with the funds to pay for third-part media measurement and analysis
services.
"Everybody has parity now in terms of technology, and so now the various firms will be challenged to beat each other out in terms of the quality of the information, the 'What
does it mean?' factor," says Katie Paine, chair of the IPR Measurement Commission and publisher of The Measurement Standard.
Joining Forces
Biz360 and CARMA International made the first move in January, announcing a strategic alliance through which they would offer a package of media research and analysis
products.
In May, Echo Research and Cymfony declared their own partnership, whereby Echo will deliver Cymfony's media monitoring and analysis solutions to clients around the world.
Meanwhile, industry leader Delahaye has been ramping up its efforts in other directions. In January it rolled out delahaye.com, a Web site where PR practitioners can get direct
access to Dalehaye's proprietary consultation and analysis. It soon will launch an industry-specific daily news service to help PR practitioners glean the context of their media
hits.
So what does the spate of new alliances mean for the PR field? For Cymfony CEO Andrew Bernstein, it's about jockeying for position. "We wanted an international partner," he
says of the Echo deal, which gave Cymfony a worldwide reach it previously did not possess. Cymfony is a creator of advanced analytic software, while Echo provides reputation
analysis and communication research on a global scale.
At Carma, meanwhile, COO Elizabeth Miller says Bernstein is just playing catch-up to her firm's January alignment with Biz360. Carma specializes in media analysis, while Biz360
can automate the process; together they offer clients both volume and clarity. In the race to stay competitive, Miller says, Carma is "always looking to find more efficient
technologies and also looking into relationships with other organizations."
All this action unfolds in the shadow of Delahaye. This division of Medialink leads the media measurement and analysis industry. CEO Mark Weiner says the recent alliances among
other vendors does not surprise him. "You have to look at their motives," he says. "Neither one of them had a complete solution on their own."
Observers say the media-measurement vendors have good reason for strengthening their hands. If a battle is brewing it's because the landscape is changing, with PR professionals
facing an ever-increasing demand to demonstrate that their work, well, works.
"It is such a high priority with clients," says Kathy Cripps, president of the Council of Public Relations Firms. "For every one of our members that I speak with, one of the
biggest pressures they are feeling from their clients is to find better ways to account for the programs they are proposing and implementing."
Thanks to today's automated search technologies, it is possible to lay hands on reams of press clips and vast volumes of data. But data is no longer enough since PR executives
are increasingly reaching beyond the old tactic of counting column inches.
"As a communicator you have to take the step back and understand what you are measuring," says Kathleen Buczko, a partner at PR firm NMC Partners. Without the added
intelligence of a research component, "none of these services will provide you with anything except a ton of data and maybe a general direction in which to go."
A lot of the action going on today involves the data-producing firms joining forces with the research experts, in order to offer a more rounded suite of services. "If all you
end up with is data, the communicator has got to be able to sift through that data and put it in context," Buczko says.
The Cost Factor
Trouble is, while research advice and analysis services may be the crux of media measurement, they also are the most labor-intensive, and hence the most costly, component.
"When clients want strategic guidance and interpretive analysis, there is a premium placed on that," Weiner says.
But there's a paradox, too. In these lean times, clients want data analysis to validate their PR spending. Yet these same lean times also dictate tight purse strings. "We don't
put a lot of investment into those things," says Brandy King, a PR executive with Southwest Airlines. The airline gathers media data from Vocus, and then analyzes that data in-
house, rather than hiring an outside research firm to dissect the data. "We spend most of our time in building our relationships with the media, and not so much of our time
analyzing the results of those relationships."
On the agency side, PR experts may meet with resistance from clients who likewise feel that analysis is a useful, but not a necessary, exercise. "Many more agencies would do
more measurement if the clients were willing to allocate those funds," says Cripps. "The agencies know that measuring is important, but there is a price for it, and often times
the client is not willing to allocate those funds."
Cost is not the only concern. Despite new alliances, capabilities do still vary among measurement vendors, and PR practitioners still must be savvy shoppers when looking for
such services. "For the folks who care more about the 'so-what' - about the implications of their media data -- that sorts out a lot of companies, because many of the media
analysis companies don't even pretend to be able link media content to outcomes," says Bruce Jeffries-Fox, president of Jeffries-Fox Associates, a communications research and
consulting company.
Other factors come into play that may mitigate against the use of today's automated systems. "If you do not have large volumes of clips, or if you care about publications that
are not available digitally, these automated systems are not going to cut it," Paine says. "Likewise, not everybody does [automated analysis of] foreign languages, so if you are
looking for that capability, that may not be there either."
As major players form the partnerships they hope will give them the diversity of services they need to woo corporate spending, some assert that this bigger-is-better approach
may be just the wrong angle. At PR and marketing agency E21, Vice President Tom Morrow worries that the new alliances may in fact make measurement vendors less able to respond to
clients' diverse needs. "Everybody in market research today uses surveys and focus groups, and there are a variety of services available depending on the level of sophistication
needed for the business problem at hand," he says. "I would like to have that same flexibility in the PR world, and if the vendor is going to give me a one-size-fits-all, I don't
think that is going to be useful."
Contacts: Andrew Bernstein, 617.630.9114, x3003, [email protected]; Kathleen Buczko, 562/436.4787, [email protected]; Kathy Cripps, 914.682.0045, [email protected]; Bruce Jeffries-Fox,
609.884.8740, [email protected]; Elizabeth Miller, 202.842.1818, [email protected]; Tom
Morrow, 510.226.6780, [email protected]; Katie Paine, 603.431.6967, [email protected];
Mark Weiner, 203.899.1600 x246, [email protected]