Market Trends

Breaking TRENDs

Latin Market Sizzles:Clippings Increase

The Latin American market has been a hotbed for PR and the media and a recent statistic released to PR NEWS confirms that.

International Media Services, Inc., Miami, had a 400 percent increase over last year in demand for media monitoring and clipping services for that geographic pocket, says Hector Botero, CEO. The company culls content from news outlets and operations in the Caribbean, Mexico and Central and South America. (IMS, 305/649-0455)

Media Relations Execs: Heed News Consumption Online

Media relations executives relying on print publications and traditional media to discern what stories are enticing the press should revamp their tracking methods to include online news/content sites, if a new study holds true.

Consumers turning to the Internet to get their news at least once a week has tripled in the past two years, according to Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C.

If you want an accurate and timely way to gauge your publics' perceptions of your company, you should:

• bookmark news groups and Web sites to visit every day;
• hire a media monitoring firm whose services include online analysis; and
• assign staffers to regularly visit sites where your industry, company and/or or executives have been in the limelight.

The Pew study is based on interviews with more than 3,000 adults between April 24 and May 11.

It concluded that 20 percent of the people queried went online to receive news at least once a week. This compares with 6 percent in 1996 and 4 percent in 1995. (PRC, 202/293-3126)

Internal Communications Means Speaking to the Young & Mobile

The proliferation of the phrase upwardly mobile might soon be replaced by just the word mobile as workforces increasingly are made up of people who frequently change jobs - albeit not always to climb the corporate ladder in one organization.

A new study indicates that more than half of U.S. managers have held their current positions for less than three years, according to the American Management Association, New York, survey of more than 4,500 executives about their job transitions and careers.

For PR professionals tasked with communicating to employees, that's a sure sign that you'll be speaking to a larger mass of workers who may not hold corporate longevity, but should be treated as more than cogs in the system.

Consider, too, that many businesses are hiring employees with expertise in more than one area - a trend destined to make internal communications more complex. About 54 percent of professionals who have changed jobs in the 1990s are multi-specialists or hold cross-functional experience.

Other survey findings include:

• 71 percent have held two or more positions in the 1990s; 39 percent have had three or more;
• Nearly half have worked in two or more different organizations since 1990;
• 43 percent have held their current positions for less than three years; and
• 29 percent have relocated at some time in the 1990s, including 19 percent of those who have worked for a single organization in that period. (AMA, 212/903-8052)
  

  U.S. Managers' Job Mobility Number of Organizations Worked In, 1990-1997
  By age:	1	2	3	4+	2 or More	Avg
  Under 35	28.9%	35.0%	20.8%	10.7%	66.5%	2.17
  35-44	47.1%	29.8%	13.2%	5.4%	48.4%	1.77
  45-54	49.8%	30.4%	10.1%	3.2%	43.7%	1.65
  55 and above	60.1%	21.3%	6.2%	2.1%	29.6%	1.45
  Source: American Management Association International

---