Jack Felton, president of the Institute for Public Relations, couches the evolution of PR measurement practices in literary terms: "Cicero used to say that we should write so
clearly that we can not be misunderstood. Robert Wood Stevenson later said yes, we need to be understood, but we also need to write to affect people precisely the way we
intend to affect them."
While measurement is hardly a poetic discipline - which perhaps explains why practitioners who fancy themselves more artisans than scientists have been loathe to adopt the
practice - the industry as a whole is making progress in the world of strategic benchmarking. Reliance on advertising equivalency measures, for example, is waning as more
sophisticated tools are developed. And while there are natural variations in the newest crop of media measurement tools, there are also some commonalities emerging. To wit:
almost all of the most popular media research packages on the market track not only placement, but also the tone of coverage, the prominence of the story, the degree to
which key messages are communicated and the relevance of the publication to the intended target audience.
Delahaye Medialink's InfoTrends tool offers this sort of analysis, as does the "Impact Quotient," now peddled by InsightFarm, a new venture of Burrelle's and VMS announced last
month (PRN, Oct 30). Also in the mix are similar proprietary tools developed by PR agencies. The high tech firm Wilson McHenry, for example, evaluates its clients' media
coverage using a "Percentage of Perception" (POP) score that's derived using the same criteria: messages, audience, position and differentiation.
"We are now looking very deep into articles," says Cheryl Sekel, marketing communications manager at Alchemy Semiconductor, a Wilson McHenry client. "It's not just, okay we
got 48 hits in the press this time. It's, are we highlighting our value proposition?" This is a key goal for the six-month-old company - a spin-off from Cadence Design Systems
that's competing with big guns like Intel in the microprocessor chip market. Sekel says quarterly evaluations help spark critical adjustments in the company's media relations
strategy - allowing it to remain nimble and competitive in spite of its small size.
Felton, meanwhile, is heading up an industry commission dedicated to identifying common threads in media measurement (such as those mentioned above) and packaging them as "best
practices." Last April, the Institute for PR and the Council of PR Firms announced grand plans to develop the industry's first comprehensive PR measurement model - a compendium
of case studies highlighting measurement best practices in a variety of communication disciplines (PRN, April 10).
The two organizations have since amassed a panel of leading research experts (hailing from agencies, corporations and suppliers) to shepherd the initiative. The research firm
Wirthlin Worldwide has been hired to compile the 100 or so measurement case studies that will constitute the bulk of the model. (Wirthlin is now mining PRSA's Silver Anvil award
winners for worthy examples.)
Of course, the extent to which leading corporations, agencies and suppliers will be forthcoming in revealing their budgets, software and methodologies for all to replicate
remains to be seen. "At the end of the day, they're not gonna let you in their drawers," says Albert Barr, president and CEO of the research firm CARMA International, based in
D.C. "I think the market will control the development of standards. I'm not a big advocate of everybody doing everything the same way. If everyone had to comply with the same
standards, there'd be no incentive for innovation."
No doubt, the race to develop better research models remains fierce. At the time of this writing, Delahaye Medialink was keeping a hot new product under wraps. CARMA,
meanwhile, is touting a new syndicated online benchmarking tool (cost: $800 per month) that tracks public perception of more than 500 corporations and correlates media coverage
with stock performance. The tool, known as "imMEDIAte," allows subscribers to generate custom reports, based on specific competitors or industries.
While small companies aren't tracked in the imMEDIAte mix, the tool nevertheless benefits smaller players, Barr contends. "If you're Juniper Networks and you're trying to
compete with Cisco, you'll do well to follow what Cisco is doing." By the same token, he says, "If you're an automotive company and you're trying to reposition yourself as a
consumer products company, you'll want to follow Coca-Cola and Nike."
Of course the big question in measurement now isn't whether "off-the-shelf" tools will beat out more customized solutions (we suspect there will always be room for both), but
rather whether industry practitioners will begin using research more strategically than defensively.
"Most people use [measurement] to justify their budgets and their jobs more
than they use it for actual strategy," Barr says. "Is media analysis the holy
grail? No. But it can complement other kinds of corporate research." When PR
analysis is correlated with benchmarks gauging stock price, employee retention,
market share and similar trends, its relevance is substantiated. But only when
such findings are used to improve strategy is PR's value proven. In other words,
it's good to know when PR has affected people - but even better when that feedback
can be used to affect people precisely the way we want to.
(Barr, 202/842-1818; Delahaye Medialink, 603/431-0111; Felton, 352/392-
0280; Sekel, 512/421-6286; Wilson McHenry, 212/836-4060)