CHICAGO - "In the next 500 days, a company not currently in your field will introduce a product that's better than yours," futurist Watts Wacker predicted in his keynote
address at PRSA's Public Relations World Congress here last week. A venture announced at the same conference by Burrelle's Information Services and its broadcast monitoring
affiliate, VMS, has the potential to make this forecast a sooner-than-expected reality for many PR agencies.
As PR NEWS reported last week, the two media monitoring powerhouses have launched InsightFarm, a PR research and measurement shop that goes beyond raw data aggregation to offer
analysis and strategic consulting - i.e. the same value-added services many agencies offer their clients.
The new company will likely rival research and monitoring firms such as CARMA International and Delahaye Medialink.
While InsightFarm founders wax optimistic about the potential to forge co-branded relationships with the 400+ agencies that already use the monitoring services of its parent
companies, the start-up also plans to offer one-stop shopping for corporate execs who prefer not to use their agencies as intermediaries.
To wit, Ford Motor Co., AT&T, Starwood Hotels, and Mercedes-Benz will be among the first clients to beta test InsightFarm's a la carte consulting services. It appears,
based on conversations PR NEWS had with InsightFarm execs, that Ford will tap into the firm's online monitoring and analytical expertise to gauge public perception of its
corporate brand image in the wake of the Bridgestone/Firestone recall.
At a press conference, Bruce Jeffries-Fox, executive VP of the new venture, further illustrated his new firm's prowess by offering a hypothetical scenario in which a hotel
chain interested in penetrating new markets might tap the services of InsightFarm.
"We could develop norms for the amount of media coverage most hotels get during the average launch," to be used as a benchmark of success, he said. It's likely he was referring
to Starwood, which owns Westin, Sheraton, St. Regis and other chains.
Key Players
If anyone is in the pole position to spearhead a hybrid venture of this ilk, it's Jeffries-Fox, who most recently worked on the corporate side, developing proprietary
measurement and planning tools for AT&T. He also serves as chairman of PRSA's Commission for PR Measurement and Evaluation.
And he certainly did his homework. As an independent consultant, Jeffries-Fox recently reviewed measurement systems at seven different research firms to complete an
independent study for the Council of PR Firms that identifies 10 essential reputation factors critical to business performance. The study included an assessment of PR measurement
models and offered guidelines for choosing a research partner.
Among InsightFarm's newly-hatched roster of "power tools" is a trademarked process known as "Reputation Yardstick," which uses the reputation factors in the aforementioned
study to help clients determine what kind of rap they have on the street and how it might be influencing the bottom line.
Also at the helm of InsightFarm is president Bruce Merchant, who doubles as executive VP at Burrelle's. Merchant was a senior partner with the ad agency Bozell from 1989 to
1999, and his former ad-man status is pivotal to the new venture, given that InsightFarm is peddling its ability to demonstrate, through research, how advertising and PR campaigns
affect each other in the context of integrated communications programs.
Michael Kaufman, president of VMS, will serve as CEO of InsightFarm.
In the Deep End
Of course, PR agencies won't be the only suitors to feel a pinch with the introduction of InsightFarm. On the vendor side, Burrelle's and VMS hope to leverage their offspring
firm as a means of one-upping competitors in the news monitoring arena - including Bacon's, Luce, Medialink and online surveillance shops such as PR Newswire's "eWatch." The key
selling point: InsightFarm not only mines data, but interprets it.
Will other clipping and Web monitoring vendors follow suit? It's probably too early to tell, although one eWatch representative at the conference told PR NEWS that eWatch
would likely leave the data analysis up to the agencies that buy its services.
Agency Take
Although InsightFarm's model will inevitably infringe on consulting turf that's largely dominated by agencies, initial reaction to the new start-up in agency circles has been
positive, if not downright fraternal.
"As a general rule, anybody who is advancing the science of measurement and strategic development in PR is doing the Lord's work," said Chris Atkins, partner/director in
Ketchum's global practice and a key player in Ketchum's Reputation Laboratory, which measures correlations between corporate reputation and business results.
"The more the merrier," Atkins added. "Clearly the biggest issue we've faced for decades is measuring the effectiveness of PR and using that strategic input to decide where to
go next. To the extent that [InsightFarm is] moving that science along, great."
Merchant, who hopes to take InsightFarm global by second quarter of 2001, is of a similar mindset. "Information is the currency of the new millennium, but information in
isolation can never tell the whole story," he said. PR executives wishing to maintain their credibility in the board room will be expected to show ROI for money spent on
communications initiatives, he said.
Which makes it disappointing to hear that, in spite of its sophistication, InsightFarm can't seem to divest its capabilities menu of one of the industry's most popular, albeit
useless, measurement tools: the whipped-up meringue known as "advertising equivalencies" (which attempt to quantify the success of media relations programs by assigning a value
based on the advertising cost of the equivalent amount of ink or airtime).
"Ad equivalencies are completely bogus," given that they fail to take into account the tone of the media coverage, and whether or not key messages are delivered therein,
Merchant said.
He added that InsightFarm hopes to steer clients in the direction of more substantive matrices, such as those that correlate communication initiatives to stock price, employee
retention, market share and sales.
In spite of this goal, InsightFarm nevertheless plans to offer ad equivalency measures among its services as a means of keeping old-school clients appeased. "You know the
saying...you have to play within the system to get ahead," Jeffries-Fox said.
Which makes ya wonder whether the industry is really ready for what InsightFarm is prepared to offer.
(Merchant and Jeffries-Fox, InsightFarm, 800/631-1160; eWatch, 888/776-3977; Atkins, Ketchum, 646/935-3900)