PRtrak's "Share of Discussion" methodology continues to stir a thorny debate about the effectiveness of measurement tools and underscores an industry need for a standard
measurement metric. At best, this latest debate has industry players agreeing to disagree.
Backed by its proprietary technology, PRtrak set out last winter to show the benefits of the Share of Discussion metric, which is one of many measurement tools on the market.
Share of Discussion is the quantity and quality of your media coverage compared with your competitors and, according to PRtrak, correlates better to business outcomes. The study,
which is continually being fine-tuned, has been recently updated to include more case studies.
Share of Discussion is like Share of Voice in the advertising world, but adjusted for tonality. But unlike advertising, which is always positive, publicity may be negative.
PRtrak, a subsidiary of Surveillance Data Inc., is pushing its technology to help communications and PR execs garner more attention for their work and, in turn, get a bigger slice
of the budget pie and become more integrated into the company's overall marketing strategy.
By introducing the technology, PRtrak is hoping to alleviate some of the apprehension -- and downright confusion -- about PR measurement. "When you show companies that public
discussion correlates with business outcomes, attitudes change considerably," says Gary Getto, VP of Surveillance Data Inc. (which owns PRtrak, who helped put the study
together).
"This is a good metric with a bad reputation," he says, and who helped put the study together. (For this article, Getto speaks on behalf of PRtrak.)
The study has sparked controversy among communications executives who say that while share of discussion is good in theory, they're concerned about PRtrak's calculating methods
and how they've been put to practice.
Part of the problem some PR executives have with PRtrak's Share of Discussion study is that the "share" was calculated using Ad Value Equivalencies (AVE), which many PR
executives dismiss as "PR witchcraft." PRtrak has locked horns with PR measurement guru Katie Paine, in particular, about this aspect of the study.
"While I agree with the study demonstrating that share of discussion correlates with outcomes, the controversy is in the science that PRtrak is using," says Paine, who stressed
that she was responding to the study as a PR executive and not as the Chair of the Institute for Public Relations' Commission on Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation.
"Comparing an earned media inch to an advertising inch is not valid...You don't know how people respond to different media and they can't predict consumer behavior. They're
assuming it's the same across all media. The challenge is science verse practical reality."
Perhaps to assuage Paine and others who pooh-pooh Ad Equivalencies, PRtrak is now referring to AVE as "Media Value" to be used as an index over time. "This is a matter of
semantics," says Getto. "The term suggests that we're comparing publicity to an ad. We're not. We're using the amount that a publication charges for a paid ad as a metric to
determine the value that earned publicity generates."
For example, the same story that runs in both the Des Moines Register and The New York Times does not have equal weight as clips. The Times story is likely to have a bigger
impact because of "impressions" or pick-ups from the initial story. "Impressions are a better metric than story counts but still do not account for differences in the size of the
coverage," Getto says. So is there a tool to measure impressions weighted for size of coverage? Getto says the only adequate metric to do this is ad value or Media Value.
"Media value is often embraced by top management who intuitively understand the value of a dollar-based metric," he says. "However, media value should be used only to compare
competitors or campaigns or generate trends, not as an absolute dollar figure.
If we removed the dollar sign from media value and simply used it as an index, much of the controversy might disappear," Getto adds.
The response to the PRtrak study has been decidedly mixed among PR pros. "It's a new category and it does give you an opportunity to break through the clutter," says Julie
Gladu, VP of the consumer group at Schneider & Associates, a Boston-based PR agency. "But I agree with Katie [Paine] that Ad Equivalencies are really bunk because you're
comparing apples to oranges...The client and the consumer knows the difference between advertising and something that's written [about the same company] in The Washington
Post."
A sample of the corporate perspective on Share of Discussion suggests that PRtrak executives need to do a better job of selling their technology. "We're interested in
competitors' messages," says Pat Donohue, director of communications for McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. "But
in terms of improving our results, we rely on improving our own messages and how they're being communicated to the public."
Of course, both sides can debate the merits of share of discussion until they're blue in the face. It won't matter until clients start to fully embrace the whole concept of
measurement. "My frustration is that more and more clients demand to see measurement in the program but when the bill comes they don't want to pay for it because they don't see
measurement as a good part of outreach," says Mike Lawrence, EVP of PR firm Cone Inc. "But my guess is that when VNRs [Video News Releases] first came out people probably didn't
want to pay for them either. But so far, I haven't seen a widespread willingness among clients to put their money where their mouth is for measurement tools."
Contacts: Chris Deri, 212.704.4520; [email protected], Nikki Korn, 617.272.8370; [email protected]; Kathleen Moazed, 415.901.0111; [email protected]