Ralf Leinemann, director of press and industry analyst relations for Hewlett-Packard's Business Customer Organisation, oversees PR in more than 100 countries in Europe, the
Middle East and Africa. "At the end of the day, what's important for me is the major business in the top 20 countries," he says.
As HP has consolidated smaller, lesser known subsidiaries under the Hewlett-Packard Business Customer Organisation over the past year and a half, Leinemann has been charged
with measuring how the change in organizational structure has changed the company's visibility in his many markets. Beyond the sheer scope of the project, vast cultural
differences come into play. "The situation per country can be very different - the competitive situation, the culture, the way articles are written," Leinemann says.
PRN: What was the goal behind the consolidation of HP's smaller subsidiaries, and how were you measuring against that goal?
R.L.: The big advantage was that before this we were appearing to the outside world as a smaller organization selling printers or software, for example. We didn't always
leverage the capabilities [and visibility] of a company like HP. We were convinced this would help us with our presence in the media.
The measurements we put in place in Europe were not an absolute measure. We needed a relative measure - we had to compare ourselves against the competition.
PRN: What specific measures did you put in place to accomplish that?
R.L.: We put four measures in place. The first criterion was volume. It's very plain, very direct: We noticed that against our main competitors, we had not been as visible. So,
we measure volume in terms of impression and reach. It's very straightforward.
The second was a quality rating. We wanted to slice and dice it by country, and we wanted to look at how individual product ranges contributed to visibility.
Then we look at the number of interviews spokespeople are doing in Europe. This is an internal measurement we put in place to see if the right people are doing the talking, and
if those spokespeople are going out and delivering the right messages.
The fourth was content. We looked at the projects we did over the year and checked to see how many did go with the overall new consolidated message we wanted to implement as a
company, and how many talked more [favorably] about the [message]. About 90 percent were in line with the main message.
PRN: What other results did this four-tiered approach produce?
R.L.: From a results point of view, I cannot share everything, but we have moved from being behind to being No. 2 in the industry in Europe. We're comparing ourselves against
the market leader. We have come from about 53 percent of their visibility to a total of about 88 percent in one year.
PRN: About how much of your PR budget did you devote to this very detailed approach to measuring visibility in Europe?
R.L.: At an average, it's in the order of 10 percent for me on a European level.
PRN: You've talked a lot about the competitive landscape and how HP measures up to major competition. How do you analyze your competitive position across so many different
markets?
R.L.: The obvious approach is to compare yourself to your main competition in the market overall. But you need to be a bit more sophisticated to get an accurate picture of
what you're doing. We are up against competitors [for certain product lines] whom we do not see at all when we're talking about PCs. We need to be very precise by product range.
Also, the landscape can be very different from country to country. We're the market leader by far in one country, and in the neighboring country, we're No. 2 or No. 3. I expect
more from my PR managers who are at the top of the business in their countries.
PRN: What's the most significant value of measurement for you?
R.L.: If you don't look at your results, you can easily do a lot of work, get a lot of coverage and not target the market you wanted to target - or create too much overlap. One
of the things we found was that if you focus properly, you may generate less articles, but your reach will be higher because you focused on the right [outlets]. So you could
generate significant savings for your company.
Company
Hewlett-Packard
HQ: Palo Alto, CA, 650/857-1501
URL: http://www.hp.com
Measurement Vendors: Vendors include Delahaye Medialink
Tuning Out Background Noise
An outsider might attribute at least some of the jump in European visibility to the massive media uproar caused by the HP/Compaq merger and the controversy it caused among
investors. Not so. "We are big-time in the press because of the merger," says Leinemann, "but we've excluded the merger-related coverage" from the numbers.
Factoring what Leinemann calls "background noise" into your measurement program is key. If major company news or other industry events are causing coverage or visibility your
PR otherwise would not have generated, you have to develop criteria that will exclude that background noise from the accurate results stemming from your PR initiative.
(Contact: Leinemann, [email protected])