It's no secret that corporations nationwide pay clipping services thousands of dollars a year to send them proof of what kind of exposure they're getting. But communicators are learning that they have to closely follow their competitors and keep on top of industry trends to have a well-rounded blueprint for PR - and to impress upper management.
That means poring through hundreds of publications - including online wire services and Web sites; trade publications and major magazines and newspapers; and the stock market and the analyst community.
And it means investing human and financial resources in these daily endeavors. According to sources, competitive tracking (not including the staff time that goes into interpreting the information and passing it on to highers-up) can cost a major Fortune 500 company around $250,000 every year - which also doesn't include the approximately $1,000 they'll pay for clipping services, including broadcast monitoring, on a monthly basis - but is likely to include some kind of involvement from an outside PR firm.
"It really depends on the client as to how often they want a written report but most corporations are paying someone to sit down and read what's in the marketplace and provide a synopsis of that information," said Curt Kundred, a VP at Fleishman-Hillard. Although Kundred wouldn't disclose the particulars of Fleishman-Hillard's contract with at least one of its clients, IBM, he did say that many major corporations want both an end-of-the-day West Coast and East Coast report outlining what news is in the marketplace.
A good corporate PR team or outsourced agency shouldn't limit the information they track to what's in the public domain. PR specialists will spend a portion of their day talking to those in the media and to analysts and industry experts for leads and to chase down rumors.
Take, for instance, how the pharmaceutical Hoechst Marion Rousell, Kansas City, Mo., keeps a pulse on what its competitors are doing and what's going on in the marketplace.
HMR relies on its sales force to bring back information relayed during conversations with doctors, according to Charles Rouse III, director of communications. Although much of that news is anecdotal and not always easy to verify, those snippets are collected by the company's six North American PR staffers and shared with management. Likewise, those communicators are also keeping track of information that comes from PR professionals at its overseas headquarters in Japan and Paris.
That information, however, is always secondary to the keyword searches execs at HMR rely on from its clipping services (both Burrelle's and Bacon's) or their daily conversations with specialists at HMR's outsourced PR firms - which have included Porter Novelli, Fleishman-Hillard, Burson-Marsteller and Edelman - who are expected to track what's online. That kind of Internet canvassing includes visiting competitors' Web sites and monitoring news bulletins on Reuters and PR Newswire.
"We're constantly being made aware of issues that might affect us, including what our competitors are doing," Rouse added. "It becomes a kind of strategic game and we're always searching for what will give us that differential advantage. Our PR department repackages what's relayed to us and acts as a clearinghouse."
At HMR, company-wide and daily summaries of industry news, including information about disease breakthroughs and competitive product launches, can be accessed by employees via e-mail.
Staying on Track
Paying attention to word-of-mouth news is also important because it provides insight into what your corporation may face in the future. For too long, PR was seen as a very reactive kind of communications discipline but today it is a key part of any proactive business model. In many cases, however, far more proof is needed. Paul Clark, director of public affairs at Nova Corp., an integrated natural gas and petrochemical services company in Alberta (its subsidiaries are Nova Gas Transmissions, Nova Gas International and Nova Chemicals), said the parent company has a Business Information Center where approximately 25 employees follow a particular issue or competitor for a specified period, if requested by company employees.
"We're always watching and reading the news," Clark said. "But we look to multiple sources to find out what our competitors are doing - from tapping into a wide span of segments, including the analyst community, government and the financial sector."
"Part of PR today is providing to those in upper management a timely version of news concerning competitors," said Greg Rossiter, managing director of PR for Memphis-based FedEx whose competitors include the postal service, UPS, and Airborne.
To get a sense of what trends are driving the market and what is happening in the competitive realm, FedEx also uses an in-house market research team, part of its marketing division, to follow market influencers, on everything from regulatory issues to new product launches.
"Everyone in PR is responsible for staying on top of the issues and part of what we have to do is glean from the news information our executives can use - not information that's nice for them to have," Rossiter said.
"That includes circulating periodicals and reading every day major publications such as The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today and the Journal of Commerce."
(Fleishman Hillard, 415/356-1020; Hoechst Marion Rousell, 816/966-5000; Nova Corp., 403/290-7603; FedEx, 901/395-4440)