Use the following tip list of resources to pump new life into your PR operations. Could be especially useful if you, like many of your peers, are coping with fewer resources,
both fiscal and human.
Frustrated and Fiscally Challenged?
Your hefty PR measurement proposal didn't survive the budget gauntlet? All is not lost. Ketchum's long-time measurement guru Walter Lindenmann (now semi-retired and working as
a consultant) offers an exhaustive overview of alternative research tools and practices in his article, "Research Doesn't Have to Put You in the Poorhouse," at http://www.instituteforpr.com/measeval/poorhouse.htm. The paper covers options such as secondary analysis, omnibus
studies, quick-tab polls, sponsored research, intercept (man on the street) studies and various types of surveys.
On the same site, experts from Fleishman-Hillard and Research Strategies Corp. discuss how to overcome internal measurement roadblocks such as staff inertia, cross-departmental
competition and lingering biases in "Selling Public Relations Research Internally." Check it out at http://www.instituteforpr.com/measeval/sellingprresearch.htm.
Recycling Research
Before you dish out the big bucks, maybe $20-$100K for proprietary market research, you might want to check and see if someone else has already done the dirty work for you.
Last month Decision Analyst, Inc. launched http://www.SecondaryData.com, a chunky portal offering links to free economic and market
research data, plus research vendors/software developers, trade associations, industry publications and training opportunities.
(Christi Johnson, Decision Analyst, 817/640-6166)
Piggy Back Rides For Sale
Wonder how kids feel about gun violence, the new Britney Spears video, AIDS, or the latest condiment color-not-found-in-nature? Now you can ask 'em flat out (without getting
arrested for being creepy). Harris Interactive's "YouthQuery" online omnibus study surveys 850 kids and teens monthly, often fielding queries on behalf of third parties.
Questions can be posed in a variety of formats, with prices ranging from around $1,400 to $2,000 per question. For more information, visit http://www.harrisinteractive.com/about/feature_youthquery.asp" .
(John Geraci, Harris Interactive, 716/214-7444)
Do PR Students Measure Up?
When the economy goes south, education gets blamed for everything, including PR's sluggish adoption of quantitative research practices, according to educator Russell Barclay.
The industry's standard defense mechanism is to chastise university PR programs for failing to churn out graduates fluent in statistics and business-speak.
But there's evidence that the "PR is an art, not a science" assumption is culturally ingrained in students before they even enroll -- and it often shapes their choices of
majors in the first place. "PR students have a history of being math-phobic, as do journalists," says Barclay, former professor at Florida Southern University who recently moved
to Hamden, Conn. to start up an undergraduate PR program at Quinnipiac University. "The big joke is that the students who are weakest in math go into PR and the ones who can't
write go into marketing."
When it comes to integrated communications, there's a structural gap at the college level. Most PR programs are housed in schools of journalism while marketing programs fall
under the rubric of business schools. In the early 1990s, the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University in Dallas made a bid to take PR under its wing, but was
unsuccessful in its attempt, Barclay notes.
Barclay says that his and other university PR programs are making headway by encouraging (if not requiring) communications students to minor in marketing or other non-J school
disciplines -- as a means of ensuring they get their recommended daily allowance of economics, statistics and finance. "Research and [foreign] language skills are going to make
the difference in who gets the tastiest [jobs] in the near future," he says.
Meanwhile, graduate level programs are also starting to bridge the gap. "Until recently, PhDs in communications theory were borrowed from other disciplines such as psychology,
political science, business and sociology," observes Robin Kim, SVP with Cohn & Wolfe San Francisco, one of PR NEWS' recent "15 to Watch" prodigies. "Only recently has
academia started pumping out actual communications research specialists [with] PhDs. I look forward to seeing how this growing specialty will affect the way we research and the
impact it will ultimately have on public opinion, brand ROI and other ways of doing business on the applied communications side."
Please Touch That Dial!
Stepping up from old-fashioned phone surveys, many research firms are using interactive testing grounds to garner instantaneous public reactions to corporate messages. Insight
Farm (a Burrelle's/VMS company) recently partnered with the ASP Ntercept to develop Direct Impactr, an online research environment in which consumer "panelists" log on at their
convenience to view streaming video and other forms of news coverage. Participants use their mice to turn a digital "knob" that indicates strong positive or negative feelings
toward the messages being viewed.
Insight Farm's research tool is similar to one offered by Strategy One (Edelman's market research arm) which uses "instant response technology" to gauge stakeholder reactions
to various brand, product or program concepts. Strategy One President Steve Lombardo illustrated the tool's value as a crisis management application at the PR NEWS Strategic
Online Communications seminar held last December in DC. When a certain client became aware that it was going to be featured on "60 Minutes," the platform was used to gauge
consumers' feelings about the company pre- and post-broadcast. Online survey participants were asked to evaluate the company, its spokespeople and its competitors. Their reactions
helped the crisis team hone in on the most critical messages the company needed to communicate to the public immediately following the broadcast.
(Insight Farm, 800/631-1160; Ntercept, http://www.ntercept.com; Strategy One, 202/326-1721)